The intention of this work is to present perspectives on post-apartheid dance in South Africa by South African authors. Beginning with an historical context for dance in SA, the book moves on to reflect the multiplicity of bodies, voices and stories suggested by the title. Given the diversity of conflicting realities experienced by artists in this country, contentious issues have deliberately been juxtaposed in an attempt to draw attention to the complexity of dancing on the ashes of apartheid. Although the focus is dance since 1994, all chapters are rooted in an historical analysis and offer a view of the field. This book is ground breaking as it is the first of its kind to speak of contemporary dance in South Africa and the first singular body of work to have emerged in any book form that attempts to provide a cohesive account of the range of voices within dance in post-apartheid South Africa. The book is scholarly in nature and has wide applications for colleges and universities, without alienating dance lovers or minds curious about dance in Africa. Mindful of its wide audience, the writing deliberately adopts an uncomplicated, reader-friendly tone, given the diversity of audiences including dance students, dance scholars, critics and general dance lovers that it will attract.

This book is the first to consider contemporary African dance theatre aesthetics in the context of phenomenology, whiteness, and the gaze. Rather than a discussion of African dance per se, the author challenges hegemonic perceptions of contemporary African dance theatre to interrogate the extent to which white supremacy and privilege weave through capitalist necropolitics and determine our perception of contemporary African dance theatre today. Multiple aesthetic strategies are discussed throughout the book to account for the affective experience of ‘un-suturing’ that touches white spectatorship and colonial guilt at their core. The critical analysis covers a broad range of dance choreography by artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Canada, Europe, and the US as they travel, create, and show their works internationally to global audiences to contest racial divides and white supremacist politics.

This book explores when and how, and to what effect, the body in South African contemporary dance protests, subverts, or represents a site of the struggle against oppressive forces of power. It considers how the dancing body is choreographed, what meanings lie behind the movements it makes in space, the possible effect of these movements, how and why it is costumed, and its relationship to its setting and space. It examines a selection of contemporary South African dance works, including Flatfoot Dance Company’s Transmission: Mother to Child (2005), Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre’s Home (2003), Musa Hlatshwayo’s Umthombi (2004), Mlu Zondi’s Silhouette (2006), and Nelisiwe Xaba’s They Look at Me and That Is All They Think (2006). Using both critical study of these works and the author’s own practice research, the book develops an understanding of the body in contemporary dance and its political and social meanings both in the chosen performance and within the broader context of South African society from 2003-2007. This provides a snapshot of the practice and concerns of contemporary dance in just over a decade from the first democratic national elections in 1994. It is through the study of these dance works that this moment in South African history is captured. Contemporary dance in South Africa tells the story of South Africa; its past, present, and possible future, and is therefore an enticing and evocative historical period to research a dance practice.

This book analyses the impact of HIV and AIDS on performance in the twenty-first century from an international perspective. It marks a necessary reaffirmation of the productive power of performance to respond to a public and political health crisis and act as a mode of resistance to cultural amnesia, discrimination and stigmatisation. It sets out a number of challenges and contexts for HIV and AIDS performance in the twenty-first century, including: the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry; the unequal access to treatment and prevention technologies in the Global North and Global South; the problematic division between dominant (white, gay, urban, cis-male) and marginalised narratives of HIV; the tension between a damaging cultural amnesia and a potentially equally damaging partner ‘AIDS nostalgia’; the criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure; and, sustaining and sustained by all of these, the ongoing stigmatisation of people living with HIV. This collection presents work from a vast range of contexts, grouped around four main areas: women’s voices and experiences; generations, memories and temporalities; inter/national narratives; and artistic and personal reflections and interventions.

A Picador Paperback Original The hero of Zakes Mda's beloved Ways of Dying, Toloki, sets down with a family in Middle America and uncovers the story of the runaway slaves who were their ancestors. Toloki, the professional mourner, has come to live in America. Lured to Athens, Ohio, by an academic at the local university, Toloki makes friends with an angry young man he meets at a Halloween parade and soon falls in love with the young man's sister. Toloki endears himself to a local quilting group and his quilting provides a portal to the past, a story of two escaped slaves seeking freedom in Ohio. Making their way north from Virginia with nothing but their mother's quilts for a map, the boys hope to find a promised land where blacks can live as free men. Their story alternates with Toloki's, as the two narratives cast a new light on America in the twenty-first century and on an undiscovered legacy of the Underground Railroad.

This book weaves archaeology, anthropology, culture, politics, colonial history, dance and choreography into a life-transforming tapestry. It charts the extraordinary story of the author’s work in South Africa during the abhorrent system of Apartheid when she started a mixed-race dance company called Moving into Dance in the garage of her house. Her in-depth research into rock art, its meaning, the creation and performance of Tranceformations, the dancers’ own transformative experiences, as well as issues of cultural appropriation, are at the core of this book. It straddles different disciplines, and shows in real terms how art, or specifically dance, can transform people’s lives, not only in physical or cognitive parameters, but that it can change attitudes and perceptions of both participants and observers; that it can touch the human spirit and transcend the very essence of being human. This book also includes a link to a video of the 30-minute dance “Tranceformations”, choreographed by the author.

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African dance is discussed here in its global as well as local contexts as a powerful vehicle of aesthetic and cultural exchange and influence.

This book explores Black British dance from a number of previously-untold perspectives. Bringing together the voices of dance-artists, scholars, teachers and choreographers, it looks at a range of performing arts from dancehall to ballet, providing valuable insights into dance theory, performance, pedagogy, identity and culture. It challenges the presumption that Blackness, Britishness or dance are monolithic entities, instead arguing that all three are living networks created by rich histories, diverse faces and infinite future possibilities. Through a variety of critical and creative essays, this book suggests a widening of our conceptions of what British dance looks like, where it appears, and who is involved in its creation.