Constellations: Hung upside down

The soft flumpf of footsteps on a loamy riverbank path, motes rising golden in the horizontal rays of sun. Eddies of leaves on the verges of thickening bush, twisted skeletons of undergrowth and deadfalls. Darkness rising from the earth as the gloaming descends.

Silence. But for the last birds calling their mates home, the distant hum of the R310, and the flumpf as you follow each other’s heels to beckoning lamps — a grotto, replete with womxn waiting.

Settling on a semicircle of stumps, a near-religious awe amid the silence and expectation as, across the stream, she sits. Clad in white, lacey slip and hooped skirt reflecting light from a sun already set, her body a moon pulling our gaze.

“A woman sits on the bank of a river. A woman does not sit on the bank of a river.”

There, before a dozen pairs of eyes, she is, in all her incongruity and dark hair curling over her shoulders. And yet she is not, for this is a performance, intended for an audience that has been led, knowingly and unknowingly, to this point. We have not by mistake peered through the branches at a private ritual, our hearts hammering at the fear of being discovered while transfixed by the unexpectedness of what is before us. We have not come down to the river to pray.

Yet we have. We’ve come down to the river, willingly led into a mystery, into a silence before art. The island where two rivers meet is our temple, performance our altar.

It is not often we experience the coming of night within the forest, as we might conveniently call the mix of riverine bush and trees between the Eerste and Blouklip rivers alongside the Spier wine estate. The period during which the gloom gathers and silence descends as the diurnal creatures quiet and the nocturnal are yet to come forth, a time of crepuscular shuffle, a flick of tiny wings closing beneath your collar, a tickle up your ankle. Veldschool. The army, for some. Hikers and campers, ocassionally, if caught by the suspension of the hour. Rare, for we have an innate drive to be home, to find shelter rather than risk losing our bearings in the coming dark and becoming prey to something with talons and teeth.

In this, at the very least, Constellations provides a new, possibly unique, experience. The request for silence before we follow the paths to various grottos of performance seems redundant; the time and place call for reverence.

Which four of nine performances you watch – each in different parts of the forest and 20 flexible minutes long – is unknown. You can choose the red or the blue route, or have someone choose for you, but not which women you will see – and curator Brett Bailey has deliberately chosen women as the guardians of this forest. Further, those on each route are divided into groups, so in what order, or at what point, the performances are experienced is according to chance.

To offer a critique of what was seen would be to exclude five other works, at best offer a partial view of part of a whole; all there is to offer is the over arching scenography, as above. And the curation, inspired by ancient forests in Benin where women hold power, leading us to confront that which our primal instincts avoid. Yet! In the partial view of a partial view I did, after having absorbed the gathering darkness, the reverence and the suspense of silence, want it shattered.

Because at about 40 minutes in there is an acceptance that this is performance, it is theatre however unconventional, and inherent in theatre, is surprise. All the rest was given to us: movement, tension, intrigue, humour, pathos even, which was the most surprising — but no metaphorical tiger roared, no snake reared underfoot. The curtain of reverence was not torn.

Despite this anarchic desire remaining unsatisfied, or perhaps because of it, the silence lingered long after we had departed. The world, even in the high speed hum and lights of the highway home, had shifted. Until dawn called again, we had become crepuscular. We were hung upside down. We were bats.

This is the third iteration of Constellations at Spier wine estate and is performed until 19 November. Curated by Brett Baily of Third World Bunfight, it features performers Luh’ra, Mandri Sutherland, Nico Athene, California Janson, Lorin Sookool, Babalwa Zimbini Makwetu, Ncebakazi Mnukwana, Che Adams, and Rehane Abrahams. Gathering at Spier at 6pm, tickets cost R200. Information and booking here, but unfortunately the performances are currently sold out.