This dissertation aims to investigate an expanded notion of location within the dance theater of a specific site. These frameworks are engaged in relation to contemporary area-specific dance theater production in Durban, South Africa.
CHAPTER ONE
Bodies in sites and Bodies as sites - towards a theory of the body politic in site-specific performance
The interrogation of space and problematization of the idea of site culminates in a discussion of site-specific performance practice as a mechanism of/for cultural production. These factors are important to establish a context regarding the historical emergence of site-specific performance and its relevance within the 'New South Africa'.
1.1) Site-specific sights: space/place/location, interculturalism and the body politic in performance
- Site-specific, site-specificity, the body and performance practice
- Empty spaces?
- Interculturalism and site-specific performance practice
- Performance, representation and the body
The concept of interculturalism is important in relation to location-specific performance as presented in this dissertation28. In the case of performance – and in this case specifically site-specific performance practice – that vehicle is the body.
1.2) Private lives in public spaces: the interconnections between architectural spaces and live performance -
By articulating the body as a site - it acquires agency - as it acquires the qualities associated with sites as unfixed and fluid representations of a broader social and cultural macrocosm in which embodied subjects exist and operate. If the modern body can be shown to have been produced by the ideological discourses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, discourses that have only recently been made visible by contemporary scholarship, the "postmodern body" is the body that is actively and currently regarded as produced by ideological encodings that it cannot simply transcend.
Installation art, performance art and site-specific performance
Performance art offers an awareness of how the body can become subversive in performance, drawing attention to “the paradoxical status of the body as art” (Heathfield, 2004:11). In line with previous debates in this chapter, the idea of the body as location becomes an important connection point between performance art (in all its myriad forms) and site-specific performance practices.
Engaging private discourses in public through site-specific performance
Site-specific performance as practiced necessarily deconstructs notions of performance and its placement in society. Site-specific performance practices also bring to the fore notions of spatial ownership and spatial-cultural ownership.
CHAPTER TWO
Home-grown identities and iconography in intercultural spaces: re-locating performance art in South Africa and
- Colonial rule and the influence of geographical conquering
- Cultural production in post-colonial, apartheid South Africa
- Site-specific performance in South Africa
- Jay Pather's shift to site-specific performance
- Jay Pather's use of home-grown iconography
Such legislation also had a significant impact on the emergence of implementation forms in South Africa. The next section of this chapter explores Jay Pather's49 shift to site-specific action in post-apartheid South Africa.
CHAPTER THREE
- Cultural Studies - useful theoretical frameworks
- When the rainbow is not enough
- The dance-object and culturally produced bodies
- CityScapes - background information
- CityScapes -breaking the boundaries of multiculturalism
- North Beach pier
- The Workshop: Out of Africa Coffee Shop
- The Albany Hotel
- The Musgrave Shopping Centre
- Cityscaoes at The Durban Art Gallery (D.A.G.)
These five site-specific performances were followed by an installation at the Durban Art Gallery (D.A.G.) in April of the same year. These interpretations formed part of the CityScapes installation at the Durban Art Gallery (D.A.G.), offering an additional dimension to CityScapes in the form of video/installation art. Rather, they were engaged as rhythmic mirrors to the ebb and flow of the Indian Ocean tides.
Pather's concern with this work was to engage different cultures through rhythm, in relation to the natural rhythms of the ocean (Appendix D). For the most part, Thando Mama's video interpretation for 320 West Street offered a documentary of the site-specific performance work on site (Appendix G). Virginia MacKenny's video interpretation for the piece The Musgrave Shopping Center focused not on the performance, but on the location of the performance.
CHAPTER FOUR
- Private home-spaces and public home-spaces
- Home - a descriptive account
- Intercultural inter(reactions in the 'Rainbow Nation'
- Performing Home, at home in the 'New South Africa'
The notions of home in relation to space, embodied in the concept of home spaces, provide a point of connection between site-specific performance practices as they depend on different understandings and receptions of space ( Kaye, 2000 ; Kwon, 2004 ). The concept of home in the performance Home included notions of private home spaces and public home spaces. In relation to Pather's work practices, this idea of interculturalism provides a point of contact for notions of cultural ownership and (spatial) access in relation, in this case, to specific dance forms (and in this chapter, within specific deconstructed and designed home spaces).
This notion of interculturalism will be explored in the rest of this chapter in relation to the Father's House. The home as situated within the 'New South Africa' provides a platform from which to investigate notions of domestic spaces in relation to cross-cultural exchange within Pather's site-specific performance work. The breakdown of the performance space in relation to the scenography for the House is evidence of this.
Conclusion
Site-specific dance theater in the “new South Africa” offers insight into the impact of historical legislative processes regarding racial access, or lack thereof, in this context. In doing so, important questions about the life of site-specific dance theater in South Africa outside Jay Pather's production of the form must be raised and then addressed. There were relatively few other local performers and artists who chose site-specific dance theater as a formal genre.
