Reporting Cape Town

At this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, choreographer Dada Masilo produced a rendition of Swan Lake that captured the epic tale and placed it in a new space and time. The piece told a story of loss and desire that at once challenged and revered the classic.

This swan was one of confrontation—it challenged expectations of movement, gender roles, family and faithfulness. Masilo managed to access classical, contemporary and African techniques to produce a fusion of movement and text that created a bridge for the audience and allowed for moments of laughter, abstraction and raw emotion.

The piece played in two major parts. Tchaikovsky’s classic score broke the stage wide open. As the music swelled, each dancer crossed the stage, toe-to-heel and executed classical ballet repertoire--in bare feet, of course.   Each was clad in a quintessential white tutu. Though, the male dancers were without a bodice, it was clear that gender neutrality was a running theme throughout the piece.

The MC, Bailey Snyman quickly broke up the moment and provided a brief synopsis of the Swan Lake story, in an attempt to help those who may have come from a “cultural desert.” Ballets and dance in general are known for confusing audiences. The vast majority of newcomers to the genre often say, “I didn’t get it,” or claw for an explanation.  Masilo poked fun and did away with the confusion at once.

Snyman quickly narrated as the company of dancers performed a variety of movements filled with releves, lifts and pirouettes. He also coined the phrase “virility leaps” and highlighted the dying swan moment, which was dutifully renamed the “nobody loves me” pose.

The dance began. The large corps of dancers moved across the stage, reenacting the story of the swan on new terms. Light and lifted repertoire was replaced by swift and grounded  movements, balanced  with a combination of  the balletic extensions  and shuffles and undulations across the floor, which were more akin to contemporary and African forms.  The piece moved with the same grace  and obvious concern for techniques as the original, but with slightly sharper edges.

Once the corps was introduced,  Siegfried danced by Songezo Mcilizeli entered and was immediately overwhelmed by his parents (Bailey Snyman and Nicola Haskins) with the words “Let’s get married.” Though Siegfried tried to give flight, the company of dancers overtook him with their movement of celebration.  Clapping hands and swinging hips and Masilo’s quick footwork sealed Seigfried’s fate: he would be marrying the wrong person (Masilo).

Odile, Siegfried’s swan (Boysie Dikobe) then entered.  With one ethereal crossing of the stage on pointe,  Dikobe wowed the audience and complicated the story—this swan would be just a ethereal and intangible as the original.  Though done in a mostly light and comedic way, Masilo’s swan contradicted traditional mores of gender and sexuality in a single body.

As the story goes Siegfried found himself face to face with his bride-to-be. Masilo executed a wedding dance of sorts and linked the coy and the sensual.  In one moment, a twirl of her hips shook her tutu from side to side, much like a tail feather. In the next, she transitioned to deep contractions in her torso that reverberated from her core and reminded the audience we were watching a woman with desire.

Hers was quickly replaced by the presence of the swan. The duet between Siegfried and Odile is the only thing reminiscent of a traditional pas de deux. The ease of the movement, seemed to eliminate the so-called untraditional aspects of the scene.

The swan was revealed and Siegfried was not only exposed but confronted by the entire corps—a seeming village—with wagging fingers, audible stomping and movement that swept across the floor and kept Siegfried on the move in obvious disapproval. The dance did not merely capture unrequited love, but the expectations and disappointments that are part and parcel of living in society.

Siegfried’s day of reckoning transitioned to a duet between Masilo and Dikobe set to Arvo Part’s rendition of the score to Swan Lake.  The dancers wore long black skirts and nothing else. The vulnerability of the costuming set the scene for the “swanicide” to follow. The two appeared to find solidarity in their loss; and, as the corps of dancers entered, the lines of gender blurred and the gravity of the movement solidified.  Sequences of torso undulations passed through their limbs with sharp extensions followed by softening suspension. One by one the swans died, not quietly, but in one resounding thud to the ground.

Dada’s Swan Lake moved from the ground and the core and offered a story of loss that almost anyone could feel—cultural desert or not.  

- LeTania Kirkland

Choreographer Dada Masilo discusses her training, her process and a new approach to the Swan.