Dancing Bodies
There is something undeniably familiar about the way we express ourselves through our bodies as Africans. Our dance styles are as vast as the countries contained on the continent; a continent so multi-cultural and multi-dimensional that the only way you could describe what makes the way we move so special, is the word, energy. The energy of our body movements is palpable and indescribable, but we will always try to put into words this practice that carries the stories of those who have long passed; those who live now, while also imagining alternative futures for us on the continent.
“It’s the multitudes of our cultural backgrounds that we are blessed with. We have so many elements of culture across the continent, even just in South Africa, and the richness of ethnicities and religions is so diverse," says Vincent Mantsoe, South African dance veteran and founder of Association Noa, whose career spans across 4 decades, and almost every continent.
Courtesy Cie Vincent Mantsoe
Mantsoe’s career has been an expansive one, having begun early on, growing up in a deeply spiritual home. Being woken up at 5 am via the drumming, singing, and dancing of his grandmother, mother, aunts, and siblings, who were all traditional healers, was a way of life for him. It formed the foundation of waking up and greeting his forefathers and ancestors, before journeying to work each morning. He now wakes up in France, with dancers who have followed him, been taught by him, and continuously cement him as a living legend in the industry.
“The one intangible thing is the spirituality of dance, the energy and the sincerity of the movement that we bring to dance belongs to the Mother Earth of Africa. It's about cultural preservation within the 21st century. This is a very important thing for me personally, when I teach or create, I will always stress that this is important. We shouldn't forget who we are and where we come from, we need to be able to balance ourselves with the modernity.”
Dance on this continent of ours has always been an organic practice. Movement is so inherent to our cultural and spiritual practices, it forms a colossal part of not just our histories, but the ways we retell the stories of our collective memories. Our movements have always been powerfully expressive in the ways they are communicated and connected us, an energy that heals and bridges between those who move, and those who experience it.
Manstoe shares:
“This is the tradition of the Sangomas, we dance to heal ourselves and the next person. When you go into the classical movements or dance like contemporary, it's a completely different expression of dance. It has nothing to do with spirituality to me. It's a peripheral dance to me where you just see the body moving without any essence of spirituality.”
In "Mapping a Historical Context for Theatre Dance in South Africa", Sharon Freidman speaks to exactly this, noting that the local artscape arose in the mainstream sense that we now engage with, from a history warped by colonialism and Apartheid. The oppressors of Black and Brown people on this continent, and more specifically in South Africa, reduced cultural art forms to the exotic "other", opting to fund the more "classical" art forms, like ballet and shoving "ethnic curiosities" to the margins. The private club is still upheld to this day, continuously fueling this binary of the classical, versus the traditional.
Stills from Gregory Maqoma & Vuyani Dance Theatre | Cion: Requiem of Ravel's Bolero
Gregory Maqoma, founder and artistic director of Vuyani Dance Theatre, finds this significant in the ways he works, as well as the ways he feels; it then becomes endlessly necessary for the creative sector to remain grounded in telling our own stories.
“In our time when we started dancing, it was all about perpetuating the whole colonial way of learning how to dance. We were not owning our own style, we were learning the techniques that were brought to our country from the West. It was really from us who had to have an interest in breaking the cycle and decide to own our own stories where we have space where we can express our desire to tell our own stories without fear, without having to conform to anyone's culture or tradition or even the aesthetics. I wanted to live within my aesthetic and create a space where other dancers could come from other parts of our country or even the continent and come find the space where they can also feel at home.”
"Post-Apartheid Dance: Many Bodies, Many Voices, Many Stories" is a collection that speaks on this exactly, expanding on the binaries that left the marginalized forgotten, and speak to how our histories have shaped our art forms. The book includes discussions on privilege, the necessary disruption of normativity in the industry, examining identity politics and their impact, as well as analyzing the contexts of the work that is done. We are 26 years into a democratic South Africa, and these conversations cannot simply end here when discussing the politics of expression within dance.
The work of Maqoma, Mantsoe, and Mamela Nyamza, to name just a few, has paved a way for a new generation of dancers that are unapologetically claiming their space. Nyamza, an award-winning dancer and choreographer, focuses on how the socio-political has continuously challenged the norm, whilst consciously blending forms to share her life experience.
