EXTRAORDINARY CHOREOGRAPHER: SIFISO SELEME PERFORMER: SIFISO SELEME SET AND CONSUME: AFRICANISM 13 LIGHTING DESIGN: MARTIN PILZ SOUND DESIGN: SUSANNE FRANZMEYER PHOTOGRAPHER: TANJA BRUECKNER VIDEOGRAPHER: LIEN HEIDENREICH WITH THE SUPPORT OF: GOETHE-INSTITUT SOUTH-AFRICA CO-PRODUCED BY: TANZFABRIK (BERLIN) DURATION: 55 MINUTES Extraordinary is a performance installation and a living photography exhibition. In this work in progress version, the multitalented artist Sifiso Seleme plays with stereotypes of men and women, with glamour and poverty, ecstasy and exhaustion. Longing and generosity, despair and hope are all present in this extraordinary idea and first performance. In this work, the viewer learns about the double life of the main figure. The performer misleads the audience and asks them to take a careful look into the details on stage. The background of Sifiso Seleme s work of strong pictures is the post-apartheid society in his home in South Africa. His interest is particularly the in-between of different realities of life in Johannesburg and Soweto and its possibilities and impossibilities. Extraordinary is a multidisciplinary work that uses dance and multimedia. A living marionette as a symbol for the search of identity and movement between identities plays an integral part in the work.
Sifiso Seleme: Extra-Ordinary 1
Letter of Reference For Sifiso Seleme Berlin, June 2012 Extraordinary When Sifiso Seleme told me about the puppet or the marionette he was preparing for his new performance Extraordinary, I thought of his wrapped-up paper puppets he had made in Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2009 in the project Cross Currents, also in cooperation with the Tanzfabrik-Berlin. But this time the puppet was himself. His head, arms, feet and even his fingers tightly fastened to the elastic ropes of the control bar above. He was a she, a white woman: painted white and in a white dress. One of those celebration dresses the South African women wear in the deep countryside, but there they have bright colours; Here this woman is white. White with red fingernails and red lips. Although the elastic strings gave her some motion possibilities, which she explores is many ways, in the end they always pulled her back to her fixed place. A white, dressed-up black African. This reminded me of my childhood in Belgium where as in the Netherlands- the tradition of Sinterklaas (a kind of Father Christmas, who celebrates his birthday on the 6th of December bringing present to all the good children, carried by his helper : the Black Pete) still is practiced up to now. Traditionally these Black Petes are white men, painted black, pretending to be a real black African, scaring the children and threatening them to put them in his big sack if they did not behave properly. In Extraordinary the roles are changed. Nowadays the blacks are free, no helpers anymore and they can play around as well! As does Sifiso Seleme: the black figure is a white and elegantly dressed up woman. Nothing scary, isn t it? Yet, for whom is a marionette a joyful game? For the puppet, the puppeteer or the audience? When this white woman frees herself from the strings, she enters the space with great caution, as a young girl alert to her steps not to wake up her parents. Is she really free? Out of these careful steps a powerful, raging dance breaks out. Stamping as well as jumping the bells on her boots accompany this force with loud laughter. Who are they laughing at? In the second part of the performance, the woman changes the dress. In a clearly Western s vogue she presents herself again. Is this her way of emancipation? Is this the concept of being free? Does the world now look at her? Accept her? What kind of attention is it that she gains? Isn t this just another type of marionette, however now with invisible strings or manipulator? Isn t this behaviour just another slap in her face? Sure. We witness how she does get beaten up. Time after time and again. Finally this fancy dressed up woman starts to clean the floor she previously was wildly dancing on. On her knees, with a bucket and a rag. Only here in this act of cleaning, she also cleanses herself: she rubs away the white paint on her arms, on her face. He is black. He is one of the many black cleaning men or women here in the western world. By playing around with these well-known images and concepts of our post-colonial history and our global present, Sifiso Seleme questions primarily this practice of dressing up of free black women. How do they actually deal with our colonial past? How does the Western world still controls the illusion of freedom and what place do Non-Western people get in this global, democratic space? However, as this performance is created in the Tanzfabrik-Berlin, the main audience is the European audience, so secondly he is addressing us: how open are we to be asked these questions by a black performer? This dialogue is to be continued, let s enter the platform.
Fiona Kelly MA in German and English Literature and Theatre sciences, U.A. Antwerp, Belgium Freelance Dramaturge and Performer in Berlin, Germany