In The Beginning Was Desolation

South Africa Wed 23-09-2009

In The Beginning Was Desolation
By David Kaiza

In the beginning was desolation; a snowscape of dazzling white in which life is near-impossible, froze a stage in which what looked like an iceberg stood at the centre.

Then, as if the ice were melting, the iceberg shifted shape. Pop! A human hand broke through. Other forms begun to move and we started to make out the outlines of human limbs and forms, and with the changing of the stage lights and music, the iceberg was transformed into twisting, pirouetting dancers delicately going about complex themes.

The stage lights for the production of the show, 3 Colours at the Alexander Theatre in Johannesburg at the opening of the 4th World Summit on Arts and Culture, are dazzling white: The white gauze the figures on stage are covered with is white.

They have white powder on their faces, and because of their absorbed, aloof faces, give off an air of intense hostility. You watch, as it were, from a thematic distance.

'In The Beginning Was Desolation'. Photo- The play

^{The play}

The music croons deeply, weatherly. Are they ghosts or angles, these slow unfolding, surrealist forms? You watch them come off the platform set in the centre of the stage, and as they move away, you see a dark liquid – startling by its contrast with the intense whiteness – oozing out, a hint at very sharply contrasting themes.

When the stage bleeds, you get a foreboding of things coming unstuck. But at this stage, that is not the expectation sitting in the auditorium when just an hour earlier, the Hlabelelo Ensemble had roused the crowd with a full throttle a Capella.

The ensemble is part of the stage show and this being an opening ceremony we are expecting more of their thing.

Opening ceremony events, are after all, ice breakers, which in this case, is a literal one – or be it an iceberg. But then come three cleaning ladies, all in white, who start to clean out the liquid and this sends a warning that things may take a difficult turn. There is a slight moralizing tone which is pushing us to take sides.

Bits of what read like poetry flash on the screen overhead – “When the crops were ripe, the birds came…we had never seen such birds…children went to see the birds…the birds took our children away…”

Then we know things are not fine. The words connect us to a story we already know and it is at this point that the unease invades the audience: Already other figures in brown have appeared and the instant contrasts they make to the figures in white tell us this is an epic narrative about a deeply felt history. We know the plot. We know what is going to come, and we know it is not going to be easy.

We know because we have all read Alex Laguma’s A Walk in the Night and Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy, and know that the South African narrative is never an easy one, and that to tell it, the South African story teller frequently has to push at boundaries.

3 Colours is essentially a story about a voyage into Africa, the conflict that colonialism brought the devastating enslavement of black peoples, attempts at cultural erosion and the subsequent fight for freedom.

A rendition of Geoffrey Oryema’s mournful track, Land of Anaka was performed and this introduced the darker themes. 3 Colours became profound and arresting. With South Africa hosting the first World Summit on Arts and Culture, we should not have been surprised they were going to put a show with such themes as colonialism, slavery and apartheid.

By the time Land of Anaka comes to an end, the mind is already wounded, for the production of 3 Colours is expertly done. Its themes of alienation and unalloyed human brutality receive complete realisation, from the music, the dance choreography, to the stage lighting:

3 Colours’ themes are open, naked, oppressive – very South African themes. Its telling is also very South African; impactful, engaging and mercilessly direct.

A quarter-way into the action, we start to understand the beginning and see that pasts are under contrast here: it is obvious cultures are under comparison, for we remember the figures in white making ballet dance moves, and now, the figures in dark are doing energetic African rhythmical moves.

opening ceremony, world summit on arts and culture, south africa,2009,

But by now, one starts to feel that a bit too much is being said: was it accurate or fair for them to present European culture as cold and inhuman? Granted, Europe’s contact with Africa encourages that feeling, but is it the territory of art to make one-dimensional interpretations?

It may be political point-scoring for a politician to stand before a rally and loudly claim that African arts contain more life where as the European is inert. But at a world summit, it is not a generous point at which to begin.

Clearly 3 Colours is trying to tell us that art is humanizing, that cultural assertion is the most powerful form of emancipation. Yet because it was a world summit, it should have at least made wider themes. The fact that midway through the show, statistics about displacement, immigration and homicide were flashed across the screen did not necessarily universalize 3 Colours. It felt like an attempt at creating balance. The point had been made already.

Those who live in post-colonial societies – and in this case, post-apartheid South Africa, know that things are not so straightforward afterwards. Oppression, we now know, is not colour-based, but is more structural, the result of bad systems and less what one colour does to another.

Hence, for an opening ceremony piece, 3 Colours was too tough. Yes, it is true, they never lied about history. They did not invent anything and all the police beating of black people happened. The rape enacted on stage took place and social exclusion based on colour still takes place. But there are abundant examples to pick from to show that things are not that straightforward.

Perhaps it was meant as a reminder that art and culture are not for fun and cannot expect to entertain when they also become weapons of exploitation. In its favour, the show fudged with little and perhaps the shock was ours as foreign observers – perhaps the final judgment ought to be left to South Africans. After all, few societies in this world have gone through the extreme hatreds and dehumanization of South Africa.

Indeed, some of the South Africans in the audience did make their judgments. They walked out of the show. It was a tough reminder that nearly more than fifteen years since the end of apartheid, the struggle about the country’s past still divides opinion to this extent.

Nearly all those who walked out where white.

The director of the show, Brett Bailey writes that “in making a performance piece about the complexities of interculturalism, I chose to portray different societies or cultures symbolically, as shrines.”

But was that the case? He may be right in calling it a show about history, a struggle for values and heritage, but how much of it was about art and culture?

Rather, this is the kind of narrative that one tends to see too much of in Africa generally, by which incumbent systems tell ad infinitum, the interpretation of the past that legitimates their position even when evidence of mismanagement and corruption tell us otherwise. It is a narrative that hoodwinks and leads countries astray.

Yet the show did provide possibilities for universal interpretations. Was it deliberately provoking us to dare take a position; was it challenging the manner in which we immediately judge others depending on their colour; was it asking us to consider whether art is moral or not?

The technical realisation was better than good. It was an illustration of how South African arts perform at very global levels.

The production of 3 Colours was fine to a fault; not a single mistake seemed to be made from the manner in which the actors hunched their shoulders, moved their fingers and legs. The choice of music was superb.

It was also a reminder that South Africans know how to sing, gifted over-abundantly with powerful voices. They work hard at perfecting it and listening in front of the Alexander Theatre, before we got in to watch 3 Colours we got the full power of this. It was not a musical performance you forget easily.

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