(July 2014) Award winning dancer and choreographer and Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year 2011, Mamela Nyamza will be performing her own works on the Artscape Arena stage as part of the 8th Artscape Women’s Humanity Arts Festival which runs from 4 – 9 August.
Hatched together with I Stand Corrected, a collaborative work she created with Moijisola Adebayo, are some of the highlights of this years’ festival. Both have been performed to critical acclaim throughout Africa and Europe.
Nyamza has been declared the festival icon for 2014 and visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy performances that are both thought provoking and entertaining and which represent the ethos humanity which is this year’s festival theme.
Hatched, which launches on Wednesday 6 August, is an ever-evolving autobiographical work. For theatre goers who have seen her earlier productions, these performances will bring them up to date with Nyamza’s life as a mother and as an artist. The performance was part of Infecting the City in March, and has also been performed in Johannesburg, Amsterdam and Paris before being adapted for the Artscape theatre environment.
The show was first performed and funded by the National Arts Council (NAC) and the Raymond Ackerman Family Foundation when her son Amkele Mandla was nine years old. He was part of the premier at the New Dance Festival in Johannesburg. Each show is reinvented as he grows and he joins her again as a 14 year old in this production.
The production seeks to convey deeply personal and challenging issues of culture, tradition and a woman’s evolving sexuality within the customary rites and rituals of marriage, until she realizes her true identity. The show was nominated for best visual performance at the Out of the Box Festival 2010.
Details: Ticket price R80 / Dates: 6 Aug at 20:30 & 8 Aug at 17:00: Bookings at Computicket.
I Stand Corrected is a powerful story told through haunting and sometimes absurdly comical physical theatre, with songs, dance, music and drama. Created by Mojisola Adebayo and Mamela Nyamza, this is the first collaboration by these two outstanding international artists. After its debut at Artscape as part of the Women’s Month celebration in 2012, the show went to London where it was nominated for six London Off West End Theatre awards including best director, best play and best choreography.
Funded by the British Council and Artscape, the show has received accolades wherever it has been performed both nationally and internationally. The production has also evolved from its original script in response to homophobic, transphobic, hate rape, murder and women’s issues seen across the country since its inception. But it is also a beautiful, uplifting memorial to survivors and those who are gone. Following these performances the show goes to the Singapore Arts Festival.
Details: Ticket price: R80/ 7 Aug at 20:15, 8 Aug at 20:15& 9 Aug at 20:15: Bookings at Computicket.
Spread over the week leading up to and including Woman’s Day, the Artscape Woman’s Humanity Arts Festival brings together a wide variety of events. It includes, as it has for the past seven years, the disabled community, the disenfranchised community and women and men from all walks of life and is Artscape’s response to highlight the lack of “humanity” which marginalised groups face on a daily basis in South Africa.
Prepare to be enthralled and excited with world-class stage productions and empowering workshops. Song and poetry, art exhibits, book launches, storytelling and a ground- breaking launch of a website specifically designed for disabled women, plus a women’s humanity walk, add up to an empowering week with something for everyone, and to which everyone is invited.
Positive and uplifting, the programme is a kaleidoscope of events reflecting the Artscape ethos and focusing firmly on women’s role in society. It offers festival attendees a chance for their voices to be heard and to celebrate being a woman in Cape Town.
Join us as we celebrate and salute those women who actively strive to better their own lives and the lives of countless other women in our society today.
Mamela Nyamza Biography
STANDARD Bank Young Artist Award in Dance 2011.
Nyamza was born in Gugulethu, Cape Town and trained as a dancer at the Zama Dance School and later at the Pretoria Dance Technikon where she received a National Diploma in Ballet. In 1998 she received a scholarship to go and further her studies in dance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Centre in New York. After graduating she joined the State Theatre Dance Company, Johannesburg, where she performed nationally and internationally.
She performed as a dancer in major international musicals such as The Lion King, We Will Rock You and African Footprints. Simultaneously she developed her own artistic practice, developing choreography which deals with important political and societal issues of today’s South Africa.
Since 2006, Mamela has dedicated her career to choreography. The autobiographical works include Hatch, Shift, Mendi, IDolls, Kutheni and Hatched which all premiered at Dance Umbrella festivals in Johannesburg. She was nominated for the best visual performance for Hatched at Out the Box Festival 2010.
Mamela also performed at Dans Le Afrique Dans 2010 in Bamako, Mali and again at the same event in South Africa in 2012 with a new work Shift which addressed issues of human rights, the status of women in sports, commissioned by British Council.
She attended the Artistic Residency Crossings in Johannesburg. Led by Vincent Mantsoe and Michel Kelemenis she worked with lighting designers and music composers from South Africa.
She worked as a resident choreographer and as the vice principal of the Zama Dance School in 2007. She was one of the choreographers for the live broadcast dance show. “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2008.
She represented South Africa as a soloist in The Super Stars of Dance in Los Angeles in 2008 and made it to the semi-finals. Hatch was performed in the Netherlands, Mexico and in Los Angeles. Mamela was chosen out of 1000 dancers around the globe to take part in the 2008 ImPulStanz in Vienna International Dance Festival.
In 2009, she was nominated to take part in the Big Intensive course in directing dance and movement at the Sadler’s Wells in London. Since then Mamela has presented her work in various dance festivals in both Africa and internationally.
Author: Charlene Key from HIPPO Communications.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HIPPOcommunications
Images: For high res version/s of Two image/s please contact: HIPPO Communications.
I Stand Corrected – Mamela Photo: Artscape Cape Town
Hatched – New Dance 2009, Wits Theatre
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