imMEDIAte: The dance of class

imMEDIAte: We ask, you answer, we post.

Nomcebisi “Nom” Moyikwa, 24, of Fingo Village, Grahamstown.

What are you?

A mother, choreographer, performer, teaching facilitator, part-time teacher in movement,  administrator of the First Physical at Rhodes and co-founder and director of choreography for the National Arts Festival-supported Creative City project of Grahamstown.

Education?

Samuel Ntsiko Primary, Archie Mbolekwa Higher Primary, Nombulelo High.

Rhodes University honours degree in drama (physical theatre, choreography and applied theatre).

When did you start dancing?

In Grade 6. I was already involved in traditional dancing and drum majorettes. My English teacher said (dancer, community arts activist) Janet Buckland was holding classes. She came to our school and my friends and I did her classes. That’s when I started modern dance with (Buckland’s) Amaphiko dance project. I was 10.

What was your first big feeling as you danced?

Control of my own space. I remember now, as I make sense of it all, dance classes allowed the body to be free and to be released and at the same time to pay attention to yourself. You have to point your feet, and pay attention to your body. lt felt like the only space where I could be in control.

Growing through dance?

We danced twice a week and in Grade 10 BB Zondani or Nombulelo community halls. I was introduced to the First Physical (dance company at Rhodes) and we’d dance on Fridays at DSG (Diocesan School for Girls). While dancing I continued to work hard at schoolwork.

Mom:

My mom was not into this dancing thing. At one point I stopped. She questioned the value of dancing (as a money-earning career).

You are a mom now. Do you understand her?

Yes. You support your child through to a career, especially if you are from the working class. You send a child to school and university to come back and make money. Art was not guaranteed. I was a child. I lived in a partriarchal Grahamstown home. I have a very patriarchal grandfather. My dad was in PE working. When my grandmother had my mom, my gran would hide her money so that my mom could go to school. My grandfather paid only for the men to be educated . He valued edcuaton, but only for the men. Women were mostly silent and submissive, but now I see my mom was fighting back. She had the courage to sneak away the money to send the child to school. That’s not being silent, it’s loud. Most of my aunts stopped school at Grade 10. My mom went to the Gadra matric school.

Double ovation award winner at the National Arts Festival:

These are my first awards. The festival called me last night after I had just finished a performance of “Waltz”. Yesterday was only the second time my mom had seen my performances. The first time was my honours performance in 2012.

Why?

She didn’t get an education and was beat up by the situation. She was not in a good space man, and she wanted me to get the education she never had. When my gran passed in 1999 my mom had to move to Cape Town to find a job to pay for her two girls’ education.

Patriarchy:

I was three months old when my dad left. Something happened and he went to work in Port Elizabeth. He wrote a few letters. He remarried and would show face. Yes, it’s a cynical answer. My mom raised two kids on her own with my grandparents’ support. It got to a point when she was too scared to ask for money for milk for her babies. She had to put the empty (milk formula) tin in front of my grandfather. My father had to pay intlawulo (maintenance) but it went to my grandfather, who worked as a gardener at Rhodes.

Poverty:

For me in my household, it was never a thing. There was food on the table three times a day. Even now I have never experienced having no food. My mom only worries about that. It was crucial. Her mother would cook in a big bowl in my house. It is still like that in our house where each child form the Mzwange clan will get food or shelter. My grandfather would always look after the clan. In my third year I went home and found three extra bodies in the house. My room was occupied. They were sick – from alcohol, a stroke, and he (grandfather) buries them. He pays. He loves his family, he does. He is very powerful in his commitment to traditional culture.

When did you become conscious of patriarchy?

In my first year at Rhodes. I had lived at home my whole life, never left home or visited a relative outside of Grahamstown. It was a shift to live in res. I learned and moulded myself and morals about the world at Rhodes. I remember when I went home I realised there’s a scenario. It happened on a Sunday. My aunt was cooking a Sunday lunch and all of us came back from church and were putting plates on the table and I was wiping them. As she dished up, she asked me to help serve the meat. Suddenly she had this freak out. ‘What’s going on?!” I had put the wrong piece of chicken in my grandfather’s specific plate with it’s specific spoon. He had to get the breast not a thigh or wing. I was truck about how she vocalised the matter, how scared she was, how frightening it was for her. That was shocking. To see a woman I respected so much shrink in a moment, to become so tiny and inconsequential.

How did you get to Rhodes?

I started school when I was five and matriculated in 2006 when I was 16. I scored a merit for accounting, got a B higher grade for maths and an A for business economics.

I was part of the First Physical youth company and and thought oooh I want to be like them with no understanding beyond that. When I saw dance on TV it was always the white faces, but when i saw Noni (Nonhlanhla) Makhathini dancing for First Physical and that was a black dancer, I saw myself in her. I thought OK, it can be a thing for a young black woman. It can be! As a black female, it was a something that could happen. As a child I viewed silence and submission as a weakness. Now I think differently. I thought that (Makathini) was how I wanted women in my household to be like.

Patriarchy 2:

I was part of NSFAS (national student bursary scheme), but I was short for my first year of studies at Rhodes. My grandfather and I went to the GBS (Mutual Bank) and drew the R11 000 from his life savings. He put the cash in his suitcase and we walked up High Street to Rhodes to pay. But Janet (Buckland) heard about this and she called the (then) vice-chancellor Saleem Badat who agreed to give me a scholarship from his own pay, which he donated to bursaries.

