40 years of Moving Into Dance Mophatong — ‘an enabler of purpose’
A preview of the JOMBA! 2018 opening programme by Tammy Ballantyne
In the booklet entitled “Celebrating 30 years of training, nurturing and producing dance artists”, Adrienne Sichel states: “As a rule contemporary dance companies, no matter how valued, don’t survive for 30 years, let alone develop into a respected, internationally recognised, prototype.” She wrote this in 2008 about the Newtown-based organisation Moving Into Dance Mophatong (MIDM) which this year marks its 40th anniversary.
Founded in 1978 by the feisty Sylvia “Magogo” Glasser, whose vision of creating a non-racial company with a new and evolving African aesthetic, MIDM continues to empower, nurture and enable dancers, teachers, choreographers and students with Nadia Virasamy as its CEO and Mark Hawkins as artistic director.
Virasamy told me that she works for “an enabler of purpose…it defied the Group Areas Act as the founder Sylvia Glasser opened her home in a white suburb for black youth from townships to be trained in dance. This woman who did not know what defeat was, who strived through the most tumultuous conditions to bring dance to youth who lacked access and opportunity. Sure, dance is what we do, but it is a tool to the development of African leaders. The evidence of this is seen in the over 23 dance and theatre companies that were started by our graduates, and are still operational.”
Glasser’s reflections on this massive milestone came to me across the sea from Sydney, Australia, where she now lives. She may be retired but she retains that powerful energy and focus that drove the artistic vision of the company:
“I wanted to find methodologies and ways of evoking and developing creativity that was appropriate and part of the ‘African-ness’ of our country,” she said. “My method of running the organisation, as well as of teaching, choreographing and mentoring was consultative. School principals, teachers and leaders in the African communities that MID children, students and dancers came from, were my advisors. When others decided what the ‘disadvantaged’ needed we consulted our stakeholders. When others head-hunted for leaders we trained and developed them from within. When others looked for ‘the perfect ballet bodies’ we trained beautiful African bodies. When others did outreach that ‘showed’ what they did, we at MID did outreach that was interactive and we learnt from our students.”
It is fitting then that another visionary, enabler of dreams and the force behind the evolutionary Flatfoot Dance Company, Lliane Loots, has invited MIDM to open Jomba!’s 20th edition, aptly named “Legacy” — milestones indeed!!
In this time of great hardship for the arts, of companies folding, of funding being diverted elsewhere, of dancers being swallowed into commercial projects, now more than ever we are in need of these visionaries, humanitarians and teachers with impactful strategies and toolboxes which facilitate cross-cultural learnings and methodologies that are transformative and empowering. And who have transferred so much to others in nurturing environments.
It is in this spirit that MIDM presents a double-bill featuring works by Sunnyboy Mandla Motau and Khutjo Green. Motau, a member of MIDM since 2008, created “Man-Longing” for the National Arts Festival in 2015. Disturbed by the sinister underworld of human trafficking, Motau chose to produce an issue-based work that he hopes will raise awareness of the dangers lurking in cities such as prostitution, drug-dealing and using, and a form of modern-day slavery. His work bears testimony to Glasser’s refusal to shy away from political, social and often controversial themes.
Motau has allowed the company to develop and create the characters within the work, using dance and poetry to transmit his message. He embodies the legacy of MIDM’s training programmes, having come through the former Performing Arts Training Course, into the performance company where he continues to teach, choreograph and engage with young dancers on many levels.
Actress and director Khutjo Green has created a collaborative work with the four women in the MIDM performance company. “The Women who Fell from the Moon” brings the explosive talents of Asanda Ruda, Lesego Dihemo, Sussera Olyn and Thenjiwe Soxokoshe to the forefront. Green acknowledges Hawkins as pivotal in bringing artists together across different disciplines. She explains:
“There is a space in me that comes alive when I work with women that continues to redefine and affirm my own womanhood. … I go through many phases of healing and that process of mending the broken and the damage is further avowed by the women involved in the work, who also spoke to the same process of healing during the piece. “The Women who Fell from the Moon” is a work that speaks of migration and how women (myself included) have become hyperaware of the refugees we have developed into in the spaces we occupy. And so the work cultivates a blistering exploration where the women, coming from a foreign land (the Moon) explore and carve their own understanding of the other (Earth), and through the process of exploring this new territory they begin to evolve into themselves.”
She speaks of the “infectious spirit” of the MIDM dancers, and how “each dancer portrays and exudes such an enchanting individual force, which begs for its own moment.” It is clear that the process involved continuous teamwork, and she said she “appreciates that they interrogated and questioned the work we were creating, [as] artists who were willing to travel a journey even if sometimes we didn’t know where we were travelling to.”
An additional and integral collaborator has been designer Leon Vonsolms, who has imagined and breathed life into the costumes which, according to Green, “are a divide between the place the women come from and the sensuality that their form is made out of. It’s also very light and hard and neat and ruffled. And these designs shape how the women move and feel and understand the newness.” Green felt an immediate connection with Vonsolms, who understood the concept of what is hidden and what is revealed.
This programme displays the diversity and range within the MIDM company — the legacy of the training and ethos blended with the new and innovative. The voices of Motau and Green contribute to the sinuous storytelling of an organisation which has weathered turbulent, emotional and sometimes agitated times. In Glasser’s words:
“I developed a way of skilling, nurturing and developing South African choreographers who each had a different voice.”
Halala MIDM and Jomba! — to those who came before and to those who carry the future in their hands.
MIDM performs on August 28 and 29 at 19:30 at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre as part of the Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience — the Legacy edition.
