Preview: POP-multidisciplinary dance piece – premiering at NAF 2022

Preview: POP- multidisciplinary dance piece- grappling with mental health issues related to homophobia -premiering at 2022 National Arts Festival, Makhanda #NAF 2022

A much anticipated show on the Curated Programme at National Arts Festival 2022 is POP, “a multidisciplinary dance piece interrogating mental health issues related to homophobia”. The choreographers are Thamsanqa Majela (South Africa) and Matthieu Nieto (France). Thamsanqa Majela was a co-choreographer with Tebogo “Artslave” Gxubane, on the acclaimed, Mommy mommy which was on at on the Fringe at The National Arts Festival 2021. Mommy mommy, also a multidisciplinary dance piece- wowed me with its beauty, emotion and intensity [https://thecaperobyn.co.za/live-theatre-online-leading-edge-mommy-mommy-at-national-arts-festival-2021/. Those who watched Mommy mommy, will be tuned into the extraordinary dance theatre, created by Thamsanqa Majela and creatives that he works with. POP is an exciting co-production between South Africa and France and has been created during residencies, from March 2022 and will premiere at NAF 2022. Info as supplied:

POP- project notes

POP is a multimedia dance piece exploring our conversations and introspections about queer lives and mental health through our personal stories. Based on the observation that queer people are more likely to suffer psychological abuse or physical assaults and develop mental disorders, we cross the traces of traumas influencing our construction as gay men and artists. Though we are approaching deep, sometimes brutal issues, as choreographers we wish to infuse a sense of lightness in the performance by staging a pop and fantasy world echoing our inner fantasies and fictions. This is a necessary contrast to give varying layers to our narratives and avoid the pitfall of simply reproducing violence on stage. By choosing to integrate our dances in a digital landscape, we enrich our choreographic writing within an immersive visual dramaturgy composed of multiple colours and shapes – like an imaginary transcription of immaterial, subconscious spaces. Thus, we explore a hyperchromatic aesthetic by revisiting, in our own ways, the heritage of two emblematic artists of the Pop Art movement: Yayoi Kusama and Keith Harring. Like the installations of the Japanese performer and visual artist, these moving, abstract, psychedelic and colorful landscapes depict the movements of the mind in the face of trauma and mental disorders. We invite performers and spectators on a surreal, inner journey where time and space intertwine in a hypnotic way. The performers’ bodies are transformed by the colours projected onto the stage, thereby relocating or depersonalizing bodies and giving them new political, poetic meanings – like the colourful silhouettes of Haring. The space and the body become plastic, exploring the interdependence between the body and its spatial and cultural context, standing on the thin border between abstraction and narration. This somatic journey reveals vulnerable worlds, filled with unspoken words, shame, stigma and secrets, while bringing out phantasmagorical stories and representations. In a desire to affirm these multiple influences that animate us as performers, the body language and the aesthetics of the movement are nourished as much by the fundamentals of contemporary dance as by voguing, waacking, krump, drag, butoh, cabaret, and the cultural expressions that allowed us to transcend traumatic experiences through flamboyant or dramatic acts of resistance. By celebrating our plural influences, we intend to create a queer escape that challenges the racist, heteronormative and overly disciplined narratives that plague bodies and relationships today. The interrelationships between our bodies and their digital, mental spaces will shed new, subjective light on the complex but fluid cultural shaping of gender, sexuality and race. The cabaret-like, hyperchromatic universe provides a backdrop for the duo as we embark on an internal journey filled with cultural conflicts, traumatic violence, but also resistance, affirmation and celebration. This work plays with a back and forth between the dramatic and abstract dimensions of movement. Thus, we will allow enough room for the audience to build their own narratives, to go through an intimate and sensitive experience, and perhaps experience healing and reconciliation in cathartic ways.

✳ Images supplied.