Intellectual awakening:

First year brought such a shift in my thinking, the pedagogy used, and from high school where how I learned was to regurgitate. Now I had to think and contribute. I didn’t connect with a lot of things but I loved psychology where I felt connected, much than in drama where I felt very disconnected.

Looking back?

In psychology you learn different theories, theories of development, (Jean)Piaget, and through that I started learning about myself. That’s why it was so important to me. I wasn’t just learning theory, I was doing a lot of relearning.

The big connection?

It only happened in honours. I knew I loved choreography and physical theatre but only when I did applied theatre with Alex Sutherland, did I see the importance of theatre and linked it, and making of it, to my life. Using Michael White’s narrative therapy, which I learned in final year, I ran focus groups. I went to communites affected by HIV-Aids and would encourage people to write plays and songs about their community experience to make them remember what they used to value before their minds were consumed by effects of their illness. I started with choreography. It was universal work and I choreographed what I thought was needed.

I went to Joza (Grahamstown) to find groups to run workshops. As part of that course work, I went to the orphange in Joza run by mama Ngcangca. Some kids who approached me did modern dance in Amaphico (wings) where they were taught by Janet. I wanted to merge dance and applied theatre. I worked with 10 kids there. I always think of the white man on a horse gallopinig to save the disadvataged communies, but he was an outsider, but I was an insider. But because I was at Rhodes, and I was with Alex, I was suddenly an outsider.

First big piece?

It was in my honours year. I felt I was going on this journey as a professional dancer. I knew how to use the body. There was not enough content, but in knew the language I liked which was movement not dance, and I auditioned for an internship with Forgotten Angle dance company which used improvistion, and was choreographed by PG Sabbagha. I got it and spent a year in Johannesburg. Johannesburg was very loud. My head is very loud, it’s always going, always thinking. It felt like the culture (in Johannesburg) was loud. I could not grab anything. It was like a relentless mass. You cant walk slowly there, like here in Grahamstown. There you feel a constant urge to move. There’s no value in that for me. You don’t fully grasp things, and that is how it is there for me personally. In my honours year I wrote a paper about physical theatre and Paulo Freire’s “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. My research on physical theatre is collabortative and the problem is methodology versus the banking. Fix the problem is methodolgy and banking is just depositing. You just repititively regurgitate the motion of putting coins in the jar.

Ballet versus physical theatre.

I looked at ballet at how it banks, while physical theatre is more about problem posing by performers, it is more collaborative, about co-learning and applied theatre for development taken to communites for transportation and transformation and the dialogue.

Separation
In my home in Fingo Village I was treated differently now. In my familyl I got to a point where I had to sit them down and say I am still your kid. They felt I had achieved, that I was the ‘it’. If you go to Rhodes you are the minister of finance! And How are you? was missing. I hate it when people go down. It was so uncomfortable. Something was not happening. We discovered I’m not here to save, I’m here for a dialogue. I had carried huge responsiblity. They were looking up to me like I did to Noni as a child. But my character, is that I’d rather have friendships abouit ‘How are you?’, rather it being all about myself. Suddenly I was the person in the middle. It was upsetting. I see importance in them as well. The image of having power is not a strong image for me, it means being superhuman and I’m not that person. My family said OK you are strong,man. I said No, sometimes I just need my mom to ask if I am coping, Am I OK? Yes, I do push and drive myself, but I sometimes iIneed to go back home to be, to just be.

The festival pieces, one show with men, one with women?

Waltz:

Gender separation was not a conscious decision. I have thought about it now, but I have always worked with women and then last year I fell pregnant. The man was rubbish. I had problems with my grandfather. There was a lot of the angry black man around me. There was also a lot on TV about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, for ‘threatening us’ (whites).

I had to work with (a mixed race cast of) six male dancers and started by saying let’s give hugs. It was weird, They didn’t want to hug. Six from Grahamstown East (townships) and some from Rhodes. Thats when I shifted too. I saw how partriarchy was more damaging and exhausting for the man and I ashamed and thought this is for me! Black men believe they have to be strong; you can’t do this, say that, this is how you have to hold yourself. It’s damaging.

Waltz is a dialogue between three different dance forms, between men from different parts of SA; black men, a white man, one mixed race man. It is layered. Being a female, I had to step out. I was in a room filled with men and even though I tried to create a relationsip with them, you are still female.

So I did the piece and left for two weeks. I told them you have to find the journey. I came back and things started happening. There was a shift in th energy ands pace. They were caring for each other. But when Nom was in the room, it was gone.

They had to do it themeselves. It opened yesterday and it went so-so.

After the performance I didn’t have to tell them. They were were just, No, shaking heads. They’re taking ownership of the dialogue.

I’m seeing new stuff as a black female. Many black women people are cursing men, saying I was so abused by a man. There is a strong sense of men being vicious and sending women off to be lesbians.

My grandfather was a very angry figure, but as I started to learn about how damaging the structures of partiarcy can be, I’m becoming more sensible and more open to them to reveal some humanity, because it is there. We have seen our men caring (in Waltz) and they are not the devil people make them out to be.

Inqindi

Women in Inqinidi are inspired by the image of my grandmother and mom and their absence, the absence of black females (invisibility), caused by the reductionist essentialism of their bodies. You see it even in theatre; you see a domestic worker, a woman being raped or becoming a prostitute. We were once upgraded to being miners! People only read this when it comes to women, or they see a black woman on stage being yet another black woman struggle story. There is no complexity. Our piece sees six women trying to make sense of it all, trying to to reveal they can love be strong, and cry and care, and not be like this (universal) black female and her black rage.