Where do lost and uncollected spirits go? Ba Moepo (a Sepedi phrase that means 'those who gravely dig') is a practice-led performance art installation that considers the devastatingly exploitative practice of mining in South Africa, and grapples with labour, extraction, the body, and the earth, post-apartheid. Set in a sparse, yet rich and speculative space beneath the earth, the work honours and draws on the spirits of those lost to the mines.

Ba Moepo is a trying work for viewer and performer alike. It is an installation performance that is both durational and experiential, immersive and compelling. The six men who occupy the stage are more like spectres than performers. They haunt the stage, moving slowly and in silence. Each wears a dim headlamp, illuminating their form, spotlighting their condition. They are trapped together, but remain apart, without the simple respite of human presence to comfort them. Behind them, the harsh, jagged rockface. Above them, the heavy weight of history, labour, exploitation and more. Time moves slowly, excruciatingly. We watch them fall in slow-motion, saliva dripping from mouths contorted in permanent screams. They curl up on the ground, keel over and relent, their bodies breaking and failing.

Conceptualised and directed by Calvin Ratladi, Ba Moepo is theatre as performance art, and as installation. But the audience is made to sit and endure, to watch loss, death, and abandonment in slow motion. As such, much of the activity of the work can be located off stage, in the audience. There is the creaking of chairs, the odd cough or sigh, bodies growing uncomfortable in seats, the shaking of heads, and the rubbing of necks.

Lighting, too, is a key contribution to the work. It can turn the cardboard backdrop to rock, or to gold. Slivers of gilded light or fire shine through from the bottom of the stage, the bowels of the earth. Narrative is held in the body, in the atmospheric soundscape. There is intermittent crying from those on stage. It pierces the silence, hangs in the air like a punctuation mark. At times, it is a total abandonment of hope, other times, a form of raging against it all. Always, though, there is a return to silence and stillness – the loss of breath, the lack of air, the sharp gasp of the mines.

And just as you feel you can endure no more: a single howl, the long and cathartic letting of grief, fear, and abandonment before the slight slowly, very slowly, fades away.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CONCEPTUALISER & DIRECTOR | Calvin Ratladi
MOVEMENT DIRECTOR | Thabo Rapoo
PERFORMERS | Thabo Rapoo, Nhlanhla Mahlangu, Muzi Shili, Katlego Kaygee Letsholonyane, Micca Manganye & Sinenhlanhla Mgeyi
SONIC DIRECTOR | Nhlanhla Mahlangu