MELAPO LE MELATSWANA | IMIFULA NEMI FULAMBO FULANA is a programme of works that travel through sites and across literal and figurative thresholds. Works of personal and collective journeying that translate and transmute experience.
NOSIBABALO
On the streets of Maboneng, a place of perpetual motion and activity, Qondiswa James assumes the role of the busker, experimenting with the kind of daily, private work that facilitates public life.
Nosibabalo is measured and deliberate. It is the work of the knees and the hands, on the floor with a waslap and enamel basin, kneeling and cleaning. People stare as they pass. Some stop to find out if she is okay, others decide she has lost her mind.
By engaging with the city, evoking its unseen labour, and ultimately disappearing, James harnesses invisibility as a tool for insurrection and intervention. She carries with her the physical and affectual materials of the city. Her hands and feet are blackened with dirt, her chest heavy with the smog of the city.
Back inside the Arts on Main building, she removes some of the dirty clothing and submerges herself in the basin, soaking in the cold, murky water. It is both a letting go and a burial.
– David Mann
CREDITS:
CONCEPTUALISER & PERFORMER | Qondiswa James
OLWAM
Olwam is the performance of a journey. Here, the act of climbing becomes a metaphor for progress – from childhood onwards – and all of the milestones, setbacks, triumphs and rites of passage that one encounters along the way.
An instant spectacle, Olwam makes use of the metal stairways that wind their way up the exterior of the Arts on Main building. A dress, lit by a dark, red light, waves in the breeze. A figure appears (Muzi Shili) and begins to dance across the stairs and walkways. It is a frenetic and unpredictable choreography, alive with risk and the fear of falling.
Throughout it all, the soft and deliberate music of Xolisile Bongwana scores the journey, mirroring the frantic gestures of Shili as he slides down a stairwell or sits upside down on a metal frame, suspended.
As the performance develops, objects emerge from the small, childlike backpack worn by Shili. They are both a cumulative counterpoint to his daring acrobatics and a series of narrative markers – objects signifying rises and falls, triumphs and tragedies, and singular, definitive moments – along a journey that is anything but linear.
As the performance draws to a close, and Shili withdraws from his impromptu stage, there are only the gentle, almost soothing gestures of a lone blanket moved by the wind.
– David Mann
CREDITS:
CONCEPTUALISER & PERFORMER | Muzi Shili
MUSICIAN | Xolisile Bongwana
IZANDI ZEMIZILA YETHU | THE SOUNDS OF OUR TRACES
How we do begin to translate and commemorate the lives of those who we have recently lost? The installation Izandi zemizila yethu | The Sounds of Our Traces, merges scenography with looped projection to produce a commemorative and contemplative space.
Plinthes bearing clusters of candles populate the space, while the names of those who’ve passed away over the past two years appear on the walls of the space.
A live performance by Duduza Serenade activates the otherwise still and reflective space in a different capacity, producing a carefully-curated soundscape that traverses the stages of loss, mourning, and acceptance by translating life and shifting grief.
What emerges is an audiovisual installation that commemorates through song, breath and ritual, the artists we’ve lost, translating and transcending loss and pain into the power to carry on.
– David Mann
CREDITS:
PERFORMERS | Duduza Serenade
CHOREOGRAPHER FOR BREATH CYCLE | Athena Mazarakis
DIRECTOR | Mandla Mbothwe
AUDIO DESIGNER | Elvis Sibeko
DIGITAL ANIMATOR | Sanjin Muftić
(M)MATLAKALA(NNA)
In (M)matlakala(nna), performance becomes a means of excavation. Thabo Rapoo, Muzi Shili, and Xolisile Bongwana use only the inherent rhythm and physicality of the body in motion to interrogate how contemporary constructs of masculinity and manhood lead to the suppression of emotion and pain.
Through this short-form physical work in which words are intentionally held-back, choreography becomes conversation, and the impact of hands and fists on bodies – beating, shaping, soothing – is an enduring and poignant refrain.
At the heart of (M)matlakala(nna) is an attempt at building a space to allow men to surface and make sense of that which has been buried, both spiritually and emotionally.
– David Mann
CREDITS:
PERFORMERS | Thabo Rapoo, Muzi Shili & Xolisile Bongwana
CONCEPTUALISER| Thabo Rapoo