“Six inspiring short performances blend dance and live music, developed by South African artists at William Kentridge’s leading centre for experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts.”

From 6 to 9 October 2022 The Centre for the Less Good Idea presented To What End at The Barbican. This curated programme featured diverse performances from a range of disciplines including a captivating all-female chorus, as well as rhythmic dance and a physical theatre solo. The innovative performances used text, sound, music, movement and visuals in experimental ways to explore themes of social and political change in South Africa.

To What End performance programme:

Footnotes, sees a team of dancers and musicians equipped with typewriters and percussive instruments questioning the nature of their being and their labour. Caught between modes of survival and instruction, this is a rampantly physical dance and sound piece.

The Weep of the Whips is a breathtaking physical two-hander seeking to find power in brokenness in which the sjambok (whip) is used as a tool for instruction and musicality.

Commission Continua is a personal and heartfelt one-hander, in which paper becomes a shrewd and incisive metaphor.

A musical performance sees the use of instruments and bodies to both replicate and pay tribute to the myriad sounds and narratives of South Africa’s northernmost province in Sounds of Limpopo.

The largest ensemble work of the programme, Pitsana is a performance that grapples with the conventions of responsibility, duty, and labour. It is a story that posits the consequences of a physical and psychological repression of energy.

An ensemble female chorus come together in the performance of Umthandazo, taking its lead from the oft-overlooked victims of the 2012 Marikana Massacre.