Mamela Nyamza
HATCHED ENSEMBLE is a poetic and emotionally intense piece: it works with diverse musical movement material from classical Western dance history as well as African dance styles and vocal scores. HATCHED ENSEMBLE is, as the title suggests, a large group piece. The ten-strong dance ensemble with a background of classical ballet training, an opera singer and a live musician pursue the deeply personal and challenging topic of body politics. Nyamza and her performers demystify and deconstruct (gender) norms, exposing sexist and racist ascriptions. Anyone who has ever felt a conflict with or uncertainty about their own identity will feel particularly addressed by HATCHED ENSEMBLE.
Choreographer, dancer, and activist Mamela Nyamza is one of the most idiosyncratic voices on South Africa's dance scene. Her expressive and courageous works are usually carried by urgent social issues. With HATCHED ENSEMBLE, Nyamza adapts HATCHED, her highly acclaimed 2007 solo piece, an autobiographical work in which the choreographer reflects on her resistant biography as a lesbian mother and artist between (dance) cultures and identities, between tradition and transformation.
“HATCHED ENSEMBLE powerfully conveys challenging issues of tradition. An insightful, thought-provoking, and deeply moving production” (Daily Dispatch, Sivenathi Gosa)
“Embracing Complexity and Identity in HATCHED ENSEMBLE: The mastery of the performance is its contrast” (CUE, VILIA DUBE)
Duration: ca. 70 min.
| Sat 25.05. | after the performance | talk with Mamela Nyamza and dancers of the ensemble, moderation: Balindile ka Ngcobo (more info below) |
| Sat 25.05. | 11:30 – 13:30 | workshop Body & Sound with choreographer Mamela Nyamza |
Talk: HATCHED ENSEMBLE – fifteen years after HATCHED, thirty years into Democracy
Talk with Mamela Nyamza and dancers from the ensemble, moderated by Balindile ka Ngcobo
The talk is focussed on the processes and contexts between the solo work HATCHED (2007) and its new ensemble version HATCHED ENSEMBLE (2023). The choreographer and dancer Mamela Nyamza and the researcher and artist Balindile ka Ngcobo discuss with dancers from the ensemble how the political conditions for Black, female and queer people in South Africa have changed since it became a democracy in 1994. Questions about the representation of Black female read and queer bodies are raised and how body politics are navigated between the so-called ‘global South’ and ‘North’ are discussed. What ‘meanings’ do the bodies of Black women and queer people have in their original contexts, and what ‘meanings’ do they take on when exposed to white, European gaze?
in English
Mamela Nyamza Nyamza works as a choreographer, dancer and dance teacher. She completed her classical dance training in Cape Town and Pretoria (South Africa). Nyamza then received a scholarship for the Alvin Ailey Dance School in New York (US). Since 2006, Mamela Nyamza develops her own choreographies, which are invited internationally. In them, she repeatedly highlights discrimination and injustice relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and drug use. She is intensively involved with human and women's rights. Her work has won several awards.
Balindile ka Ngcobo is a South African performer, theatre maker and writer. She is a doctoral candidate at the Ruhr Universität Bochum, where she contributes to research on Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of Violence. Her work investigates representational violence, dismantles colonial tropes and traces the ways in which the Black female body serves as a repository for memory – in postapartheid South Africa and across the diaspora.
In co-operation with the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group (DFG) ‘Dramaturgies in the Afterlife of violence: transnational Theater between Global South and North’ at the Ruhr University Bochum: https://theaterwissenschaft.blogs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/forschung/drittmittelprojekte/emmy-noether-nachwuchsgruppe/
Concept, choreography, direction: Mamela Nyamza; lighting design / technical direction: Thabo Pule; costume co-design: Mamela Nyamza & Bhungane Mehlomakulu; opera singer: Litho Nqai; African traditional live music / multi-instrumentalist: Given "Azah" Mphago; Dance: Kirsty Ndawo (rehearsal director), Kearabetswe Mogotsi, Khaya Ndlovu, Thamsanqa Ndlovu; Tania Mteto, Itumeleng Chiloane, Amohelang Rooiland, Noluyanda Mqulwana, Zandile Constable, Thimna Sitokisi.
Co-produced by National Arts Council (NAC) and Makhanda Standard Bank National Arts Festival (NAF). Supported by Moving into Dance (MID) and #Friendswhosupportartists. Funded by Alliance of International Production Houses, funded by Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien. Furthermore funded by Goethe Institut.
