Timecode Adrienne Topic/Comments 11:00:00 Adrienne. My name is spelt A for apple, D – R – I for ink, E for elephant, N for nut, N for nut, E, and the surname is Sichel, S for sugar, I C H E L for lovely. 11: 01:00 What makes South African contemporary dance unique is WS that obviously, it’s had international influences but during Apartheid we were part of...Effected by the cultural boycott. So when South African contemporary dance kind of began in earnest, I, dare to say the mid nineteen seventies…And there were the Apartheid driven separations, so you had the classical Western arts, uh, you also had African community performance and a lot of traditional dance. And in the mid-seventies, some, History mainly white South Africans, teachers, 11:02:03 choreographers, started rebelling. So it became a, an act of, um, political resistance in a way. But the influences…Because of the cultural boycott, we couldn’t get really good teachers coming into South Africa, so people brought in techniques like the Martha Graham technique. Umm there was some Limon, which I’ve only discovered recently, um, some Cunningham, a lot of Horton. And the teaching uh happened uh some of the teachers, the pioneers like Sylvia Glasser in Johannesburg and people in Cape Town like the Jazz 11:02:42 Art uh pioneers broke the law basically by teaching people of color. But it’s more complicated than that because the University of Cape Town School of Dance which was founded in the ‘30s uh Dulcie Howes the founder, found a way of breaking the law. So she was training dancers of colour especially in Cape Town because in terms of the racial classification, if you were of mixed race you were uhm classified as colored. And she was training dancers but when they left the school, by law till 1978 the theatres were all segregated so dancers like Christopher Kindo had to leave the country. He went to I think to Boston ballet and then he had some contact with the Graham School and the Graham company. When those, but there were other dancers that spent their careers um in the UK. So it’s quite a complex story but that all informs South African contemporary dance ‘cause one of the roots is the uh, what was called the UCT ballet school is now University of Cape Town School of Dance. Uhm then you had the independents like Sylvia Glassser who was a white Jewish women in Johannesburg, her 1 husband’s an academic, David Glasser and when he went on sabbaticals she would go on sabbatical as well. And she started developing her now very famous Afro-fusion technique uh wh- which is known in this country and on the continent and internationally now. Um she developed it in Texas so she had the courage to experiment by fusing um African and South African ritual and 11:04:17 rhythms with Western technique. So the uniqueness comes from the explorations, um the training…Because Zoom to MS then in the early ‘90s um she founded this um community dance teachers training course. And amongst the early intake were now revered uh choreographers and dancers like Vincent Sekwati Matsoe and Gregory Vuyani Maqoma who grew up together in Soweto and they, they used to do Michael Jackson routines and they used to dance at weddings and stokvels. Um but they also were influenced by the traditional dancers around them and they were amongst the first sort of contemporary African choreographers coming from South Africa and for the continent. So um but also what makes it unique is the kind of, when I talk about fusion, it would include um forms like Bharatanatyam and Kathak… Depending who, like Jay Pather for instance, the community he grew up in, all those influences fed into what became our contemporary dance. And um it was never really called modern dance because part of the explanation is um you get a lot of, or used to get a lot of studios as well and they taught like modern dance which would be the more commercial sort of work and people opted for contemporary. But in terms of the forms there are various forms in the genre like physical theatre, dance theatre originally influenced by Pina Bausch and also Graham um now we have performance art, which is part of performance. So there are different genres within this umbrella of contemporary dance and contemporary African dance cause after ‘94 there were, to our shock, we realized we were part of the continent and the 11:06:52 continent started recognizing us. Timecode Gavin interview good Topic/Comments 03:32:45 Err. My name is Gavin Krastin. That’s G A V I N K R A S T I N. 03:33:48 Um, well this performance isn’t exactly a a performance WS only in and of itself. It’s an image that has cropped up in quite a few of my works since 2013. And I am 2 continuously developing this image of a vacuum packed err body whether that be two vacuum packed bodies in duet. Or a solo work or um…A duet with one of the body’s vacuum packed. So it’s been on and off since about 2013 with three or four works I think 03:35:23 Um. I mean quite honestly I’m not sure if it matters that much to me. Err uhh I just want to make work and academics, scholars, programmers and organizers can can label me as they see fit. I personally go by the title of um performance practitioner or or live arts practitioner as it does….err…encapsulate so many art forms that deal with liveness and the body a- as its primary position. I I did train in choreography though, ah so it definitely does come out. My appreciation or understanding of the body does certainly come out of a choreographic and physical theatre lineage than a a a text or an acting or or a…human sculpture of figure drawing or anything. It is out of a a a very physical transfer transferring of energy that er I have trained or approach work in. Err…I mean I I I do understand that it is a bit of a contentious err thing. But uhm. Yes oh sorry alright ya. The term uh or or uh the conversations around South African contemporary dance err I do understand it as a somewhat controversial understanding in South Africa umm…Sorry I’m trying to formulate my my thoughts. Yes aha. 03:37:54 Yes right. I mean in terms of conversations around contemporary South African dance I I think we really are um…contesting, playing with and pushing forms and content…Uhm. We’re actually seeing a lot of err dance work with very pedestrian not domestic movement um….And certainly a non-codified movement I would perhaps argue. Or. Um. Perhaps in a current decolonization movement we might even see more of that. Ah in terms of of…That’s speaking to form. I Race suppose in terms of content and in terms of of of of this work it’s ver- very much speaks to notions of whiteness…Um…In a certain way a….A packaging of a white body. A preservation of a white body. But perhaps simultaneously a death or a silencing of a white body. Or a distant memory of a white body, uhh which are. Is topical conversations and of of course I come from it through my own genealogy as a white South African man…Um. So I I think yes it does speak to that…uh….Perhaps also the…I don’t know…haha. 3 03:39:28 Help me out here…Haha. Why. Um. I think we in South C/u African currently and for a very long time in fact, um considering the history of the country…Personal story or or or personal experience or very familiar or idiosyn- idiosyncratic movements or or…Or a sense of of of one’s own viscerality or or corporal reality and how it functions in space err has somewhat driven or catalyzed a sense of autographic performance. But in…err err an autography, an autobiography that’s that’s somewhat is specific yet general enough to speak to larger thematic concerns. That it’s not about one’s self, or one’s story or one’s Personal own narrative. Because I mean no one really cares uhm s- but perhaps it’s framed or done in such a way that uhh it’s able to expose and speak to the the larger politics that that do affect us all. I do- I don’t know… 03:41:05 In terms of emotion I do try and distant myself from the MS work or or being in the bag for two reasons. Um primarily although it looks quite easy, there there’s a bit of a technique that that has to uhh one has to be very considerate of um in order not to burst your eardrums. So that’s constantly keeping the back of your throat, open and continuously equalizing the the air pressure in your ears and in your nose. Um. I I would imagine kind of like a scuba diver might, I wouldn’t know I haven’t done that. And so I’m I’m I’m more preoccupied wi- with that and trying to find length and extension and challenge the strength or durability of of of the membrane of the plastic, but without it breaking.