My DanceAfrica wish list

Abdel R. Salaam, Artistic Director
of BAM's annual DanceAfrica fest,
presents Remembrance, Reconciliation, Renewal,
honoring the centennial of Nelson Mandela's birth
and the work of "freedom fighters past and present."
The season focuses on South Africa's
traditional and contemporary dance.
Below: Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre, founded in 1995,
under the leadership of artistic director Jay Pather
and resident choreographer Simphiwe Magazi

He said it himself. Several times. It's hard to choose.

Why do we have to?

Abdel R. Salaam--Chuck Davis's successor as artistic director of DanceAfrica--went to South Africa and fell in love. He auditioned several dozen dance troupes, knowing he could select only one for his festival. One. At most, two. He watched and watched. And enjoyed. And agonized.

Then he chose one (Durban's Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre). And then he combined a large number of dancers from four different companies into a supergroup, what became Ingoma KwaZulu-Natal Dance Company, made up of performers from:

Champions Dance Crew, which specializes in isipantsula, an energetic street style of movement that first emerged during the apartheid era; Kangaroo, a traditional Zulu ensemble based in Durban; the all-female Tswana Group, trained in Setswana, Pedi, Venda, and Xhosa styles; and Amatsheketshe, another all-female troupe that specializes in the traditional Zulu styles of Ushiyameni, Umkhomaas, and Umzani. -- from DanceAfrica 2018 publicity

And with thoughts of Mandela's birth centennial and mindful of continued struggles both there and here in his own homeland, Salaam began to create a way to introduce a range of South African artistry to his loving and loyal DanceAfrica audience for the 2018 season.

The head swims to think of Salaam's responsibility. And to think the next thought--which is that, since Baba Chuck gave Salaam his wholehearted blessing, telling him to make DanceAfrica his own, it might be time to do exactly that. What's the next level for this annual tradition at BAM--one which, given Brooklyn's struggles around gentrification and cultural displacement--is more significant than ever?

While Salaam is meticulous about thanking DanceAfrica supporters like Bloomberg and ConEd from the stage, I'm going to throw out a challenge to BAM and to funders to help DanceAfrica do more than entertain. It's time to make it an institution that thoroughly illuminates and educates year-round, not just for a single holiday weekend.

DanceAfrica 2018, which continues today and tomorrow, is entertaining and rousing as all get out, designed to be so, with everything from thrilling movement and acrobatics to breathtaking stage design. You can't beat it for that. Salaam inherited a jewel and, wonderfully, brings his own broad interests to it.

I can say that I saw much--and it was quite a range, stylistically, all presented with painstaking skill and openhearted verve--but I can't say much about what it all meant. I can't distinguish between the styles noted in the above description of Ingoma's component groups. I have a woefully imperfect understanding of the theatrical narrative presented in Siwela Sonke's Umsuka (choreographed by Neli Rushualang), despite what's written in the program notes' one-sentence description. And--like Salaam in his way--I want more.

I'd like Salaam to have the opportunity and the wherewithal to break DanceAfrica out of its box and build it further. Why, after four decades, is it not yet an institution that can bring companies--from traditional to hip hop and beyond--throughout the year? Why can he not open a permanent DanceAfrica building of studios at the ready to nurture African and African-diasporan dancemakers and new generations of excellent performers? Why can't young Black artists making searching, powerful work here in New York City and the states not have venues to find common ground with colleagues from the continent? Why can we not have year-round DanceAfrica residencies and retreats and networking and commissions and awards?

Why can we not have as many and as much as we want and need? And why, in particular, can't we learn--through adequate opportunities to see and document work--what we most need to know to truly give Africa's artists their due?

I want this. For myself. But also for Salaam and all the artists and audiences DanceAfrica has touched.

Dance Africa continues with 3pm matinees today and tomorrow, Memorial Day. For information on the season and related events and ticketing, click here.

BAM Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Chicago's Deeply Rooted brings "INDUMBA" to BAM Fisher

Dominique Atwood and Joshua L. Ishmon
of Chicago's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in INDUMBA,
a work by South African choreographer Fana Tshabalala
(photo: Ken Carl)

How fortunate to be introduced to South African dancemaker Fana Tshabalala through his mighty ensemble piece, INDUMBA ("healing hut"), a 2017 work performed for the first time in New York by Kevin Iega Jeff's Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. The Chicago-based troupe completes its too-short run of this stunning piece this afternoon at BAM Fisher.

