In a March 2008 Amnesty International report on human rights in South Africa, one rural black woman told a researcher, “I am at the lowest end of all.” The report found that more than one in five women in South African households had been a victim of physical violence inflicted by her partner in the preceding year.
Relationships and violence toward women is one of the social issues Durban artist and dancer Mlu Zondi, winner of the MTN New Contemporaries Award (2006), a coveted award honoring young artists, explores in his performances.
In the performance that won the MTN award, Silhouette (2006), Zondi worked with poet/actress Ntando Cele to play out a new relationship that starts as a tentative courtship. But when the mutual attraction moves to a point where the two embrace, the shy character Zondi plays is overtaken by predatory urges, and ripping off his red tuxedo he forces himself violently onto his traumatized partner, licking her face like a hungry wolf as she screams her distress. A third player in the piece moves around them at a distance, like a discreet referee, wielding a video camera. Close-ups of the action, recorded by this character, are then projected onto a screen behind the performers. Silhouette, with its theme of brutish sexual coercion, is a shocking yet thought-provoking statement on how rampant domestic abuse is.
Zondi, who has worked with Cele on several pieces, told dance writer Adrienne Sichel in an interview in the online magazine Edition 1 (June 27, 2006), “Ntando and I talk a lot. We have relationship issues and we also look at what is happening around us, and this is what we deal with in our performances.”
Born in 1975, Zondi has always used his performances to investigate issues in his own life. In Identikit (2004), a two-part performance developed as part of the Young Artists Project at the KZNSA Gallery in Durban, Zondi created a metaphor for being black in a white-dominated world and illustrating the frustrating struggle of being the “other” by maneuvering his body minutely over a giant version of a game board of the popular township game Mlabalaba, drawn on the gallery floor. Next, donning a crazy outfit of a green dress and outsize sunglasses, he drove the short distance to Durban’s North Beach, followed by some members of the audience, and dashed into the waves to gauge the reaction of black bathers to a different kind of “other”—one of their own but one who deliberately acted “strange” to stand out in a public crowd.
In his highly personal and theatrical performances that spur conversations among viewers, Zondi daringly provokes his audiences to consider a dialogue on issues that are usually difficult to discuss.
Silhouette 2006
Performance with Ntando Cele and Thando Mama
Transcape performance space, Cape Town
Photographer: Mario Todeschini
© Mlu Zondi
Silhouette 2006
Performance with Ntando Cele and Thando Mama
Transcape performance space, Cape Town
Photographer: Mario Todeschini
© Mlu Zondi