Is there anything more laughable than knowing you are meant for flight and have conceded your own light? It is absurd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a world of intersecting oppressions, it is absurd when we grow to believe that our purpose is to tuck in our wings and dance for mere claps in a cage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The caged bird shrills for freedom, writes Maya Angelou in her autobiographical fiction, and Lulu Mlangeni\u2019s KGANYA<\/em> is a cawing, clawing call towards this light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n KGANYA<\/em>, translated as \u201cLight\u201d, is also a command to shine, to enlighten, to awaken. The word itself means all these things. The work that Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance 2020 is also all these things and more. KGANYA<\/em> is a refreshing piece of dance theatre that exploits a narrative structure much like the coming-of-age innovation Angelou created when she wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings<\/em>. In KGANYA<\/em>, with its all-caps title, Mlangeni turns the gaze from the bird\u2019s oppression only, toward a mirror of our own gaze. Mlangeni looks at herself and looks at us in turn, as though to say, \u201cKganya!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\nis nothing timid about Mlangeni\u2019s dance theatre. A cackle begins\nthe piece and runs throughout the work like a grotesque refrain. Two\nbirds are being laughed at for choosing to remain in chains. Mixing\ntext with the sounds of dance and voice, Mlangeni choreographs the\ndancer\u2019s moving bodies in heightened and editorial fashion. Enter\nMoMo Matsunyane, an actor, clad in black. She wears a witch\u2019s gear,\nwith a fascinator-hat dripping over her forehead, her garment\nover-laid with transparent peplums and bags of oranges add a quirky\nand pointed flair. Her costume tells the story of a womxn who enjoys\nhaving means and prefers her birds to remain pretty in their metal\nframes. \u201cMade of death,\u201d she bellows. \u201cUntimely awakenings\u2026\nKe tloga go tsamaya. Ke nako,\u201d it is time. The time for awakening\nhas come but she guffaws as she tells how the time has found the\nbirds unready, unprepared. In the mirror-world that Mlangeni invents\nfor KGANYA<\/em>,\nwe are implicated at every turn, so the laugh hits home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n High metal frames create a scene of open confinement on the stage. The frames are like walls made of our own mental shackles as much as the frames also mark the external borderlines of the raised square set. An island of confinement. The floor is painted to symbolize a wire-mesh fence, but as the brush strokes are light, the space breathes. Designer Oliver Hauser\u2019s minimalist sophistication allows the dance\u2019s physical tension to perform the imprisonment of these captured minds and bodies. When the birds appear, it is clear the team of KGANYA<\/em> have created a symbiosis of forms to enliven this dance theatre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tebogo Ribane\u2019s costumes tie the narrative strands together with dramatic delight. Lulu Mlangeni and Khaya Ndlovu appear at the back, also in black, before the enlightenment begins. They are in spandex with tassels at the arms. Two birds, or one? They are stuck to each other\u2019s backs as they birth themselves into the world. The slow unraveling of the two dancers is a partnership more than a duet. They mirror one another in breath and form, rippling in unison, arms undulating and accessing a sense of nascent power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the dance grows and they move together separately, there are hints of clenched fists as they dance to the call of their own voices. They click their tongues and caw like crows crying after death at their birth. KGANYA <\/em>is a coming-of-age crisis with the plot of an existential birth into an absurd world. Yet it is clear that every cackle is a command to awaken. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The dancers mix styles from tip-toeing balletic postures to steady gyrations as they side-eye the viewer through the lens of the camera. We are complicit in the unfreedom here. And MoMo Matsunyane\u2019s laugh echoes throughout. \u201cSelelo sa bana,\u201d she says. The cry of the children is a tragicomedy. \u201cSmile. Your tears are wasted here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mlangeni\u2019s\nnarrative as an existential coming-of-age is refreshing because it\nalmost refuses the naivet\u00e9 of a traditional story of this structure.\nThe birds are born with a knowing look. They refuse to smile from the\nstart. \u201cKe nako,\u201d Matsunyane\u2019s character repeats. It is time.\nBut where she sees ill-prepared fledglings, these birds are born with\nthe ability to bear fists. They struggle. When they are separated and\nMlangeni stands outside the mirror, Ndlovu holds her head in pain.\nThey are never the same birds again and their bodies flick and flail\nuntil Matsunyane brings them all in line, with a third bird (Ipeleng\nMorafe) to follow her steps. But, even when they march in line in the\nsecond act, they are tall and stamp their feet and eventually disrupt\nMatsunyane\u2019s glee. They appear like the colourful candles of a\nritual ceremony in this second half. Dressed in bold primary colours\nin stove pipe hats,\nthe trio makes magic of the lull of the march. They allow themselves\nto be arranged and re-arranged in lines until one rejects the\nbusiness-as-usual formation and pulls off their sculptured business\nsuit. It is Mlangeni who leaves the floor of this island of pretty\nconfinement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back\nin the black spandex and tassels of her birth, but alone, she\nstruggles towards the light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If\nthere is one thing that KGANYA<\/em>\ndrops, it is the ending. It is intended as an open ending; there are\nno neat endings in the theatre of the absurd. But the editing of the\nfinal moments of the work simply cut from the performance to an\nabrupt and unnecessary curtain\ncall. There is no live audience. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n KGANYA<\/em> shines. Its spiritual question is held in a political space. The themes reverberate in a number of ways; about as many ways as we may feel oppressed. It shines a light on self-reflection and our need to pull through the despair of our absurd existence. Laugh or cry but, this caged bird dances towards freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n View <\/em>KGANYA on the National Arts Festival platform <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n PHOTO: Left to right – Ipeleng Merafe, Khaya Ndlovo, Lulu Mlangeni, Momo Matsunyane. Photo by Shudufhadzo Lubeng.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a9 <\/em>2021\nThe Critter. This article is licensed under a <\/em>Creative\nCommons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em>\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"