This may be one possible reason for the relatively small incidence of site-specific performance work being made in the 'New South Africa'. Republic: performing the body politic (2004) and PARADISE (2005), two site-specific dance theater companies that formed part of the JOMBA. Perhaps this is a starting point for further research in this area, on possible reasons for the lack of involvement in place-specific dance theater in Durban, and South Africa in general.
Bibliography
The politics of appropriation: interculturalism and the use of classical Indian dance in contemporary choreography in the South African context. Reprinted by Drama and Performance Studies Program - University of Natal (Durban) in Elective: Dance and Choreography Manual, 2001. Reprinted by Drama and Performance Studies Program - University of Natal (Durban) in Elective: Dance and Choreography Manual (Drama 3B), 2001.
Colonized bodies: overcoming gendered constructions of bodies in dance and movement education in South Africa. Reprinted by Drama and Performance Studies Program - University of Natal (Durban) in Multiculturalism and Performance (Drama IB), 2005. Fragments From a Remembered Diary: My Stay in New York City for the 'Personal Affects' Exhibition, September 2004.
APPENDIX A
Jay Pather: My connection to Durban is very strong, and I am very happy to be able to make work here because it is such a concentrated cultural experience. Clare Craighead: What has been your biggest challenge with the work you have created so far. Jay Pather: Often the images are a series of different things; the images are more in my subconscious and emerge gradually during the process.
Clare Craighead: You work in the idiom dance theatre; can you offer your definition of this idiom. Clare Craighead: What is/was the primary basis for your interest in creating site-specific works. Clare Craighead: Do you believe that there is a contemporary dance aesthetic that is specifically South African, and how does your work fit into your concept of contemporary dance in this context.
APPENDIX B
Wesley Maherry: In most of your pieces (eg Albany Piece from CityScapes) have a very strong characterization, how do you draw these out from the performers. Jay Pather: I like to use the idiosyncrasies that come out of improvisations from dancers but are not connected to the dancers in a real way. Wesley Maherry: How do you start doing shows and where do you encourage the performers to start.
Wesley Maherry: Who are you doing shows for and what do you hope they walk away with. Wesley Maherry: How does the work you're creating inform your aesthetic and contribute to a larger South African way of making shows that speak to our context. Wesley Maherry: How does dance influence your theater creation (as you're directing Medea at the moment) and theater in the dance you're making - if there's any difference for you.
APPENDIX C
And then to do that kind of work in the department with productions that are banned and all that. And then there was a kind of 'clinic' that I think is prevalent in a lot of post-modern dance, that I. Clare Craighead: ..and you have to give more, and more and more, because the boundaries become more and more unclear.
Jay Pather: ..and you think, 'Wait a minute, there's the Red Cross (laughs), there's a whole other world to do this in, I don't have to negotiate my life...'. Jay Pather: Yeah, yeah, and that the 320 experience was much more important, you know, for me it was. I like the approach that I work with them from 9 to 5 and then I go home and then everyone goes home, you know, and it's cool.
APPENDIX D
All these factors have made my interest in public spaces and the people who move through them a rich and powerful journey. I hope this is evident in the production – at least the wide range of human and physical architecture present in Durban and the richness that emerges from the interaction between all these elements on our streets.
320 WEST STREET
The dancers do not aim to provide a harsh cross-cultural dialogue so much as to mirror, reflect and be part of an aspect of the sea that is rarely evoked or rarely enjoyed. All three groups of dancers, Shembe, Celtic and Indian use the length of the pier and the enveloping surroundings to create moments of peace, beauty and reflection fittingly performed next to what many consider a holy weekend. He has exhibited abroad - Lava Edge, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam; Reykjavik Art Museum in Iceland and at the World Video Festival in Amsterdam, and locally - Video Views, SANG Cape Town; Inner City Tour Guide, Market Theatre.
Veteran Durban musician Ricky Gass, who plays a key role in the Workshop, will play popular tunes to accompany the dance. The work speaks to the mysteries of union and separation, foregrounding the deeply interesting and revelatory qualities of Durban's more extraordinary spaces. Virginia MacKenny [is] a practicing artist and senior lecturer in visual arts at the Technikon Natal.
APPENDIX E
Choreography: Jay Pather with Company Set Design: Storm Janse van Rensburg Lighting Design: Richard Parker.
APPENDIX F
Was a finalist in the Gauloises Art Competition in Grahamstown and was part of the Dogtroep KZN workshops. Pather also serves as a trustee on the board of the President's Arts and Culture Trust, a national funding body in South Africa. Pather is an executive member of the National Advisory and State Theater Board, recently appointed by the Minister for Arts and Culture, Dr.
They were invited to perform at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, The Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg, the Macufe Festival in Taung, at the opening of the International Writers Festival and the Interface Festival in London. 34;Medley is a light-hearted piece that is as competitive as it is choreographic, with exponents of the various dance styles valiantly striving to out-dance their rivals." - The Natal Mercury. 34;The highly respected Durban-based dance company, seen by many as one of the leading lights of the South African contemporary dance scene, has wandered into exciting territory with his new production, Neworks." - Mail and Guardian.
APPENDIX G
