The way you take on ballet in Hatched Ensemble is the culmination of a journey that started when you were eight years old. How did your relationship with classical dance evolve?
It started with curiosity: I saw children at my school moving in a way I’d never seen before. At first it was great—our teachers were like mothers, taking care of us. Things took a turn when I was 18, and I went into a program where I was the only Black woman. There was a boy, too, but because there weren’t many male dancers, he was fine. I would get incredibly harsh, destructive comments—that I wasn’t cut out for ballet, that I’d never make it. I wondered whether I had the right body, the right skin colour, the right hair. But I put up with it, with everything. I had a scholarship, and I wanted to finish my training.
That experience inspired me a lot, because it brought me to think of dance as a concept. The fact that my hair and my big butt weren’t seen as being right for ballet made me consider body politics, and that shaped my artistic approach. Questioning a structure that didn’t accept me made me stronger.
Does the piece reconcile traditional and Western cultures, would you say, or is it a critique of ballet, a liberation?
The piece integrates ballet as much as it criticizes it. The repeated music from “The Swan” evokes the history of dance, and what ballet forces dancers to endure year after year because it’s so demanding. Handwashing clothes is a metaphor for hard work, too, as if we were hanging out our dirty ballet experience to dry, and the long hours, the blood and sweat, all the things that almost kill your self-esteem… Hence the red costumes. The clothesline is about a state of mind, because you’re in a world of such beauty but all the while you’re thinking about suicide because it’s so hard. It’s also a timeline: do you want to go backwards or forward? You’ve been through so much, but you’re coming out the other side.
The fact is, we weren’t really allowed to be ballet dancers. Some of us were told what to eat to stay slim, to wear wigs so we could put our hair in a bun… We had to be other than what we are. We want to be real African women and show how this art form can be used, how to talk about it, how to stake our claim in it, because we’ve studied it. Choreographers all over the world talk about ballet in different ways; we do it en pointe.
Pointe shoes are used differently here than in ballet, where you have to be light and delicate as a feather. Here, the shoes are percussion instruments. We move our bodies, we shake our tutus, and we do other that aren’t normally sanctioned in ballet, like being topless, talking, singing, or even just walking normally. And there aren’t just skinny bodies on stage. In Africa, anyone can dance, en pointe or not. Basically, I show both the Western and the African traditions, and I fuse them together.
How did you transpose the solo onto a group?
The original theme didn’t really matter. The main goal of this piece is to empower a younger generation. Many of them are studying ballet, and the handful that actually make it up onstage never have leading roles. I wanted to create an ensemble of soloists, and break ground for those who will come after. It was also a way to create employment opportunities for that next generation. And audiences were delighted to see a whole group of Black dancers en pointe, for the first time in South Africa.
After a solo career, I was emotionally, spiritually, and physically ready to return to where I began—“The Dying Swan.” That’s the music I use here, and that was the premise of the Hatched solo. This piece is a continuation of my work. I’ve dreamed of doing this for a long time, and I finally had the chance, thanks to a small grant. I’ve been thinking about it for so long, I’ve imagined it so often, that the actual choreographic process was very quick. The whole thing was already in my head! I went back through my notes to see what I had written at the time. I created something different, something current, but there’s still a strong connection with the original solo.
