CELEBRATED South African choreographer Jay Pather was featured as this year's Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience’s Legacy Artist.
The international contemporary dance festival is in its 23rd year and will be presented for its second digital edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The festival began on August 24 and runs to September 5 and is presented by the Centre for Creative Arts (UKZN).
This year’s theme is “Border Crossings” and it will focus on dance-makers whose work speaks to this theme. As the 2021 Legacy Artist, Pather will open this year’s festival.
Pather, who was born in Durban, was raised in Grey Street, Clairwood and Chatsworth. He now lives in Cape Town and is a professor at UCT and director of the Institute for Creative Arts. Pather has recently been appointed a fellow at the University of London and was made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of Arts and Letters) by the French government.
He said he realised he wanted to dance when he was 8 years old.
“As a working class boy, it (dancing) was looked down upon in the early ’60s, so it was tough. My biggest influencer was my mum, who supported me in what was quite a challenging time to hang on to one’s passion in the midst of much prejudice.”
Pather said he was humbled to have been named Jomba’s Legacy Artist. He said the title of his piece was Undertow.
“It’s a cast of hundreds featuring, among others, Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre and Pravika’s Kathak Kendra. Because of Covid-19 protocols, we are presenting digital works available for online viewing. I’m editing a film which features excerpts from several of my productions, to look at the theme of the festival, Border Crossings.”
He said Undertow referred to an underground current.
“I’m using that to look at what informs our current state and what it means to have and leave a legacy when we as a nation are going through such precarity at this moment.
“In the early years of my career, I made many works around cultures coming together, for example Ahimsa Ubuntu, which was commissioned by the Institute for Black Research. It was written by Fatima Meer and performed in 1995 for Nelson Mandela and Sonia Gandhi, who subsequently invited it to India.
“However, later on I did works such as The Beautiful Ones Must Be Born (2005 at the Constitution Hill) and Qaphela Caesar (2013), which commented on our failed state and how we were failing the poor.
“One of the later works, Body of Evidence, talks about how we have not as a nation paid attention to intergenerational trauma and the inheritance of violence. These productions talk to how this is bound to erupt and envelop us in further violence. At this moment, I felt that this reflection is also a metaphor for how artists predict and can see the underneath of a society. Hopefully we will learn to listen, so that it’s not too late.”
The power of art
Commenting on the role of artists in the context to the pandemic, unemployment, gender-based violence and the recent unrest that resulted in racial tensions, Pather said artists should be encouraged to not just make spectacles and escapist entertainment.
“Art is not just about lightweight entertainment. What happened to artists as healers? This is part of our rituals in this country and we have not tapped into how art can reveal and help in the healing process. Our society is being ravaged by mental health issues that have generated further violence on ourselves and others. Art can help people to become more sensitive to our inner states and to navigate external challenges. This has been proven in various cultures over time.”
Pather said we have to change our attitude to art and be mindful of the depth that artists are able to plummet.
“In the ’90s, I created a production, A South African Siddhartha, which featured African, Indian and contemporary dance. Siddhartha was played by a classical Zulu dancer and Kamala (his consort), an Oddissi dancer from India. There was a petition started to have the production boycotted because it was seen to be messing with cultures, which is hilarious since these cultures are thousands of years old. One production can’t mess with that.
“Even a Playhouse board member at the time said to me that my problem was that I kept trying to bring different cultures together; why don’t I keep them separate? We ignored this and continued with our work. This closed-mindedness is something we have to navigate and overcome if we want to have a society that grows from who and where we are. And art can make this accessible. If only we would learn to listen and open our hearts and minds to the power of art to reveal possibilities, and remove borders and heal differences.”
Support the arts
With the arts industry been one of the worst-hit since the start of the pandemic, Pather said government and public support of the sector was important.
“We need to place the arts in a space of healing and helping our mental health as well as bringing our different cultures closer together. This has been shown to be true time and time again. It is now becoming crucial. Art can help us to become more empathetic and sensitive ... Government and public support of the arts is no longer a favour to people with a passion, like the 8 year old boy who wanted to dance. It is essential for society’s sanity and survival.”
Undertow screened on August 24 at 7pm.
As part of honouring Pather as the 2021 Legacy Artist, Jomba has commissioned Durban photographer Val Adamson to offer a digital photographic retrospective exhibition of his work.This digital exhibition, titled Through The Lens: Val Adamson in Photographic Conversation with Jay Pather, is a collection of more than 100 photographs.
Through The Lens can be accessed here.
More about Pather’s Undertow here.
