SIFA 2014: Bittersweet love in South Africa

SINGAPORE — South Africa’s hit Robertson Quay quite hard this week, with Mies Julie at SRT and a Mamela Nyamza double-bill (I Stand Corrected and Hatched) at 72-13. And going by these shows, that country seems one difficult place for some lovin’.

If the former was a messed-up jumble of class, race and sex issues (review here: http://bit.ly/1vvqGKa), the first piece from the double-bill takes on sexuality by way of a tragic (but with hints of comedy) love story between two lesbians.

Choreographer-dancer Nyamza teams up with theatre performer Mojisola Adebayo in this critique of the phenomenon of “corrective rape” in South Africa, a hate crime against lesbians in the attempt to “make them straight”. Often, rape leads to murder.

“Does it look straight to you?” Adebayo asks as she adjusts her mic stand. “Is it straight now?” Nyamza asks as she holds her leg up, commenting how it’s not so easy.

Between these moments and the smattering of p***s metaphors (Nyamza pointing at the audience with her fingers crotch-level, accusingly pointing “You, you, you”; and Adebayo briefly putting her mic between her legs), I Stand Corrected knows exactly where it stands.

Central here is the story of a South African woman (Nyamza) who goes missing on the day of her wedding to her cricket-teaching, mixed-race foreigner lover (Adebayo), who reports it to a smug, tea-sipping MCP police.

As the dancer, Nyamza provides much of the physical movement and memorable imagery. Early on, she stuffs herself inside a dustbin, legs sticking out. Later, like a scavenger, she rummages through the rubbish, puts on a tampon as an earring, pulls out a female magazine and mockingly mimics the poses of the models inside. It all works on an easy-to-spot symbolic level (the all-sunshine and all-white idea of a woman put forth in the media and the, erm, trashy treatment of women) until you find out that it’s horrifyingly literal — based on the real-life incident of a victim of corrective rape, whose body *was* dumped inside a dustbin.

Adebayo plays narrator and how, coming from overseas to teach cricket finds love in a place that Desmond Tutu once proudly called the “Rainbow Nation”. But like in Mies Julie, all the good, hopeful vibes post-Apartheid hasn’t quite translated to anything positive for the marginalised.

While Nyamza internalises the issue and manifests it physically, Adebayo (when she’s not being rather funny) rages about the links between South Africa’s colonial invaders (and their Bible-toting missionaries) and anti-homosexuality, and about what’s natural and unnatural, what’s African and what’s not African.

“Forcing your c**k into a woman’s c**t. That’s unnatural, that’s not African,” she seethes.

Meanwhile, Hatched is a beautiful confessional piece from Nyamza. Motherhood is a pretty complicated thing. Coming to terms with your sexual identity is, too. Combined, it can be an emotional rollercoaster ride.

And this inner turmoil is manifested in Nyamza’s continuously transforming and evolving choreography that revolves around the domestic chore of hanging clothes.

We saw how much of a livewire Nyamza was in I Stand Corrected, all nervous energy in that taut and toned body of hers. Like the clothes-pegs she uses to hang the clothes (or the numerous ones stuck on her skirt), it’s all contained early on as she taps into her ballet roots, balancing clothes, a bucket, and slowly going through the domestic act en pointe. She slowly spins around, wrapping herself in the central cloth until she resembles something cocooned, mummified, trapped — but at the same time revealing, underneath all that, her teenage son, who proceeds to walk to the side to paint.

The somewhat fake gracefulness gradually turns into something akin to an anxiety attack, all twitches, spasms. If she mimics a bird, it’s not the graceful ones in flight, but the awkward ones on land. She asks the audience for a cigarette to calm her down (and gets gum instead). Throughout, there is a haunted look in her eyes—except when it turns to her son, still quietly at work on his night seascape. There is tenderness in her eyes.

When Nyamza eventually comes out in the piece, it is a veritable sigh of relief that the body gives. She replaces her clothes-peg-peppered skirt and ballet shoes (hung on the clothesline for more symbolic effect — what’s with all these South African productions and their symbols?) with a new orange coat. She smiles and, setting aside her ballet, grooves to South African pop (that makes me want to look for my copy of Paul Simon’s Graceland). Genuine and relaxed, it’s a new beginning. But...

Hatched is a work that will continue to evolve as she herself evolves as an artist and person, Nyamza shared in the programme notes. It’s a work that is continuously in progress. A quiet reminder that, for me, links to the two other South African shows I’ve watched this week. As the grim issues behind I Stand Corrected and Mies Julie reveal, there is still much work to be done.

There’s one more show for I Stand Corrected/ Hatched (double-bill) tonight. Tickets selling fast at SISTIC. Rated: R18. Note: There’s a one hour intermission in-between the shows. For more info on the festival, visit https://sifa.sg/