The hut in question here--evoking sites of African traditional cleansing and healing--takes shape through a semicircle of stools for dancers on the perimeter of a misty space illuminated by hazy shafts of light. Constructed of beautiful, golden wood, the stools are spare and look less than sturdy. Inside that simple boundary, dancers rise to propel themselves through angular, anguished gyrations and convulsions. These obsessive movements suggest horrors born of social conflict. At the same time, they suggest a ritual of pressure to rid body, mind and soul of these lingering toxicities.

Nicholas Aphane's driving music reaches inside any helpless viewer, evoking the violent, relentless churning of massive machinery. We first hear a vague, intermittent hum like a muted signal or something powering up. We don't anticipate its coming textures and caustic power. External, inhumane forces that have become internalized must, like demons, be exorcised. The "hut" itself--heartless but purposeful--nearly pulverizes damaged beings to render them safer for themselves and for their community.

Some of the drama involves two men--are they antagonists? brothers? actually one person wracked by warring forces within himself?--who clutch, grapple, twist and coil around each other as if they were made of the same skin. One shoves away and isolates himself only to later find himself in the other's grip once again. Likewise, a suffering woman turns from her brutal attacker only to find her "savior" treating her with equal brutality.

Tshabalala's research into the experiences of war-scarred Mozambique, as well as his observations of how apartheid's legacy impacts today's South Africa, informed the creation of Indumba. The work resonates for us, as well, in an America newly haunted by its nightmarish past and roiled by present-day hatreds and violence. If Inbumba is a dance, as described in DRDT's program, offering hope of "resilience and reconciliation," there's clearly nothing easy along that path. And its final image suggests not so much the soothing of terrible pain as its honest, open-throated expression.

Performed by Dominique Atwood, Pierre Clark, Shanna Cruzat, Joshua L. Ishmon, Rebekah Kuczma, Marlayna Locklear, William Robertson and Anthony Williams

Costumes: Alex Gordon
Lighting design: Sarah Lackner

INDUMBA concludes with a 3pm performance today with a post-show discussion moderated by Baraka Sele. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Hugh Masekela, 78

Hugh Masekela, South African jazz trumpeter, dies
BBC News, January 23, 2018

Hugh Masekela, Trumpeter and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies at 78
by Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times, January 23, 2018


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Keorapetse Kgositsile, 79

Keorapetse Kgositsile, 79, South African Poet and Activist, Dies
by Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times, January 16, 2018

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Ray Phiri, 70

Ray Phiri, ‘Graceland’ Guitarist and Anti-Apartheid Bandleader, Dies at 70
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, July 14, 2017

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Queer NY presents Mamela Nyamza's "HATCHED"

South African dance artist Mamela Nyamza
in her solo, HATCHED, at Abrons Arts Center
 (photos: John Hogg)

Did I hear right?

It took several years of effort for Shay Wafer's 651 Arts--now co-presenting with Queer New York International Arts Festival--to finally bring South African dancer Mamela Nyamza to New York?

And for only one night?

Curated by Marýa Wethers, Nyamza's HATCHED introduced an artist I wish more New Yorkers could have experienced. Attendance was sparse. Every seat in Abrons Arts Center's Playhouse theater should have been claimed.

(photo: John Hogg)

Abrons has smaller, less formal and more flexible spaces well-suited to alternative dance and performance. But Nyamza pointedly mixed the classically formal (tutu, pointe work, port de bras, Saint-Saëns) with the unexpected (blood-red laundry, looking, for all the world, like flayed flesh or butcher cuts, that she hung to dry on a line strung between the wings). She needed honest-to-god proscenium space for the razzle dazzle of her visual imagery and lighting. She created a jarring, split-awareness for audience members first to take their seats before the show began. We listened to The Dying Swan and gazed out on Nyamza's bare back, shaved head, waves of crimson fabric engulfing her white tulle as, beyond the hall's flung-open doors, stragglers continued their loud chatter.

From the outset, HATCHED announces itself as both forbidding and irresistible--and sacred--very much in its own space, which we must focus to approach.

And it was no surprise when, during the post-show Q&A with Wethers, Nyamza revealed that, in performance, she goes into her "zone," communing with her deceased mother and other ancestors, and that she aims to welcome us into the work while maintaining an unbreachable distance.

Dramatically reflecting the tension between Nyamza's ballet training--with which she maintains a complicated relationship--and her Xhosa heritage and artistry, the solo suggests a search for her true self beyond all external structures, expectations, appearances. Her work is sourced in her life. Married and a mother, Nyamza left her husband for a woman and now exults in her life as an out lesbian. The personal is the political is the poetic.

