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The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg

  • AT THE CENTRE
    • COLLATION 1 | ON AIR: VISUAL RADIO PLAYS
    • COLLATION 2 | SOUNDING PICTURES: LIVE SCORES TO SHORT SILENT FILMS
  • SO Academy
    • ABOUT
    • SO | PRACTICE & TÊTE-À-TÊTE
    • THINKING IN (2020 - 2025)
    • IN CONVERSATION ARCHIVE (2017 – 2024)
    • HOW | Showing the Making (2022 - 2024)
    • THE OPEN MOMENT
    • DR JAMES BARRY WORKSHOPS (2024)
    • THE HEAD & THE LOAD | ACTIVATIONS (2023)
    • MOTLHANA KALANA INCUBATOR (2023)
    • A GATHERING IN A BETTER WORLD (2023)
    • The Centre of Somewhere (2022 - 2023)
    • 2ndary REVISIONS (2022)
    • WOVEN WITH BROWN THREAD (2021)
  • THE CENTRE OUTSIDE THE CENTRE
    • ABOUT
    • 2025
    • CFLGI x FONDATION CARTIER (2024)
    • 2024
    • 2023
    • 2022
    • 2021
    • 2020
    • 2019
  • FOR ONCE
    • ABOUT
    • FOR ONCE ARCHIVE (2017 - 2024)
    • A KAFKA MOMENT (2021)
    • A CONSIDERED 3 MINUTES (2020/2021)
    • THE POETRY MINUTE (2021)
    • A GODOT MOMENT (2020)
    • ODD PORTRAITS OF THIS PLACE (2021)
    • THE HIGHWAY NOTICE PROJECT (2020/2021)
    • THE LONG MINUTE (2020)
  • Season Archive
    • SEASON 10 | OCTOBER 2023
    • SEASON 09 | October 2022
    • SEASON 08 | October 2021
    • Season 07 | April 2020 / September 2021
    • Season 06 | October 2019
    • Season 05 | April 2019
    • Season 04 | October 2018
    • Season 03 | April 2018
    • Season 02 | October 2017
    • Season 01 | March 2017
  • Tickets
  • SO | ACADEMY BOOKINGS
  • THE TEAM
  • About

NOT A MACHINE

What kind of connections can be forged between the human body and the machine in motion? In Not a Machine, music, sharp choreography, and the narrative of breath and body are used to probe the duality and the dynamics of these two modes of performance.

From the onset, there is no ambiguity between human (Thulisile Binda) and machine (Muzi Shili). Shili’s movement is sharp and mechanical, Binda’s fluid and free-flowing. A dynamic is soon established, that of instruction. Human commands machine who follows, slowly, but diligently. Human demonstrates, while machine replicates, allowing himself to be corrected, tweaked and tuned.

There is music, then, industrial, percussive sounds that activate the duo. It is here that the dynamic takes on a new shape. Where the human body allows for slight deviations in form, the machine is consistent. When the human slips up, the machine never tires. A question emerges: who does it best? And another: What can the one learn from the other?

Ultimately, there is union. Human instructs machine once more, this time to bend and manipulate his rigid limbs towards an embrace. She tweaks his facial features, codes them into a smile that is almost believable. The embrace is electrifying and stirring. As the lights fade, he winds his arms like a turbine. She circles him, jogs, and gains speed. She runs and runs and does not stop, charged in the way of a machine, a human dynamo.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CONCEPTUALISER & DIRECTOR | Nhlanhla Mahlangu
PERFORMERS | Thulisile Binda & Muzi Shili