She has said: “I must deliver a work that not only speaks to me and the world but one that speaks to the issues our country is facing because between art and life there is no difference. We have become the ambassadors of our country, its prophets.” Art is a pillar of provocation, a way to voice anger and frustration, to make calls for accountability and justice, to convey new images and imagine ourselves into spaces we were once denied.
Manstoe tells me that wherever he performs globally, people are quick to share that South Africans are so joyous as people, always smiling and laughing. To which he responds to them: "Yes, of course, there is so much to be joyful about but underneath there is always the history, the pain, the refusal to forget where we have come from, and a yearning to commemorate that through art."
We have the balance between these experiences, experiences that Maqoma speaks to via how we often become political people, by virtue of the fact that we are responding to our own circumstances. We are only picking up the pieces from the past, continuing legacies of those who were there before us and by that, artists allow a continuation of legacies through the acknowledgment of our collective histories.
“I'm very interested in our generation that has experienced the fall of Apartheid only to be flung into a country that is still grappling with its own trauma and healing,” Kieron Jina shared with me. A queer multi-disciplinary artist, choreographer, and performance creative researcher, Jina finds the norm tedious; he refuses to align uphold structure that doesn’t align with the core of who he is. He uses his own body as a site of therapy and healing; rooting in the physical body, a constant negotiation of reclamation.
“Dance is about finding an authentic voice or authenticity within the way you move your body. The whole point of the performing arts space is about human connection, and my queer identity was finding a way to connect to myself. They are definite links between me coming to terms with who I am and what I'm going through as a way to disrupt the heteronormative monoculture that we exist and conform to. By choosing to create my own space, designing my own signature I show to reject the norm.”
This art form allows so many to unpack their experiences and make sense of them. The raw energy presented in it allows our imaginations to run wild, and find solace in looking inward for our own representation. What happens when these perspectives lack certain voices and bodies? Can we say that dance is inclusive of the diversity of bodies that are present if many are shut out or shamed into the margins? How do we create spaces that do not continue the violent cycles of alienating the "other"?
Maqoma speaks on the bodies that are often forgotten within dance, emphasizing the need to debunk the elitisms within dance: “We need to return back to the empathy of it all, the technique isn’t a way into the expression.” For us to engage with dance as an art form that connects us to the myriad of human experiences, it needs to continue to open up space for everyone to feel as though they can move with their heart and soul, connecting with themselves and their audiences. When the industry doesn’t represent the full spectrum of human experience, it will always feel lacking.
There are still many who are shut off from this industry, whose presence within it is pathologized. Gerard M. Samuel's disability justice work within dance is monumental. Both "(Dis)graceful Dancing Bodies in South Africa" and "Dancing the Other in South Africa" speak to the significance of disabled dancers being in the foreground within the industry, continuing in the work of "Gayatri Spivak’s provocation of the voiceless and Sylvia Glasser’s politics of dance foreground my argument of diverse dancing bodies.”
Samuel names "the others" the migrants, the frail and hospitalized, the uneducated, the poor, the unemployed, the rural farmers, and the drug-addicted, and centers them in work that reminds us that the work is not done simply because there are more faces that look like ours in multiple sectors.
Samuel’s work is an extension of Jina’s comments; it is vital that we continue to bring the marginalized to the other; center. While these sensational artists have given so much of themselves in pursuit of creative freedom and collaborative power that is interdisciplinary; there are still the structures of power that continue to make their work incredibly difficult to navigate and to ignore that truth, is to deny the very impact of the work that is being done. There has been immense progress but it cannot ever stop here. Samuel’s work reminds us that there is much still to be done and is reminiscent of Nina Simone.
Jina shared with me: “How can your art not reflect the times we are living in?” Times where inclusion should be addressed in every form, every industry, every dance studio. Times where the creation of art is an act of resistance, where young people are increasingly aware of the impacts of colonization, capitalism, and the urgent need to represent ourselves authentically.
When Jina speaks on what is triggered when he hears the phrase "Dancing Bodies", he reaches for words that describe the experience of the artists whose work is referred to here: “Imagination. Historical context. Identity. Culture. Social Dynamics. The complexities of relationships to self and two people. The necessity for breath.”
An art form that is grounding in the body, yet completely intangible in the ways it expresses soul connection, ancestral wisdom and guidance and in many cases, rejecting the norm to create Afrofuturism; in which every single body that yearns to, can have the space to engage in the creation of art via movement. "Dancing Bodies" is a testament to the power of human connection.
by Tshegofatso Senne