| What: Mamela Nyamza’s Hatched Ensemble When: April 29 and 30 April 2026 Where: Baxter Theatre, Cape Town Hatched Ensemble is being staged co-currently, at the Baxter, with Mamela Nyamza’s Herd/Less – on May 1 at 2pm |
Hatched Ensemble by the legendary Mamela Nyamza is on in Cape Town, in the Baxter Pam Golding, two performances only – April 29 and 30 2026. This is beautiful, fierce, urgent, heartbreaking, inspiring, transcendent dance theatre
I was at the opening, last night and it is on tonight and that’s it for now at the Baxter. I hope that this important production will be staged again.
The rousing ovation continued for about ten minutes, with people lingering in the theatre. Please go and experience this epic piece of dance theatre. I use epic in terms of physical scale and conceptual arc -10 ballet dancers – a stage which is bare and yet full bodied, increasingly impacted by the debris from the body of dancers en pointe.
Mamela means “to listen” and this great artist, activist, creative is prodding us to listen with the epic Hatched Ensemble, which is an extension and embodiment of her auto-biographical solo work, Hatched, an excavation of her peregrination as a Black ballerina, from her youth in Gugulethu, to constructing her identity as a Black Dancer – Ballet and all genres of dance. This is a very quick review as Hatched is on for two performances only.
As part of the season, Mamela’s Herd-less is also on at the Baxter – May 1 at 2pm.
✳ Mamela Nyamza’s Hatched Ensemble is on stage in Cape Town, at the Baxter Pam Golding Theatre, April 29 and 30 April 2026 at 8pm. It is running concurrently, with with Mamela Nyamza’s Herd/Less , which is on May 1 at 2pm Photo: Tale Hendnes-Dansens. Supplied
