Dance review: Out of South Africa, Via Kanana captivates in its expression of rage
The North American streaming premiere of Gregory Maqoma’s pantsula-based ensemble piece for Via Katlehong proves mesmerizing
Via Katlehong in Via Kanana. Photo by Christian Ganet
DanceHouse, in partnership with Digidance, presents Via Kanana performed by Via Katlehong and choreographed by Gregory Maqoma to March 6 via video on demand as part of Black History Month. The stream includes a short post-performance documentary about the work’s creation.
WHILE GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION in South Africa is well-known, Via Kanana brings the view of so much greed and injustice from the streets to the stage through pantsula, a form of dance and fashion that grew out of apartheid into a culture all its own.
Choreographed by Johannesburg-based artist Gregory Maqoma for Via Katlehong, a dance company named after the township in which it’s based, Via Kanana mesmerizes in confronting oppression. Wearing straight-legged pants, buttoned-up dress shirts, and Converse runners, the eight dancers are dressed in the style of pantsula. (We later learn in the post-show documentary that the clothing reveals little to hide so much trauma.). The movement of pantsula, which emerged in the 1950s and ’60s as a form of communication and expression, is influenced by tap, jazz, funk, traditional tribal dance, and gumboot (a miners’ dance incorporating strokes of the hands against the thighs and calves). Maqoma’s choreography is beyond athletic: a dancer leaps over top of another, who’s standing tall, or tumbles around and through the legs of performers clustered at centre-stage. Fast, frenzied footwork is fused with dizzying, sharp gestures and isolations.
Rhythm is everywhere, from the sound of a train’s wheels rumbling along the tracks to the human percussion created when the dancers slap their hands against their bodies. There’s an intermittent heartbeat that sometimes picks up in pace like a panic attack. At other times, the tempo diminishes, music and movement seductively swelling. When one dancer’s clapping slows down, we can sense his weariness, the others surrounding him to lift him up. It all makes for the most captivating expression of rage.
Video projections of the township of Katlehong are projected against an angled white backdrop, which also allows for the dancers’ shadows to become part of the choreography. In one scene, contrasting scrambled digital images are newspapers that the dancers fold into their phrasing, opening and closing the broadsheets that later serve a more gruesome purpose.
At one point, a dancer takes to a mic to describe just how deplorable the situation is in South Africa, echoing the words of Patrick Lumumba, the first prime minister of the newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo: With thieves elected to public office, the only way to achieve integrity in South Africa is to punish the corrupt.
There’s violence and aggression in Via Kanana, but there’s even more joy and collective positive energy. In speaking their truths through transfixing movement filled with so much life, the dancers inject hope into a seemingly hopeless situation.
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