Let's hope for more chances to see what Nyamza, an artist of arresting skill and a woman of much charm, might have to offer. I hope it will not take long for her to return to New York's venues.

HATCHED is closed, but for other events in the 2016 Queer New York International Arts Festival--running through October 2 at various venues--click here.

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Dada Masilo's swans of a feather flock to the Joyce

Songezo Mcilizeli as Prince Siegfried
with Dada Masilo as Odette
(photo: John Hogg)

some Masilo swans swanning about
(photo: John Hogg)

That blaring Tchaikovsky processional set the tone right away. Those barefoot dancers, flouncy and twitching in their gender-nonspecific tutus on The Joyce Theater stage, simulated the flight of a flock of swans while encoding every point along the movement spectrum from ballet to African. But not seamlessly, never the sort of contemporary ballet where every last element is blended out, airbrushed and...Kumbaya! We've got exotic perfection for ya!  Instead, you can see the separate techniques of dancing smacking up against each other, visibly diced, sliced and spliced by the exacting mind and sharp hand of Dada Masilo. Without question, this extraordinary work is Dada Masilo's Swan Lake.

I only became aware of Masilo when she choreographed and performed in William Kentridge's Refuse the Hour at last fall's BAM Next Wave. But, for several years, this talented Black South African woman has been turning heads all over Europe, making works called I Just Want To Be a Princess for One Day and The World My Butt and Other Big Round Things, and training her wry eye on classical icons like Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake.

Well, why not use the classical ballets she dearly loves to tell contemporary stories of top importance to her?

Her take on Swan Lake puts me in mind of Camille A. Brown. Fans of that American dance artist will find Masilo's narrative work and her own piquant, bravura performance style similar in nature and appeal. In addition, both artists draw from aspects of Black culture and artistry, have well-honed, character-driven comedic skills and an interest in showing the full range of human experience and feeling. They both step up to address challenging issues, mixing entertaining performance with social relevance. For Masilo, the story of Swan Lake sets the stage for a look at the consequences of homophobia and the devastation of losing generations of South Africans to AIDS.

This turbo-charged, enormously charming Swan Lake pairs, against his will, a closeted Prince Siegfried (Songezo Mcilizeli) with Masilo's eager bride-to-be Odette. Siegfried's parents--especially Mom--freak out when they learn that their son is in love with a man named Odile--yes, I know, usually, the sinister doppelganger of the dancer playing Odette--here danced by tall, graceful Thamsanqa Tshabalala, the only cast member rocking pointe shoes, and beautifully, thank you.

The piece--lit with true magic by Suzette le Sueur--flies by in just an hour. In that hour, nearly everything moves at a speedy, insistent pace. Group scenes are tightly-organized delirium, usually some hooplah over the expected nuptials. Which brings me back to the loud, nearly martial selections from Tchaikovsky. With this music, Masilo seems to underscore how the private life, and will, of the individual can get pounded down by the heedless force of society. This comes in sharp contrast to the tranquility of Siegfried's time alone with Odile. Without the crowd mashing him, Siegfried can get to know himself and his desires.

Because humor has such prominence in the dance, its conclusion can seem either jarring or poignant. Masilo lost her aunt to AIDS, and this work was made in memory of her. Performers in long, black skirts dance against a dark, starry backdrop. Some slump to the floor. Eventually, just two remain, each delicately rubbing fingers together as if sprinkling a handful of dirt on the coffins of loved ones until there's no one left to perform this final rite.

Swan Lake continues tonight through Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2pm. For information and tickets, click here.

The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Avenue (at 19th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

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South Africa's Mmakgosi Kgabi finds her light

Mmakgosi Kgabi, above and below,
in Shades of a Queen
(photos: Thomas Aurin)

For New York--a city that (thinks it) has seen it all and many times over--Johannesburg's Mmakgosi Kgabi is an startling original. Sad to say, her solo performance of Shades of a Queen--curated by Marýa Wethers for Queer New York International Arts Festival--ran only one evening. You really ought to catch this performance artist and, perhaps, some smart programmer will bring her back to New York.

