Imagine a pinup calendar that revisits history through color, and woven in a manner that depicts your past and future in an amusing way. Confused?
Well that is what the future looks like for South African performing artist Athi-Patra Ruga, known for his flamboyant performances and tapestries that challenge social norms.
Growing up in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Ruga knew at a young age he would become an artist, taking lessons, after school, at Belgravia Art Centre. He then received a scholarship to the Gordon Flack Davidson Academy of Design in Johannesburg.
“I had always known my body would be a site for telling stories. I feel the drive to tell stories, [I] overcame my fears – about it never been done before,” he says.
When he cut his teeth in art, he dabbled in fashion designing, incorporating fashion and art into one.
“Fashion has the power to dictate our movements physically and socially, to [a] great consequence. I have never seen it as a huge leap as both those mediums are concerned with the body,” says Ruga.
His current body of work is Queens in Exile, addressing issues of belonging and identity. However, it is his piece on the queens of Azania that put him on the cultural map.
“I feel it sparked something in the audience that [binds] our generation together. Witnessing the betrayal to the constitution I was raised with and also rainbowism, a utopian construct, played out in the country that is economically the most unequal in the world,” says Ruga.
Ruga was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year in 2015 and has done work for luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton. Believing the world is alive with possibilities, he held on to the hope he would one day travel the world.
“I had always dreamt of going to the south of France and now for the past five years, my husband and I have been going to Toulon for the Hyères festival,” says Ruga.
The Eastern Cape has produced some of South Africa’s great political leaders, from Nelson Mandela to Steve Biko, so it is little wonder Ruga’s work has strong historical references.
“History has the ability to arm us as a dispossessed youth, with knowledge that our forefathers went through the same things we are going through and we need that knowledge to arm us to find sophisticated ways of mobilizing for economic and cultural currency,” says Ruga.
He desensitizes “uncomfortable” topics using vibrant colors. His work is represented by the WHATIFTHEWORLD gallery in Cape Town, and in Paris, by InSitu Fabienne Leclerc.
There is also a lot of story-telling in his work which comes from his father being a journalist.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-36739 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/©_RENE_HABERMACHER_ATHI_PATRA_RUGA_PORTRAIT-768x1024.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" />
“I come from a family of people who enjoyed telling stories and I gravitate to that tradition of storytelling in my art,” says Ruga.
His industry is faced with numerous challenges, but Ruga chose early on in his career to not focus on the negative.
“I’m honestly not concerned with focusing on challenges, that’s not how I got here. It is the attitude that defines how I will overcome that is ultimate. Our education system is something we all need to face and improve as that leads one to art and in return empathy for others,” he says.
Ruga encourages upcoming artists to venture into different spheres such as photography, art and designing as they are lucrative.
He says there are more than enough role models across the continent one could look up to such as Nicholas Hlobo, a South African contemporary artist who creates sculptures and explores ethnicity, masculinity, and sexual identity. He too looks up to him.
Despite the global exposure and success at home, Ruga is convinced the best is yet to come.
“I always feel my big break hasn’t happened yet,” he says. That will be a story for another time.

