Staking a worthy claim for performance art: Spier’s ‘Infecting the City’ takes off

Melvyn Minnaar

Mumblings about using the image of a burning man as emblem for the second, seven-day Spier Performance Festival last month called it ‘gross’ and ‘arrogant’. Of course, Ernesto Nhamuave’s xenophobia-charged death - from whence the
image derive (it also refers to the alternative American festival) - is deeply tragic, but such complaints
suggest that a performance festival is all play-play, that life and death is only Shakespeare.
But these things can hit hard. Many of us who stood next to the fountain in Adderley street on that first Saturday when Exile was performed, were deeply moved. When the burning man was lit, the waters crossed, washing replaced by sjamboks, danger and sadness engulfed us. Tears mixed with water, prayers floated up. This was fearless street theatre in Africa, in Cape Town.
The point about performance or street art is exactly that it intervenes where it’s not expected, that it challenges thought at awkward moments. Naturally, it can be as beautiful as ballet, as dark as tragedy, as absurdly theatre, and as South African as politics.
Not all of the Cape Town events, neatly or oddly packaged, took flight in this week. One supposes that that too is in the nature of the unanticipation of the genre - one which, more or less invented in the 1970s when the field between all the arts became so happily blurred. Right now, in our post-post modern era, it is surging internationally. (Not that any of pushy art events like Documenta ever went without.) Spier’s Africa Centre (which, thankfully, seems to have abandoned that dreadful amphitheatre which is part of the disneyficated Stellenbosch wine estate) can be quite pleased the way it turned out. Importantly, the collaborative efforts - of which three involved various and diverse artistic talent from different countries and produced excellent pieces, in fact, the highlights - will give momentum to future development and similar ventures. Could Cape Town became an international centre for performance art?

On the logistical side, the team gets good marks and the co-operation with city and other officials seems to have been fine tuned. That too is good for more of the same.

How and what Capetonians - those mostly unsuspecting of what they would encounter on the pavement, city square or next to the iconic fountain - think about it or have reacted may be worth some research.

What matters is that many ad hoc opinions by casual passers-by at, say, the Adderley street fountain and the trapeze outfit on Riebeek square were prompted. These two places, hosted two diverse performances which demonstrated the scope of the art, but it also suggested that South African artists have some real, original excitement to offer.
The French company Retouramont’s Tuning into the Void had three black-dressed performers hanging around in the air, moving to some invisible choreography and dreary music. One passer-by suggested a shot on the bum might liven up matters, while a more laid-back academic suggested this was typical of bleek European art indulgence.

Down at the fountain, on that first Saturday, Exile - brilliantly conceived by Alfred Hinkel from Jazzart, Michael Lister of the Avanti Display theatre in the UK, Zambian performer Mary Manzole, Penelope Youngleson and a host of agile performers and singers who whipped and rode the waters - had everyone talking. A very vocal bergie shopping trolley couple was ready to join in, while an ecumenical crowd got themselves deliciously wet as part of the ritual and went home thinking about their neighbours.

A ritual of a more absurd and camp kind formed the basis of Amakwerekwere, another international collaboration. The attics of rising star Athi-Patra Ruga and a fabulous team of human penguins guaranteed broad attention. Take that, you old Thibault square!

Limbo on Church square, a potent piece that cut to the heart of the us/them theme of the festival and the dread of xenophobia, activated the stately atmospheric environment superbly. But the usual clever iconoclastic Peter van Heerden’s An Histrionic didn’t quite come off at the Castle. The parody promised simply felt silly.
Most of the other offerings were pretty regular, if interesting pieces (such as Incwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela) in ‘fixed’, traditional venues. Personal indulgence, a space and place for some wanking, is also part and parcel of this kind of stuff. The most ‘conceptual’ piece in a way, was Call Cutta in a Box, which comprised an ‘intercontinental phone play’. And there were quite some takers.

Which means that Capetonians are quite up for and to the challenges of performance art. How much infecting it did, well, that’s tricky. But that it did, that’s for sure.