At times, Mamela Nyamza’s Hatched Ensemble are bewitching. Take the opening scene, the cumulative power of repetition as Saint-Saëns’s The Swan plays over and over while a tableau of 10 dancers slo-mo their way across the back of the stage. The music is from Carnival of the Animals but to any dance fan it’s better known as The Dying Swan, and loaded with significance. The trappings of European classical dance are on display: the pink satin pointe shoes, the net skirts – although in a meeting of the sublime and the mundane, these skirts are covered in clothes pegs which look like fringing that quivers and shakes as dancers bourrée on the spot, making tiny steps on pointe (men as well as women).
The South African company absorb such balletic symbols and replay them to us on their own terms. Soprano Litho Nqai hums Saint-Saëns’s melody before moving into African song, with Given “Azah” Mphago playing the mbira on stage. The piece then wanders into more exploratory territory. The dancers change from their white skirts and bare torsos into red costumes, clothes bundled on their heads then hung on a washing line spanning the stage. They scuttle together as a group, eyeball the audience, and finally remove their pointe shoes, wiggle toes and stamp flat feet to the earth.
