Bang Bang Wo is a performance lecture about the politics and performativity of help by dancer and choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba. It was first performed at The Centre for the Less Good Idea in September 2017 as part of the For Once programme.

In Bang Bang Wo (‘help’ or ‘helping’ in Mandarin), Xaba employs a simple refrain – the moving and stacking of clear plastic bags filled with various seeds – to deliver her sharp and incisive performance lecture on the loaded nature of giving and receiving help. As such, Xaba’s performance harnesses parody, satire and tongue-in-cheek critique to muse on the notion of aid or support as it takes place in contemporary South Africa. NGOs, ‘domestic work’, arts organisations and outreach foundations all come under fire, narrated in a cool and effective tone by Xaba. “By the time they’re finished helping,” she says, stacking bag upon bag, “you can’t even do anything for yourself anymore.”

A number of enduring topics run through the performance. Xaba mentions performative allyship, online activism, local corruption, foreign aid and more. First performed in 2017, the performance perhaps finds new resonance in the age of the global Covid-19 pandemic, when forms of help, and the communities who seek and provide it, have become all the more pervasive.

The performance is shrewd and effective. As you listen to the lecture, the structure of bean-filled bags continues to grow. It is a mesmeric and didactic tool by Xaba that doubles up as a sharp metaphor. As the performance unfolds, Xaba is increasingly preoccupied with her own fortification or enclosure. She is ensconced in the illusion of prosperity, of progress. Ultimately, she becomes buried and obscured by these bags of seeds that will never grow.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CHOREOGRAPHER & PERFORMER | Nelisiwe Xaba
DIRECTOR | Toni Morkel
ASSISTANT PRODUCER | Candida Merwe
PROJECT MANAGER | Shruthi Nair
STAGE MANAGER | Hayleigh Evans & POPArt Productions