A procession of sound and colour opens the performance of NNE. Offstage, four musicians lead from behind while the dancers file in slowly, cloaked in red and stomping out a soft, but enduring rhythm. They move together, into the low light of the stage, and a conversation emerges: a performative reflection on the process of initiation.

Shown at The Centre for the Less Good Idea in April 2022, NNE is the performative outcome of AND 5, 6, 7, 8, the SO Academy’s debut dance mentorship programme, led by choreographer, performer and teacher, Teresa Phuti Mojela.

NNE is fundamentally a performance about the ritual of Koma (initiation). As Mojela explains in her opening remarks, however, this is not an initiation that is specific to a particular culture, region or religion. Rather, it is open to interpretation – a collective reading of the many ways in which women experience initiation in their lives, be it going to school, going to university, leaving one’s home for the first time or taking part in an experimental dance mentorship programme.

NNE is the result of an eight-week mentorship programme. Started in late 2020, the process saw six young women dancers being mentored in technical training, choreographic skills and performance, and other vital aspects of professional dance practice that are rarely taught in dance schools and companies, such as administration, marketing and navigating the industry as a professional freelance artist. After the first four weeks, the programme was waylaid by the COVID-19 pandemic, only to resume in March of 2022. This time, Mojela focused on the creation and rehearsal of the dance work.

The resultant performance is a rich and complex one, holding at its core notions of identity, spirituality and cultural belonging. Choreographically, the piece favours the cyclical and the invocative, allowing for a series of performative explorations that attempt to reveal the many layers of these aforementioned notions of identity, spirituality and belonging.

The relationship between music and movement, and musician and dancer is vital, too. Both original and traditional compositions from across the African continent are present in NNE, incorporating nguni languages as well as TshiVenda, Xitsonga and SePedi. In this way, rituals of initiation and notions of identity are explored and effectively contested through language and music alike. Music activates the dancers, but it also establishes the narrative dynamic between youth (dancers) and elders (musicians), initiates and leaders. Through the use of music, the performance is able to shift tone in an instant, giving way to a series of generative and engaging tales in the short form.

As Mojela explains, the mentorship and the initiation process explored in NNE are essentially mirror processes and this can be seen, overtly, in numerous instances in the performance. The role of the elders played by the musicians of NNE, for example, is not dissimilar to the role they occupied during the mentorship process, often guiding and instructing the dancers, musically, thematically, practically.

There are certain minutiae from the mentorship that have informed the structure of the performance, too. The pursuit of one’s identity and subsequent singularity, for example, gave rise to a number of distinct solo moments in the performance, in addition to informing the collective choreographic moments that characterise much of the work. In the case of the latter, it is less a cloistering, than a collective galvanizing. As much as initiation is a process of better discovering oneself, posits the work, it is also a process that involves communal rite and ritual.

Crucially, the performance is about the pursuit of truth. It is an interrogation of one’s spiritual identity, one’s point of origin and how this might be influenced or obscured by those who came before us. In NNE, however, the truth has no end point and learning is forever cyclical, always multi-influential. Initiation, then – much like the process of making sense of one’s identity and place in the world – is a lifelong process.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

MENTOR & CHOREOGRAPHER | Teresa Phuti Mojela
MUSICAL COMPOSER | Zandile Hlatshwayo
MUSICIANS | Zandile Hlatshwayo, Paballo Sithe, Nontsikelelo Mfene & Nompumelelo Nhlapo
DANCERS | Dipuo Banda, Zaza Cala, Phuti Chokwe, Princess Mbokazi, Nonjabulo Ndlovu & Tidimalo Phelephe
COSTUME DESIGNERS | Masesi Hlatshwayo & Solomon Mthobeni