NELISIWE Xaba, South Africa's foremost dance export enthralled fans at the Goodman Gallery Project in central Johannesburg over the weekend. She was performing as part of the ongoing Dance Umbrella Festival, which ends on March 4.
Xaba, who regularly plies her trade in both South Africa and Paris, was a marvel to watch.
"I cannot talk right now. I need a bit of time to just recover from what I have just witnessed," commented dancer Sonia Radebe, after watching the impressive Xaba in action.
Performing her show Uncles and Angels - an interactive dance and video collaboration between herself and Mocke van Veuren - Xaba, a visual arts masters student who created beautiful video installations to go with the show, was indeed on top of her game.
The central allusion within Uncles and Angels is the reed dance, a Zulu traditional practice meant to promote respect for young women and preserve the custom of girls remaining virgins until marriage. The piece looks at virginity testing and the painful, humiliating experience young girls go through while the elders inspect their genitals.
The practice is particularly painful to those who lose their virginity, who sometimes do not necessarily lose it through sex, but the message that comes through from Uncles and Angels is that the handlers of the ceremony, the inspectors, seem to almost always conclude that those who are no longer virgins have lost it through sex.
Losing virginity is always seen as an undignified act, and that those who are virgins should remain virtuous women .
"What happened to you? Only last year you were a virgin," says Xaba during the show, as if she is addressing a girl who is no longer a virgin.
The girl is not featured in the play, but her presence is implied.
Looked at, through a complex perspective, Uncles and Angels is more about virginity testing as it is about how traditions throughout the world sometimes tend to dehumanise people, no matter how well meaning those who practise them are.
Dance Umbrella is currently running at different venues in Johannesburg.
Taking a critical look at the enforced chastity of girls
NELISIWE Xaba, South Africa's foremost dance export enthralled fans at the Goodman Gallery Project in central Johannesburg over the weekend. She was performing as part of the ongoing Dance Umbrella Festival, which ends on March 4.
Xaba, who regularly plies her trade in both South Africa and Paris, was a marvel to watch.
"I cannot talk right now. I need a bit of time to just recover from what I have just witnessed," commented dancer Sonia Radebe, after watching the impressive Xaba in action.
Performing her show Uncles and Angels - an interactive dance and video collaboration between herself and Mocke van Veuren - Xaba, a visual arts masters student who created beautiful video installations to go with the show, was indeed on top of her game.
The central allusion within Uncles and Angels is the reed dance, a Zulu traditional practice meant to promote respect for young women and preserve the custom of girls remaining virgins until marriage. The piece looks at virginity testing and the painful, humiliating experience young girls go through while the elders inspect their genitals.
The practice is particularly painful to those who lose their virginity, who sometimes do not necessarily lose it through sex, but the message that comes through from Uncles and Angels is that the handlers of the ceremony, the inspectors, seem to almost always conclude that those who are no longer virgins have lost it through sex.
Losing virginity is always seen as an undignified act, and that those who are virgins should remain virtuous women .
"What happened to you? Only last year you were a virgin," says Xaba during the show, as if she is addressing a girl who is no longer a virgin.
The girl is not featured in the play, but her presence is implied.
Looked at, through a complex perspective, Uncles and Angels is more about virginity testing as it is about how traditions throughout the world sometimes tend to dehumanise people, no matter how well meaning those who practise them are.
Dance Umbrella is currently running at different venues in Johannesburg.
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