Athi

Challenging Social Norms Through Body Art

In a decade of dancing, I’ve experienced so many magical moments; it leaves me wondering what else I can contribute in my life and career. One of those moments was a surreal juncture in my fledgling dance profession. I stepped onto the stage of one of the most beautiful theaters in the world. I was asked to represent my nation as Holland played host to a meeting of greats. At a tender age of 20, I was center stage.
In 2002, the South African embassy in The Hague hosted the Faranani! concert at the Royal Carre Theatre in Amsterdam, at which the late Nelson Mandela was the guest of honor. Faranani!, meaning togetherness in the Venda language, was a concert promoting peace, reconciliation and unity between South Africa and the Netherlands, a relationship spanning 350 years. I danced for Madiba and the Dutch royal family with a company of acclaimed South African artists. Through the arts, these two nations commemorate the past.
For the royal family and the rest of the Dutch audience I might have been a symbol of the unusual, the unexpected act of an African woman in Europe dancing a Russian classic. In my heart, however, I was dancing for Mandela and South Africa. I felt like a cultural ambassador crossing borders, inviting audiences to journey with me until the last few breaths of The Dying Swan. As a ballerina, this honor represented  my country’s struggle against a colonial past as well as my struggle to beat the odds as a black woman on pointe in a tutu.
It was a high point in my career and the wonderful memories stick with me to this day. A sense of duty stirs inside of me, sparked by the opportunity to dance for a global hero while on a mission to unite.
Today, a world away, I find myself fulfilling this duty at a dusty makeshift primary school in a township I called home. Alexandra, in Johannesburg, sets the stage for another kind of Faranani! concert in schools for thousands of culture-hungry children electrified by ballet performances in their playgrounds. This is part of my journey as I keep working to take my art and craft outside the garlanded stages of glamorous theaters.
As we mourned the passing of the father of South Africa, I felt the weight of history on my shoulders. That service to my country, which began at the age of 20, continues in celebration of Mandela’s legacy. Inspiring children in the townships is a humbling responsibility I take with pride. The future of these children will be determined by the choices they make and the freedom to believe they can achieve whatever they put their heart and mind into. Following your passion and working towards a dream becomes possible when the struggle of the past is broken. I hope that I can help the children realize that the destitution of a township can result in the beauty and grace of a ballerina.
Touring the world and dancing for dignitaries has its allure, but the shows in Johannesburg are the ones that are most fulfilling. Ballet helps to develop the image of South Africa, a country once segregated from the rest of the world, and entices an international flair to Johannesburg.
Making history is dancing on home soil as the only South African ballerina in galas with the New York City Ballet. Forging peace and unity is dancing on a stage with friends from Kiev and Moscow amid the recent unrest between Ukraine and Russia. Coming home is my affirmation of a passion for a nation that can use ballet to create Faranani!.

