Forced Rebellion
Jessica Nupen’s Rebellion & Johannesburg gets caught up in trying to reflect a complicated and complex Joburg.
Collaboration with renowned artists promised a feast of interesting elements – Ed Blignaut created the video projection; Anmari Honiball designed and Spoek Mathambo created the original score.
Nupen conceptualised, choreographed and directed Rebellion & Johannesburg, assisted choreographically by Sunnyboy Motau and performed by Moving Into Dance Mophatong (MIDM).
MIDM is internationally renowned and is widely revered in the South African dance world. Its reputation exists for the many wonderful, cutting-edge and pioneering works it’s produced over its 38 years of existence. An important part of its reputation is its exquisite dancers who are the cream of the crop in SA. And the current company members are no exception.
So why were their talents underused and seemingly unchallenged? The dance language is superbly performed but we’ve seen those contemporary dance moves many times. Is it enough to meld in street dance, pantsula and sbujwa, with it plastered on at the beginning and end, to make it new? Does it rebel against the company’s trademark style, seen done in the creative new dance language in Fight, Flight, Feathers, F***ers (2015)?
Here the video projection was useful. With the full cyclorama in use, bodies appear thrice the size of the live performers, who in Rebellion & Johannesburg are overshadowed by this film. Additionally, our modern eyes are indoctrinated to find a screen rather than watch real life, so the video becomes a major distraction. Some scenes were repetitions of the live dance – the street dance scenes – or if the images were meant to create layered metaphor, they were overstated –the (pink) blood dripping off fingertips during an intimate duet between the two protagonists.
Rebellion & Johannesburg is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet which also served as inspiration during Nupen’s conceptualising process. Perhaps it worked as a good starting point to develop certain narratives and explore metaphors which link to the final product, but besides the direct naming of the characters in the beginning, the work can stand alone.
The work’s series of vignettes leaves the work disjointed; the applause between each “episode” speaks to this. Programme notes inform that Nupen worked with the dancers’ narratives – those of conflict, fear, disappointment, or excitement and joy, in relation to their lives and history in Joburg.
Could the disjointedness and constant firing of engines serve the work’s aim to represent Jozi’s streets? Does the non-stop music, shouting, moving and video point to a fractured and overbearing cityscape, that imposes unnatural expectations on people? Perhaps “yes” to all of this.
However, it all becomes too forced. Forced on us. Forced in getting its point across. This is seen best in the “politicians” scene, where the dancers are shouting reprimands at each other while standing on buckets (or soapboxes). Zuma is heard speaking and scenes of last year’s State of the Nation Address parliamentary furore are screened. Why is the SA situation spelt out so carefully for us? An audience should be trusted to make the connections with far subtler clues on what a work is trying to say.
The audience of the Dance Umbrella’s opening night applauded uproariously for Rebellion & Johannesburg. It is an overwhelming flood of stimuli; it’s difficult not to get caught up in the atmosphere. Yet, the work needs distilling and a careful look at its gimmicky elements – acrobatic cartwheeling over tables, fake sangoma doctors plying their products in the audience, oversized hula hoop swinging – which might work to impress an audience, but provides no substance for us to feel moved or connected to the work at large.
– Sarah Roberson
- A shorter version of this review was first published in The Star Tonight on 02 March 2016.
- Roberson is a participant in the Dance Writer’s Workshop funded by the Goethe-Institut.