Words and sounds at Poetry Africa

AS Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie puts it, a poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. Gauntlet thrown.

The poets who took to the stage at the opening of the 17th edition of Poetry Africa met and surpassed that challenge.

Local and international poets gave audiences a taste of what to expect during the festival’s run between 14 and 19 October delivering brilliant reams of thought-provoking and soul-stirring poetry to a lively audience at the Elizabeth Sneddon theatre on Monday evening.

While there were many subjects that were touched upon during the course of the evening, a common theme that seemed to emerge from the poets’ musings was the idea of freedom. Not surprising considering how calls for freedom (whether its freedom of speech, economic freedom or autonomy) still ring out years after South Africa officially became a free society.

Highlights included the likes of women poets Busiswa Gqula, Natalia Molebatsi, Lex LaFoy and Mandi Poefficient Vundla who spoke powerfully to the experiences of millions of South African women who still find themselves under the yoke of patriarchal attitudes and Lesego Rampolokeng waxed scatologically lyrical about about a personal dilemma which encapsulated much of what is wrong with the arts in this country.

With such an impressive army of word warriors calling out society on its balderdash, it looks like there’s no danger of anyone going to sleep.

She Died Dreaming is a bumpy ride

THERE were no men on stage in She Died Dreaming, which opened The Playhouse Theatre’s South African Women’s Arts festival at The Loft theatre last Thursday.

And yet their presence (and absence) is powerfully felt in Julian Seleke Mokoto’s  fizzy, all-woman four-hander about the inner lives of four new South African women.

Nomsa Buthelezi plays Hilda, an air hostess with an artistic bent who spends her time trying to capture the man of her dreams on canvas when she isn’t entertaining friends and fellow air hostesses Grace (Linda Sebezo), Promise (Zama Ngcobo) and Anathi (Kelly Khumalo) on the immaculate patio of her suburban home.

These women come across as independent, carefree and a bit wild, yet men loom large in their lives, be they real (Grace’s philandering pastor husband) or imagined (Hilda’s painted dream hunk), dead (Anathi’s late lover) or alive (Promise’s too-perfect husband).

At several points during the course of play the men figuratively gatecrash the women’s wine-fuelled gatherings as each woman gets her chance to either gush, gnash or blubber (in some cases, all three) over the male object of her affection.

Even Hilda, whose portrait-bound beau is clearly a figment of her imagination, is driven to fits of intense emotion, wildly vacillating between talking up and chewing out her fantasy fiance.

The sense of fun and mischief which permeates through the production’s three acts is noticeably tempered with a whole lot of religious sermonizing and bible-quoting, making the whole thing come across as a Sex and the City by way of Tyler Perry.

The four actors bring their A-game to sell Mokoto’s uneven script: Buthelezi radiates nuclear levels of warmth and charisma as the slightly manic yet likeable Hilda and Sebezo displays veteran comedic chops as the balls-out and outspoken Grace. Ngcobo imbues ‘good-girl’ Promise with a steely confidence while a luminous Khumalo brings a touching vulnerability to party-girl Anathi.

She Died Dreaming isn’t a perfect production. At times the characters come across as mouthpieces for Mokoto’s views on gender relations and religion, a necessary risk given he’s both writer and director.

There’s an awkward tension which borders on contradiction between the characters’ personal desires and the play’s central quasi-religious message, a tension underscored in the play’s suddenly tragic final act when Hilda prays to God to fill her with his love before taking her own life, presumably due to intense loneliness.

Fortunately Mokoto’s assembled a strong, vibrant cast to send the material soaring in performance, even if it would barely take off on paper.

The art of freedom

Growing up, art, in the very conventional sense of the word, wasn’t a big part of my daily life. There were no paintings or sculptures on display in my family’s house, although most of our neighbours had the odd Crying Boy painting hanging on their living room walls.

At primary school (art was never part of our high school curriculum), art lessons consisted of trying to draw the prettiest picture using the brightest colours. The art teacher’s favourites were always those kids who had the “neatest” drawings; those who never dared to colour outside the line.

I didn’t grow up with a sense of looking at art as anything other than mere decoration. Sure, I read books about art, but these were mostly anecdotal: I knew that Van Gogh (pronounced with a guttural G) cut off his ear and I knew that Da Vinci secretly made use of human cadavers for his anatomical drawings. They never explained what made some representations ‘artistic’ and why others were, well, just pictures.

It wasn’t until I pursued what is essentially a liberal arts degree that I began to gain an understanding of art as being something more than just a pretty painting. I learned that art could be used not just to portray that which is beautiful in the world, but also that which is ugly. I learned that it was a powerful tool that could be used to express not just simple feelings like love or pain or sadness, but could also be used in the service of expressing a melange of the most complex thoughts, emotions and ideas we have as human beings.

I learned the visual medium was not the sole domain in which art could exist: music could also be art. As was drama, dance, literature and poetry. I learned that art didn’t just belong to those who could buy expensive paintings at fancy art galleries; it also belonged to every man, woman and child who’s ever appreciated the work of roadside sculptors, graffiti artists, street performers, praise singers and pantsula dancers.