Performed last night at Abrons Arts Center's Experimental Theater, Shades of a Queen imagines the complications of coming out queer while African. Or, at least, in Kgabi's uncommon mind, coming out queer when the name your Botswanan mother gave you implies a singular status. Mmakgosi translates to "The Mother of the Chief," and, for the purposes of this piece, Kgabi's dramatic persona rocks a pinched, high-pitched British accent with the Cockney tag innit lashed to the end of sentences like a subversive tic. Who is this creature? Well, she calls herself Her Majesty the Queen.

When we first meet Her Majesty, a mysterious figure dressed in black tights and a diaphanous black cape, she's singing softly to herself and drifting around the sparse furnishings of the darkened space. A white couch faces away from the audience, and occasionally Kgabi will take a moment to comfortably settle there, still singing. A matching armchair, at a short distance, is toppled onto its side and remains so. We have no idea why. An open notebook rests on a small white table with several e-devices lining its shelf. These will play an amusing role in the proceedings as Her Majesty carries on several improvised conversations with "callers"--some clear, some clueless, some creepy--each successive call detaining her from carrying out her stated intention to leave the apartment and go to the thee-AY-tah!

Her voice. A harsh, stringently pretentious one matched by precise, insistent, increasingly impatient physicality. A finely-trained Kgabi masters it all.

"We're going to the thee-AY-tah, darling!"

"You have to put your best foot forward."

"You have to relax, speak properly...."

"You bless them with the knowledge of who you are, darling!"

"Where's that spot? Where is my light?"

"You find your light, dear. You find your presence."

With the knowledge that Shades of a Queen is riffing on the idea of coming out as queer, we begin to hear Kgabi's dialogues and actions as internal exhortations, disturbances and, ultimately, diversions. The interfering shades are a Shadow Self not easily laid to rest. Her rumblings with the external world trigger rumbling within, upending the familiar comforts and confines of home. Luckily for us, they also bring about an entertaining evening and the introduction of a confident and fascinating artist. More, please!

Kgabi is a member of South Africa's multidisciplinary Stash the Suitcase Performance Arts Collective. Follow the collective's work here.

Queer New York International Arts Festival continues events at Abrons through September 26. For information and tickets for other QNYIAF events, click here.

Abrons Arts Center
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

André Brink, 79

André Brink, South African Literary Lion, Dies at 79
by Alan Cowell, The New York Times, February 7, 2015

T. O. Molefe on the racist context of Brett Bailey's "Exhibit B"

Racism and the Barbican's 'Exhibit B'
by T. O. Molefe, The New York Times, October 27, 2014

Nadine Gordimer, 90

Nadine Gordimer, Novelist Who Took on Apartheid, Dies at 90
by Helen T. Verongos, The New York Times, July 14, 2014

Mandela Day commemorative concert at Riverside Church and streamed live, July 18

A New York Concert to Honor Mandela, and Stream Online
by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, July 2, 2014

Footsteps of Mandela Web site

Hugh Masekela celebrates birthday in song at Rose Theater

Proclaiming Joy, in Concert, on His 75th Birthday
Hugh Masekela Played His Horn and Sang at Rose Theater
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, April 7, 2014

With Ubuntu, Carnegie Hall honors South African culture

Carnegie Hall

presents

UBUNTU: Music and Arts of South Africa

a citywide festival exploring South African arts and culture

October 10-November 5

dozens of events at Carnegie Hall 

and partner venues across New York City

music, film, visual arts, and more

featuring trumpeter, vocalist, and composer Hugh Masekela; vocalist Vusi Mahlasela; jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim; vocalist Angélique Kidjo; vocal ensemble Ladysmith Black Mambazo; visual artist William Kentridge; and many others

For information on Carnegie Hall's UBUNTU Music and Arts of South Africa festival, click here.

When artists spoke up, sang out for South African freedom

Remember this? Lou Reed, Rubén Blades, Nona Hendryx, George Clinton...after a while, you've got to ask yourself, who DIDN'T show up in this kickass music video!

Artists United Against Apartheid was a 1985 protest group founded by activist and performer Steven Van Zandt and record producer Arthur Baker to protest apartheid in South Africa.

Farewell, Madiba

Madiba
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
1918-2013

farewell

rest, ancestor, in power

fierce love, fierce pride

courage to fight when fight is called for

to sacrifice

to gather strength, your higher wisdom

to extend a balm

you, blazing star, lift us, dignify us

true life is lived in this way

and death can claim no triumph

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Contemporary African art museum planned for Cape Town

New Cape Town Museum to Focus on Contemporary African Art

by Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times, November 24, 2013

Doris Lessing, 94

Doris Lessing, Novelist Who Won 2007 Nobel, Is Dead at 94

by Helen T. Verongos, The New York Times, November 17, 2013

Maqoma.

