MAMELA NYAMZA

For more than twenty years, Mamela Nyamza has compiled an oeuvre in which the personal meets the political, and where the stage becomes a site of protest, healing, and transformation. A major figure of the South African scene, she has continued her efforts to deconstruct the rules of classical ballet, an art whose form she masters at the same time that she reveals its symbolic violence. By assembling a group of performers who all share this same heritage, she creates a common working space in which each one is invited to reconsider their journey and relationship to their body. On stage, the trappings of this tradition – pointe shoes, tutus and academic lines — are both present and put to the test. Confronted with African songs, percussion, rhythms, and sounds, these objects and bodies open themselves to new narratives, thereby yielding a new space in which different cultures and histories begin to resonate with one another. This friction reveals tensions arising from norms and traditions, as well as dynamics of emancipation through reappropriation. Hatched Ensemble is more than a reinterpretation of ballet; it is a choreographic manifesto, a space where the personal meets the political, and where dance once again succeeds in reinventing itself.