I also learned that it was a dangerous profession. If you were an artist you could be among the most celebrated of your people, but also the most maligned. You could be awarded the highest honour in your field and at the same time have your work censored and banned; in some extreme cases your very life could come under threat.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned about art is just how vital it is in shaping a free society. This is why artists require artistic freedom and why censorship should never be allowed.

A free society is based on the principle that each and every individual has the right to decide what art he or she wants (or does not want) to receive or create. Once you allow the government to censor someone else, you cede to it the power to censor you, or something you like. Censorship is like poison gas: a powerful weapon that can harm you when the wind shifts.

Freedom of expression for ourselves requires freedom of expression for others. It is the very heart of our democracy.

Breaking boundaries

In his one-man stage show, Seriously?, hip-hop artist Iain “ewok” Robinson casts a brilliant and instructive light into hip-hop culture and to its four cultural pillars of expression: Rap, Graffiti, DJing, and Breaking . One of these, graffiti , has featured prominently in the media as a result of the seven Durban graffiti artists who were arrested for painting a municipal wall, sparking a public backlash against what some claim to be sensationalist coverage of the story by some of Durban’s media.

So it was fitting that another of hip-hop’s pillars, Breaking, was brought to the fore at the opening of one Durban’s most prestigious dance platforms. It is with hip-hop’s counter-cultural spirit that this year’s JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience presented works by two masters of Breakdance.

French B-boys Abdou N’gom of Compaigne Stylistik and Junior Bosila Banya delivered two of the most exciting hip-hop inspired solo pieces to ever grace the JOMBA! stage. Preceded by a fiercely insightful opening speech by JOMBA! artistic director Lliane Loots, in which she invoked the revolutionary spirits of African philosopher Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o and hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, one cannot help but be struck by the shrewdness of her words in an age where hip-hop dance has become massively commodified, commoditised and immortalised in reality dance shows and Hollywood dance flicks.

Breaking once meant only dancing on the floor, and Stylistik’s piece, entitled “Entre-Deux (In Between)”, co-choreographed with Compaigne Stylistik’s Clarisse Veaux, pays tribute to this fact as it begins with Ngom, dressed only in tracksuit bottoms, traversing the floor in a series of low broncos, his lithe body silhouetted against a row of floor lights lined up at the cyclorama.

The weightiness of the floor work is remarkable, as traditional break moves are slowed down and recontextualised for the stage. The bravado of street battle is stripped away and N’gom uses his moves not just to impress, but to express, exposing a much more personal narrative.

At one point he begins a writhing movement with his body, his sinewy back to the audience, and it takes a while to realise that he’s krumping, but krumping like you’ve never seen done before, because it’s all very internalised and done close to the body. His movements are as fluid as water before solidifying before your eyes into a sharp freeze.

With his hands splayed out on either side of his torso like tiny wings, he strikes a curious figure, before turning to face the audience for the first time. By this time, his constantly working body is slick with sweat, something which he uses to astounding effect later on when he begins to slap the sweat off his body and it clouds around him, rising from his body like steam.

The inspired lighting, designed by lighting artists Christophe Mangilli and Dorothée Tournour, accentuates Ngom’s sensuous performance, lighting his body in such a way as to highlight its idiosyncratic movements.

The piece climaxes with a moment that recalls another African francophone, Frantz Fanon, when after applying petroleum jelly to his face like a boxer before a fight, Ngom sits in front of a mirror, a focused light reflecting onto his face as he begins to apply a white plaster mask onto his face.

The moment is uncomfortable to watch, as the mask covers his entire face, sealing his eyes and his lips; the mask seems to be suffocating him. The mask eventually solidifies on the dancer’s face, at which point he takes it off and begins to dance with it.

The performance ends with the striking image of the mask perched upright on the stage, as the dancer walks off. In an interview Ngom admits that the mask symbolises a dual identity, the idea of being black and white at the same time, of being caught “in between” an African and European identity.

This is a commonality that Ngom’s work shares with B-boy Junior’s “Buanattitude”. Though the works are very different in presentation, Junior’s “Buanattitude” also interrogates the ideas of identity and difference.

Born in the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Junior left his country of birth for France at a young age after a polio infection, which left him unable to use his right leg. After a successful breakdance career, Junior returned to Kinshasa for an artistic residency.

This story is told to the audience in a series of emotive monologues delivered by Junior. Between the monologues, in which he reveals an affable vulnerability and speaks frankly about the difficulties he’s faced as a differently-abled performer, Junior displays his masterful skill as a B-boy, combining gravity defying power moves with some rousing choreography.

Like “Entre-Deux”, “Buanattitude” is intensely physical, as physical pain and discomfort comes to symbolise mental and emotional anguish. While the pace of the work tends to plod at times, Junior’s virtuosic performance and his natural charm are always engaging.

Much has been made about the entertainment industry’s appropriation of hip-hop culture for commercial gain. The works of these two B-boys, who have reclaimed breakdance as a cultural weapon, give us all hope that street culture can still produce work that continues to push, shove and break artistic boundaries.