FNB Dance Umbrella 2008: Via Katlehong and Montage

Dance-Umbrella-1
This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

2nd March 2008

View online here


Attending a double bill of performances by the Via Katlehong dance company at the Market Theatre – the fourth of over twenty programmes making up this year’s FNB Dance Umbrella – I found myself sitting next to a boy of about six years old. “Out of the mouths of babes ...”, they say; and I couldn’t help feeling that the young boy’s unrestrained responses to the first half of the show (“Toutes sorts des déserts”, choreographed by Christian Rizzo, who was invited to work with Via Katlehong in a South African-French collaboration) expressed my own muted thoughts. 

When the dancers entered, stamping and clapping in a syncopated rhythm as they began a frenetic gumboot dance, the boy bounced enthusiastically in his seat. Then the group disintegrated, with most of the dancers taking up positions as spectators. My young friend went quiet, as bodies began to gather on stage: some of them limp and inert, some of them frozen stiff. These “dead” characters were “brought to life” by other members of the troupe, who explored them with trepidation before manipulating their limbs, lifting them and placing them on chairs.

The contrast between lifeless, slumbering human forms and strong, agile bodies was an effective one, while the arrangement of these encounters in the half-lit square space of performance created some wonderful tableaux. But the occasional titters from the seat next to me – the boy’s giggle betraying his utter confusion – signalled my own inability to interpret certain obscure elements in the performance.

There is perhaps a generic critique to be made of contemporary dance, which so often gestures towards story-telling and thematic continuity but which, without a written or spoken prompt (even an explicit explanation) from the choreographer, frustrates viewers’ attempts to resolve the parts into a narrative or symbolic whole. At the same time, the visceral-aesthetic pleasure of dance – the paradoxical exhilaration of dancers liberating the human body in the very act of producing carefully controlled, coordinated, graceful movements – is lost, because concept-heavy choreography does not give dancers the opportunity to demonstrate technique or simply to revel in the joy of fast-twitch muscle fibres.

Marilyn Jenkins, who co-founded the Dance Umbrella with Adrienne Sichel some twenty years ago, has noted that in the early years of the Umbrella “contemporary dance was faltering in America and Europe ... South African dance had an enormous amount to offer, its earthy reality came out of the soil”. It may be facile to resort to head/heart or rational/irrational binaries when considering the difference between “European” and “African” art forms. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that replacing the spectacle of skilled dance performance with abstract musings and ponderous movements is a sure way to lose audience members.

This thought occurred to me as I sat alone in the Wits Downstairs Theatre, watching a projection of the fringe productions of the Montage Video Dance Festival (the main programme was far better attended). Gerard Bester and Jeanette Ginslov, whose involvement in the Umbrella also dates back to 1989, initiated Montage last year, and it has been a welcome addition to the portfolio of events – an international selection of dance-on-film that not only adds a fascinating counterpoint to live performances, but also foregrounds the potential for a different medium to change the perspective from which we see dance.

In many cases, however, the artists concerned are evidently so enamoured with their medium that the videos cease to be of or about dancing; rather, they are exercises in imaginative camera angles, editing and mis-en-scenes, or experiments with graphic effects. It’s pleasing to observe that among the exceptions to this rule are two works by Ginslov and her colleagues at Walking Gusto Productions. “Freedom”, a documentary-style piece on five female dancers, and “Karahano”, a clever fusion of video technology and urban dance energy to depict aspects of masculine identity, demonstrate that some of the more abstruse practitioners from the trans-Atlantic dance world could learn a thing or two from their South African peers.

Likewise, Robyn Orlin’s conception and choreography resulted in a second half of the Via Katlehong double bill that was more gratifying than the first. (Orlin has also been part of the Dance Umbrella since its inception, and her “Dressed to Kill / Killed to Dress” was well received as one of the opening programmes in this year’s event.) Apart from the title, “Still Life with Homeless Heaven and Urban Wounds ... (Even Bananas have Bones)”, this piece was accessible yet sophisticated. Playing on the twin meanings of pantsula – both the dandy and the dance – the troupe appeared in gaudy yellow-and-gold outfits that were part Liberace, part cross-dresser and part township rag-tag. After a light-hearted game of jiving one-upmanship, they segued into a series of water-juggling acts and turned this into a political statement, pleading with audience members for amanzi.

Pantsula refers, of course, to the way a duck walks. The group swathed themselves in long sheets of cloth and put on duck masks, imitating the sounds (squeaking rubber shoes on a wet stage floor), movements and comical mannerisms of a flock of ducks. A technical hitch a few minutes from the end of the piece hindered the performers slightly, but this didn’t limit the enjoyment of my young friend, who laughed throughout and applauded heartily at the end.
 
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