{"id":3541,"date":"2019-07-05T14:55:29","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T13:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3541"},"modified":"2020-03-30T22:19:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T21:19:45","slug":"candongueiro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3541","title":{"rendered":"Candongueiro: the promise of a journey but we’re left stranded"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Candongueiro in performance. Photo by Xipango Creativo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were a crowd of about ten in the stadium-like Centenary Hall. My heart always sinks in an empty venue. So, oh did I wish the Palasa Dance Company from Angola who\u2019ve made their way to Africa\u2019s major arts festival, would blow we ten away. I crossed fingers they\u2019d give us something good with which to spread the word \u2013 the fringe\u2019s key marketing tool \u2013 and encourage some ticket buying for the visitors.<\/p>\n

The Critter might one of these days get into the nitty-grittys of the costs of creating a work, transporting it to Makhanda, staging it on the fringe, finding a comfortable enough place for heads to rest and obtaining sustenance too. Suffice it to say, it ain\u2019t a cheap venture! Notice the shorter runs from so many fringe shows?<\/p>\n

Which is why I sat thinking of the Angolan group who had come all this way to be greeted with a near-empty house, and the demoralising effect this can have on artists, especially the \u2018emerging artist\u2019 generation.<\/p>\n

To these dancers\u2019 credit, they gave us their all. And there were some good parts, but the whole didn\u2019t deliver the impact I\u2019d hoped for. Choreographer Miguel Carlos also dances (beautifully), but once again I say an outside eye crafting the overall shape, conducting the overarching rhythmic quality, and simply trimming the fat, is indispensable.<\/p>\n

Candongueiro<\/em>\u00a0explores the lives and narratives of those using the most common means of transportation in Angola, the candongueiro. South African audiences might recognise similarities to our disreputable public transport \u2013 taxi violence between competitors, unroadworthy taxi crashes, reports of sexual assaults, bus driver strikes, Cape Town trains set alight, the Gautrain only accessible to those who can afford it\u2026 Public transport has millions of people around the country relying on it to get them to their jobs. Yet whose hands hold a tight grip onto deciding how these systems operate? In Candongueiro<\/em>, the focus is on the taxi. We are shown different people\u2019s experiences in and around it, but it feels there’s no further probing into the power structures that create and keep unsafe public transport going.<\/p>\n

I learned that choreographer Miguel Carlos trained in dance at TUT (Tshwane University of Technology) then took what he learnt back home. This explains the familiarity in style; there was much of the South African aesthetic we\u2019ve come to recognise in contemporary dance. I had wanted to watch the international company to see something wholly different, but that\u2019s my own minor issue. In the later vignettes, the company expresses their own style, with some bounce, some popping, gestural work, and a splash of breakdance. Their ownership shows through in these parts. More of that, please.<\/p>\n

But, I found the work untidy and dragging in places. The intentionally unison sections were most of the time, out of time. Unison work can be impactful and enhance a dance\u2019s purpose\u2026 but if using the device, it has<\/em> to be in sync. Because the cast were operating at different levels of technical proficiency it effected the pictorial composition of the choreography. The men were excellent movers but one woman (in red) was two steps behind almost throughout, and so was never completing her movements… which distracted and detracted from any potential impact of the movement language.<\/p>\n

When the scenes weren\u2019t played out literally, like the assault scene where a woman is \u2018kicked\u2019 to the ground and then a man roughly scoops at and eats a paw-paw; or the bullying scene where a girl is surrounded and laughed at \u201cha-ha-ha\u201d\u2026 I found myself asking \u201cwhy\u201d. Why is everyone raising their legs behind them? Why is that jump inserted there? Why is the soundtrack all classical cello or piano or orchestral pieces? I feel a few more whys were necessary in the conceptual process to marry the ideas to the practice.<\/p>\n

Candongueiro<\/em>\u00a0finished its brief run at this year\u2019s festival today. Perhaps we’ll see the Palesa Dance Company back sometime with more focus on what makes them unique, as they clearly have a passion to share their voices and we\u2019d like to see them doing just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were a crowd of about ten in the stadium-like Centenary Hall. My heart always sinks in an empty venue. So, oh did I wish the Palasa Dance Company from … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3801,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions\/3801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}