Voicing the Imaginative in Africa: three creatives speak

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Notes

1 African womanism emphasises the important place of childbearing and motherhood in many African societies. See Gwendolyn Mikell (1997) on issues of concern to women in Africa. African feminism highlights the specific legacies of colonialism in the current oppressions experienced by African women. For an overview of the theories and positions, see Pinkie Mekgwe (2007).

2 For information on these struggles and on various Nigerian women playwrights, see Iwuchukwu (2017).

3 Martha Graham was an America dancer forging a path for new dance languages and choreography in the early 20^th Century. Working within the historically Modernist era, Graham has been attributed with creating one of the first codified systems of training a modern dancer. The emphasis in this dance training system is around a series of tensions and releases (referred to as ‘contractions’) and is now referred to as the ‘Graham Technique’. See Kraus (1969) for more information.

4 Historically dance styles like ballet have required – specifically with female dancers – a particular foot size and shape to allow block or point work. This foot has high arches and the ability to flex fully into a point. Colonial practices argue that most black (and particularly African) dancers contestably and genetically had no or very small arches (ie: flat feet) and this has been used to racially exclude many black and African dancers from pursuing a career in ballet within the confines of this white-owned-defined genre. This has, of course, been deeply challenged by late 20^th century artists like Alvin Ailey and Arthur Mitchell.

5 Butoh is a post-World War II Japanese performance form that consciously rejected the constraints of Western dance and the rigidity of the highly codified Japanese traditions such as the ancient Noh drama and Nihon Buyo (Japanese classical dance). It encourages delving into those hidden and often unspoken/unspeakable facets of contemporary human existence.

6 The University of the Witwatersrand, more commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus South African research university, situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg.

7 A Sangoma is a traditional medicine practitioner, or shaman, of South Africa. They communicate with Ancestors, work with plant medicine (herbalism) and use the power of prayer for healing.

8 For information on Siwani’s installations and performances, see: https://www.buhlebezwesiwani.com/performances

9 “According to Walker's first definition, a ‘womanist’ was ‘a black feminist or feminist of color (xi) ..’ Thus, on some basic level, Walker herself uses the two terms as being virtually interchangeable. Like Walker, many African American women see little difference between the two since both support a common agenda of black women's self-definition and self-determination” (Collins,1996:10).

10 Zangoma is the plural form of the isiZulu word Sangoma

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lliane Loots

LLIANE LOOTS holds the positions of Lecturer in the Drama and Performance Studies Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has a Master’s degree in Gender Studies, and completed her Ph.D. in 2018 looking at contemporary dance histories on the African continent. As an artist/scholar her Ph.D. research is framed within an ethnographic and autoethnographic paradigm with a focus on narrative as methodology. Loots founded her FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY as a professional dance company in 2003 when it grew out of a dance training programme that originally began in 1994. As the artistic director for FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY, she has won numerous choreographic awards and commissions and has travelled extensively in Europe, America and within the African continent with her dance work. Email: [email protected]

Yvette Hutchison

YVETTE HUTCHISON is a Reader/ Associate professor in Theatre & Performance Studies, part of the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom where her research focus is Anglophone African theatre, history and narratives of memory, particularly in terms of the afterlives of colonialism. She is associate editor of the South African Theatre Journal and the African Theatre series, and she has published the monograph, South African Performance and Archives of Memory (Manchester University Press, 2013). Her AHRC-funded African Women Playwrights’ Network (AWPN) project developed a mobile app to facilitate a network of African women-identified creative practitioners and researchers: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/theatre/research/awpn/, from which she and Amy Jephta co-edited plays by African women from seven countries in Contemporary Plays by African Women (Methuen, 2019). Email: [email protected]

Ongezwa Mbele

ONGEZWA MBELE is an applied theatre practitioner, storyteller, and published poet. She is a lecturer at University of KwaZulu-Natal, Master’s graduate and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cape Town. Her professional interest is in using theatre techniques and storytelling to engage with diverse communities about their relevant matters. For her Master’s research, she received the “spirit ‘68” award. This award celebrates the spirit of the 1968 sit-in, which defended the appointment of Archie Mafaje to University of Cape Town academic staff against the apartheid government’s demand to withdraw the job offer on grounds of his race. She is currently researching the relationship between township youth culture and violence, and how applied theatre practices can be a tool of social and political healing. Email: [email protected]