Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Honest dancers
Through movement the relationship between the two characters delves into issues of trust, virtue, amorality, projection and isolation
THEMES of jealousy and confused attraction come out in a new season of dance at the Baxter from Thursday.
Male dance duo Grant van Ster and Shaun Oelf will perform Grant and Shaun: A Double Bill of Dance at the Flipside from April 9 to 18, featuring two dance pieces: the Othello-inspired Most Honest Man and The Architecture of Tears.
Van Ster and Oelf are Jazzart graduates and have recently formed their own dance company, Figure of Eight Dance Collective, which aims to train dance students.
Van Ster said starting a company had been “hectic”.
“Now it’s the admin of dance; we have to sit in front of a computer. It has been a joy to start this organisation. The long-term plan is to have a training programme.”
Oelf has his heart set on a permanent rehearsal space for the company.
Their works will be performed back to back, separated by an interval. The pieces have very different characters, requiring a mind shift from the performers.
Van Ster said: “We haven’t done them back to back yet. I understand the characters are different. For us, it’s more about the stamina and the physicality.”
Each piece is half an hour long and the pair don’t have time to leave the stage.
The Architecture of Tears is performed with a female dancer; for the first week this will be Ciara Barron and the original female dancer in the production, Thabisa Dinga, will perform from April 15 to 18.
The piece plays with the idea of a threesome, with intimate moments between the one female and two male characters.
They push and pull at each other in a piece that was inspired by a study called 100 Tears Photographed Through A Standard Light Microscope by Rose- Lynn Fisher.
It is described as “an exploration into the human responses to attraction beyond gender and social correctness”.
The piece is well rehearsed, having been shown at last year’s Cape Town Fringe and Baxter Dance Festival and this year at Dance Umbrella in Joburg.
A Double Bill of Dance is the debut of Most Honest Man in which Van Ster plays Othello and Oelf plays Iago in a piece that explores the jealousy between the two characters.
Baxter director Lara Foot is credited with the idea for the production as she asked the pair to explore the relationship between the two characters.
They were challenged to seek out the jealousy and how it plays out in their lives.
True to the original play, a handkerchief plays a pivotal role but the pair are mum on how they use it.
“We have had to use a completely different approach. Othello can have a cast of 10 or 12 and we are just two,” said Van Ster.
This performance of The Architecture of Tears comes with the challenge of performing with two different female leads in an intimate piece.
Oelf said: “Thabisa was involved in the whole process of creating the work but Ciara makes it her own. They are definitely different.”
“The works complement each other, as much as different works can,” said Van Ster.
They hope to take Most Honest Man to Grahamstown this year for the National Arts Festival. It has the added value of Mdu Kweyama as director and choreographer and dramaturgy from playwright Alex McCarthy.
● Grant and Shaun: A Double Bill of Dance is at the Baxter Flipside from April 9 to 18. Tickets are mostly R100. Book at Computicket.