Bright Young Things

I DANCE AS I WISH

ON A RARE VISIT HOME, ACCLAIMED DANCER, CHOREOGRAPHER AND TEACHER NELISIWE XABA SPOKE TO ADRIENNE SICHEL ABOUT ART, SALVADOR DALI AND RODNEY PLACE

Price tags swung from the cheeky acid yellow panties and the ethnic showgirl high heels. That black dancing body was clearly for sale. But at what price? This is just one of the images produced by dancer-choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba and director Carlo Gibson in They look at me and that's all they think (2006). This full-length solo tackled the issue of the exploitation and exportation of African dancers dating back to 1810, when Sarah Baartman was shipped from the Cape to London to be displayed as an exotic freak. In another creative tie-up, Xaba collaborated with the equally iconoclastic Haiti-born Mali resident Kettly Noël for their Correspondances (2008) in which their own biographies – as classically-trained contemporary African dancers – merge with histories of any black performer who experiences voyeuristic exploitation.
To merely describe Nelisiwe Xaba as a dancer, choreographer or teacher, is to deny her interrogative ability. There's a good reason for that. When the Dube, Soweto teenager first encountered the strictly codified world of the ballet barre and the tutu, everything was wrong. Especially her African body shape, not to mention her skin tones. As it turned out, everything was perfectly right for a performing artist who has developed a body of playfully surrealistic solos and significant collaborations.
Xaba has broken countless rules and preconceptions of what an African female dancer can do and be, on many continents. "God is Black and Nelisiwe Xaba is Queen" proclaimed the arts blog Critical Spectacle in a review of her work Plasticization at the 2007 edition of Toulouse International Festival. Of late, this performer with a seditious sense of humour has become an artist in her own right. In 2008, nine French choreographic centres commissioned her Black! White?, directed by Toni Morkel, which is programmed for the 2010 FNB Dance Umbrella (February 27 – March 14, 2010). Meeting at the Market Theatre, where she was appearing with poet Lesego Rampolokeng in the aesthetically adventurous Bantu Ghost (a Bobby Rodwell-directed staging of Rampolokeng's tribute to Steve Bantu Biko), I start with an irresistible question.
Have you always been interested in the avant-garde?

Coming from Soweto and training at the Johannesburg Dance Foundation (JDF) in the late 1980s was a culture shock. After JDF I was asking myself if I was doing an art form which is actually not African. Also understanding that after 1994 doing classical was not cool. Being African was cool. Today I still question myself: is contemporary dance a Eurocentric or African art form? What makes what I do Eurocentric or African? 

Would you agree that Rodney Place's installation Couch Dancing (1998), a fictional biography of Sigmund Freud (with choreography by Robyn Orlin), was a major turning point in your career?

Yes. It introduced me to my own solo work. It was the most powerful performance of creation I ever did. I didn't understand Rodney, but after talking to people who have worked with Rodney I realised I was not stupid! I was naive. I just opened myself. I still do. I've always followed visual art. I never thought I could be a visual artist but thanks to multimedia these days you don't have to make steps or movements, only to express yourself. You can mix and match to get your point across. I like surrealism. At one point I really was in love with Salvador Dali. He took me somewhere I haven't been.

In your inventive solos such as Plasticization and They look at me... your body isn't always visible, it is often masked. Would you say you use your body as an art work?

Yes. I also investigate my body like a surgeon would. I want to know what it can do besides walking and standing. I always want to push my body somewhere. As you get older – that's another story.

You are very interested in politics of the body.

Yes, of the female black body. The Black Consciousness Movement existed because there was racism. So if I didn't perform a lot in Europe, and only in Soweto, it wouldn't be a question... If your work mainly gets seen in Europe it is important to acknowledge that consciously. Who is consuming what you are doing? You can either play with it or feed the consumer what they want. Oh, yes, I am seen as exotic there. But I didn't do my work to sell my body. I could stand at the traffic lights in South Africa and just sell it.  My body is an instrument. That's why Correspondances is what it is. What does it mean to be naked? In Europe it doesn't mean anything. For a black body to be naked means another thing.

You obviously create performance you like to see yourself, art which is imaginative, provocative, political and visual.

Yes. Dance at some point was very boring. I had to find other ways to interact with the audience. Even though what I do is in entertainment, I don't want to call myself an entertainer. My work is about interrogation, political criticism and gender politics.

Adrienne Sichel is a theatre and dance writer, and a founder member of the annual Dance Umbrella


About Nelisiwe Xaba: Born in Soweto and trained at the Johannesburg Dance Foundation, in 1995 Xaba received a scholarship to Ballet Rambert, a contemporary dance company based in Chiswick, London. Her now historic collaboration with Robyn Orlin began in 1997 with the Vita Art Prize installation, Keep the home fires burning. Xaba first caught international attention as the pin-up in the tutu in Orlin's Daddy, I've seen this piece six times before and I still don't know why they are hurting each other (1999). Since 2001, Xaba has choreographed many of her own pieces, including Dazed And Confused, Talent search for new rainbow nation dance company, No String Attached 1 & 2, Be My Wife (BMW) and Plasticization. A frequent collaborator, earlier this year she presented Black!...White? – with Carlo Gibson and  Lukasz Pater – at the performance art festival IN TRANSIT 09, held in Berlin. Nelisiwe Xaba is Art South Africa's thirteenth Bright Young Thing for 2009

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ART SOUTH AFRICA V8.2