Above and below:
Dancer-choreographer Gregory Maqoma in Exit/Exist
(photos by John Hogg, courtesy of 651 Arts)

The bare, often terrible facts of war--and of the deeds of warriors--can be difficult to contemplate, let alone absorb. And yet the primal Warrior archetype lives on in human consciousness as a model of strength, exacting skill, dedication and sacrifice. "Warrior" is the way we think of all those who meet exceptional challenge with exceptional determination, ingenuity and fierceness. The tale of the vanquished Warrior grabs our hearts as we contrast the inherent dignity of the heroic figure with the reality his or her defeat.

In Exit/Exist, recently presented by 651 Arts at LIU Brooklyn's Kumble Theater, South African dance artist Gregory Maqoma (Vuyani Dance Theatre) brings us an archetypal impression of the revered 19th Century Rharabe Xhosa warrior, Chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma. No history lesson, this fantasia instead offers inspiration, bringing into awareness--willing into existence--the warrior we need to see. Music composed by guitarist Giuliano Modarelli and songwriter Simphiwe Dana--performed live by Modarelli and South Africa's sublime vocal ensemble Complete--contributes a heady, deep gorgeousness of harmony and propulsion.

Maqoma first emerges out of the darkness of the stage, as if conjured from the smoke of incense, a man in a modern-day suit of silvery cloth. Dancing with his back to us, he reaches out to strum an imaginary instrument as Modarelli, hidden behind a scrim, plays the notes. The dancer's shoulders and arms and knees twitch rhythmically, percussively; at times, the end of his jacket swirls back and forth across his hips. His fingers writhe like firing nerve endings, and we feel--knowing without conscious knowledge--that the spirit of the ancestral warrior inhabits him. He has been chosen, as the projected text says of the great chief, "to walk through the storm" and tell the story. The story of how Maqoma went from boy to man, from king to visionary, defending his land and culture from the ravages of British colonialism. A story ending in the prison of Robben Island where, a century ahead, a new hero, Nelson Mandela, would also be held.

Gregory Maqoma in Exit/Existwith members of Complete in background
(photo by John Hogg, courtesy of 651 Arts)

Exit/Exist is sacred ceremony, every detail perfected, in a place of wishful, constructed memory. Over the course of this powerful and stirring performance, the dancer will veer between Maqoma now and Maqoma then; in one segment, two Maqomas (the living one portrayed by one of the singers) repeatedly whirl beyond reach of each other's grasp.

"Is there still a tale to tell?" the projected text asks, late in the piece, when we have witnessed the captive warrior's grief. "Who will tell it? Where will it start?" Maqoma's telling consists of dancing that mixes tradition into a stew of contemporary movement and theatricality. More than that, it is powered by the masterful, endlessly inventive musicality of Maqoma's dancing--his exact touch--and the charisma of this natural-born star.

Coming to Los Angeles

See Exit/Exist in Los Angeles, November 7-10, at REDCAT. For information and tickets, click here.

Gregory Maqoma's North American tour is produced by MAPP International Productions in partnership with The Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium.

Jeremy Crutchley brings "Sacred Elephant" to La MaMa

Jeremy Crutchley in Sacred Elephant(photo by Rob Keith)

Fine-boned and mercurial, the British/South African actor Jeremy Crutchley has the litheness of a dancer. His masterful orientation to space makes you think there's much, much more of it than, in reality, La MaMa's First Floor Theater has to offer. His performance of Sacred Elephant--a stage adaptation of a poem by Heathcote Williams about these often exploited and endangered animals--dances as much as it vocally interprets an equally masterful, intense torrent of language, a blend of scientific observation, spiritual resonance and polemics. 

From its first inviting words and the first mad glance of the actor's red-rimmed eyes, you're roped into an experience you cannot escape: a wondrous encounter with beings of great power, intelligence, unexpected sensitivity and altruism followed by a reminder of the selfish destructiveness of that insecure "piece of work" Hamlet called "the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

photo by Rob Keith

Directed by Geoffrey Hyland, who adapted the Williams poem with Crutchley, this all-giving, 75-minute monologue never fails to engage and trouble the mind, senses or conscience.

Sacred Elephant runs through September 22, Wednesday-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm. Call 212-868-4444 or visit Smarttix.

For more information, visit the play's Web site here.

La MaMa (First Floor Theater)
74 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)