Mamela Nyamza

Mamela Nyamza is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and activist in South Africa. She is trained in a variety of styles of dance including ballet, modern dance, African dance, the Horton technique, Spanish dance, jazz, movement and mime, flying low technique, release technique, gumboot dance and Butoh. Nyamza is known for blending styles in a way that challenges traditional standards.^[1] Nyamza has performed nationally and internationally and has choreographed autobiographical, political, and social pieces both on her own and in collaboration with other artists. She draws inspiration from her daily life and her identity as a young, black woman.^[2] Nyamza's abstract dance style allows her to use dance as a way to share both her own personal stories as well as African stories with the world. Additionally, has created various community outreach projects that have helped to spread the positive influence of dance to different communities within South Africa,^[3] including the University of Stellenbosch's Project Move 1524, a group that works to educate on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and drug abuse, through dance movement therapy.^[4]

Early life

Mamela Nyamza was born in 1976 into a large family living in Gugulethu, Cape Town in South Africa.^[3] Growing up in Gugulethu had an enormous influence on Nyamza's career as a dancer. She explained that the environment in which she was immersed "did not give (her) a choice but to love dance. There was music and sound, all day long, and even in the streets the noise became the music". Dancing became a way for Nyamza to understand all that was happening in the world around her, "I used my body as the instrument to react to all forms of sound, whether it be playing, crying, or watching all sorts of things that one can imagine happened in Gugulethu in the '80s".^[3]

Since childhood, Nyamza has continued to use dance as a means to interpret, cope with, and reconcile her life's events. When her mother was raped and murdered in 1999, dance gave her the inner strength to somehow face this scarring experience. Additionally, her mother's death greatly influenced the development of her abstract style of dancing, "After my mother died, I could feel her in my dreams telling me to use my dance to tell real stories. I also later came out of the closet, and I started experiencing discrimination in society and that's when I thought, 'You know, I'm an artist, so let me be the voice that addresses all these issues'".^[4]

Community outreach projects and volunteering

Nyamza believes that others too, can use dance as a means to heal themselves by using it to express experiences they may find too difficult to put into words. It is this belief that has motivated her to take on various volunteer and community outreach projects—including ballet teaching in Mamelodi, volunteering at Thembalethu Day School for the Disabled, and launching a project at the University of Stellenbosch that uses dance therapy to educate others on issues relating to HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and drug abuse.^[3] Nyamza exemplifies the potential these projects have to positively impact people's lives, "Art has developed me, and opened a totally different book for me to explore the impossible which is now possible…Giving back to the community is helping those that come from where I come from, and showing them that this art…can heal a lot of them that are born out of issues just like myself".^[3]

Education

Mamela Nyamza began her training as a dancer at the Zama Dance School under the Royal Academy of Dance.^[3] She continued her training at the Pretoria Dance Technikon where she received a National Diploma in Ballet.^[5] In 1998 Nyamza received a scholarship enabling her to further her dance education at the prestigious Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. Upon graduation, she joined the State Theatre Dance Company with whom she did performances both nationally and internationally.^[5] Additionally, she has attended various intensive workshops and classes including a choreographic workshop at the Vienna International Dance festival, ballet training with Martin Schonberg through the Pact Dance Company, African Dance workshops in Soweto with Jamaine Acogny, and a course in dance through London's prestigious Sadler’s Wells Theatre.^[3]

Career

Thus far in her dance career, Nyamza has held the role of dancer, choreographer, and teacher. In her early career she performed in various major international musicals including The Lion King in Den Haag, Netherlands in 2004,^[3]We Will Rock You in South Africa in 2006 Africa,^[3] and African Footprints.^[5]

Since 2006, Nyamza has mainly focused on her own choreography, most of which deals with important political and social issues existing in modern day South Africa.^[5] One of Nyamza's most known choreographic pieces is Hatch. Hatch was choreographed in 2008, and has since been performed at the Out The Box Festival, the Baxter Dance Festival, and at the World Population Foundation. Additionally, Nyamza did informal studio performances of "Hatch" in Brazil and Vienna and at selected schools in the Eastern Cape, Durban and Cape Town and at the South African Domestic Violence conference in Johannesburg. She has also performed the piece in various shelters for abused women in the Netherlands Africa.^[3]

In 2009 Nyamza was selected to be the South African representative to travel to Los, Angeles, United States and compete as one of eight countries and six different continents in Superstars of Dance—a show on the NBC television network. There she performed a tribal piece entitled Afro-fusion, which told the story of a woman deeply frustrated with her marriage and life.^[6] Although she did not win the show, the judges loved her piece and awarded her 58 points.^[6] Additionally, she was a choreographer for the American television show So You Think You Can Dance? in 2008.

In 2011 Nyamza was honoured with the Standard Bank Young Artist Award.^[4] Along with the other Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners, Nyamza showcased her work at the 2011 National Arts Festival in South Africa. There she performed the pieces Isingqala and Amafongkong, which featured a solo work by Nyamza and was a collaborative production with the Adugna Dance Theatre Company from Ethiopia.^[3] Nyamza said that her intention in creating Amafongkong was to use an open space to explore the notion of "collaboration" by "seeing how and where similar and different bodies could meet in movement".^[3] Mamela Nyamza collaborated with UK-based artist, Mojisola Adebayo, to create I Stand Corrected. The powerful piece addresses issues of homophobia and rape that Nyamza describes as "Dark, strange, witty and absurd".^[3] In it, Nyamza is killed for being a lesbian, and is coming back to "correct herself".^[3] The piece premiered in South Africa and successfully ran for three weeks at the Ovalhouse in London, where it was met with full houses and fantastic reviews. Additionally, I Stand Corrected recently received six Off West End Theatre nominations in London.^[5]

I Stand Corrected was also performed at the Soweto Theatre in South Africa. This was a major accomplishment for Nyamza because of the difficulty she has experienced securing a spot in national theatres; "I have performed in Soweto, and because of that I'm the proudest artist ever". Obtaining funding from South Africa has also proved to be a barrier for Nyamza, "It's sad that we still have to struggle for funding here at home, while internationally we don't even have to apply, we just get invited".^[4]

Despite the barriers she has faced, Mamela Nyamza continues to thrive. In March 2013 she performed at Infecting the City in Cape Town, South Africa. This project "places exciting new artworks in unexpected spaces in the middle of the City (to) challenge Cape Town's ideas of art and public space".^[7] Nyamza is excited for her future and plans to continue creating work that shares African stories and experiences with the rest of the world for as long as she can.^[4]

Gallery

References

External links

• Performance at Dance Umbrella
• Zama Dance School
• Infecting the city
• State Theatre
• Martin Schonberg
• Sadler Well's Theatre
• Out The Box Festival
• Baxter Dance Festival
• Standard Bank Young Artist Awards
• Adugna Dance Company
• Mojisola Adebayo
• Soweto Theatre