CTP3336

From A Township To A Tutu

Their humming vibrates the pits of your stomach, their harmonies leave you wanting more and their combination of dancing and singing is extraordinary. Over the years, their uniqueness has garnered South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo numerous awards from around the world – including the coveted Grammys. They are regarded as the highest award bestowed on musicians in the world. Ladysmith Black Mambazo has bagged four of the gold-plated trophies, depicting a glided gramophone.
The group may not have been nominated for this year’s awards; but they will forever be etched in Grammy history.
Although Ladysmith Black Mambazo is internationally renowned and loved, back at home in South Africa it’s a different story and it shows in their album sales. The older generation connects better with the group, the younger generation tends to follow western music religiously. The group spends the majority of the year traveling across the United States (US) and Europe, returning home for short stints to see family and do a few performances.
I saw them perform for the first time just under a year ago.
It was June, if my memory serves me well. The warm sun was setting on a crowd dressed up to fight the winter at a concert outside South Africa’s capital, Pretoria. On stage, arrived one of the country’s youngest and hottest house acts Mi Casa, then Ladysmith Black Mambazo. The two groups from the same backyard, half a century apart, sang a new love song called My Sugar like they were born into it.
Mi Casa’s J-Something introduces the song, singing, “When you love somebody, right to the point where it hurts, and she got you feeling naughty,” a flurry of images flicker in your memory about those moments I had with my significant other.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo throws you right back to the good old days of Zulu traditional music and the isicathamiya sound they’re famous for. The isiZulu word, isicathamiya, is a sound best described as walking softly, a soft shuffling style of dancing, says Xolani Majozi, Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s executive producer. It is enriched by ragtime-influenced choral part-singing.
The group joins in after the chorus: “Njalo waz wamuhle Ntombi, awujwayelki ma ngikubona…” in isiZulu declaring their love for this beautiful girl as if they are seeing her for the first time. “Sengizothumela abakhulu,” – we are sending my uncles, they declare. This is a sign that the young man is ready to get married.
My Sugar mixes groovy house beats with smooth isiZulu vocals. The collaboration fuses two eras of Africa. The South African music legends match the youngsters note for note with swagger. They sign off with a flourish of two golden hits, Homeless, and Hello My Baby.
The crowd cheers the group off the stage, leaving Mi Casa to complete the set. Ladysmith Black Mambazo is rushed to the airport, for another gig in Durban at the MTV Africa Music Awards where they show they can hang in the contemporary music scene.
This is what Ladysmith Black Mambazo has been doing for over 50 years, while also surviving scores of line-up changes.
The current crop includes founding member Joseph Shabalala’s four sons Msizi, Thulani, Sibongiseni and Thamsanqa, grandson Babuyile as well as relatives Albert and Abednego Mazibuko, Russel Mthembu, Dlamini Mfanafuthi, and Pius Shezi.
It all started with a dream. Not a wishful one, but a recurring one. In 1964, Joseph dreamed of featuring in a choir singing in perfect harmony. He then formed what was to be the group of his dreams.
Formerly known as Ezimnyama (the Black Ones), Joseph renamed the group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. ‘Ladysmith’ was the name of the farming village in which he lived, ‘Black’ represented the black oxen that were the strongest on the farm and ‘Mambazo’ is an isiZulu word for axe – an allusion to them chopping down the other choirs by winning almost every singing competition.
A few years later, a radio broadcast in 1970 paved the way to their first recording contract – the foundation that led to more than 74 albums.
In 1973, they released their debut album Amabutho – the first album to reach gold status in Africa.
In 1986, American singer Paul Simon collaborated with the group on his Grammy Award-winning Graceland album. It was considered a seminal album that popularized world music. It was here they also composed the now famous song, Homeless. The group also sang on Simon’s single Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes.
A year later, Simon produced the group’s first worldwide release of the album Shaka Zulu, which won them their first Grammy Award in 1988 for Best Traditional Folk Recording. Since then, they’ve been nominated 15 times and added three more Grammys for the albums Raise Your Spirit Higher in 2004, Ilembe in 2009 and Live: Singing For Peace Around The World in 2014.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo spend most of their time performing in the West and Europe, from Germany to Norway. Nearly 30 years after Graceland, the tours keep coming. During March, the group will tour the west coast of the US.
FORBES AFRICA met with the group in Johannesburg, a few months after they scooped their fourth Grammy. The men are laughing and chatting in isiZulu dialect, heavy and untainted by years working away
from Africa.
Because the group comprises of Joseph Shabalala’s sons and some of his relatives of the Mshengu clan, I introduce myself with a different version of their surname, Tshabalala. They exclaim “nawe ungi Mshengu, ubuti wethu,” (you’re also an Mshengu, our brother). I am. We exchange hugs and they feel more at home. They’re celebrities but they could be your next door neighbor.
On this particular day, the group have taken a day off from their musical Amambazo at Pretoria’s State Theatre. Created by Joseph, the 25-cast and six-piece live band musical, along with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, is in its second year on stage. It follows Joseph’s story of founding the group.
More than 50 years of music has had its struggle and casualties. The group released their latest album called Always With Us, a tribute to the matriarch Nelli Shabalala, Joseph’s wife who was shot and killed outside their home in the KwaZulu Natal province. The album is a collection of songs she recorded with her church choir a year before she died.
In December 1991, Joseph’s brother and fellow member, Headman, was killed by an off-duty white security guard near Ladysmith. A few years later, Joseph’s other brother, Ben, was also shot and killed while driving his children to school.
But through it all the Shabalala’s persevered.
About three days before the group won their fourth Grammy, Majola announced that Joseph, aged 73, was scaling down his activities with the group.
“It’s a temporary retirement. He had back surgery and is recovering from that. As soon as he gets better, he won’t be as involved in the group like before, but he is still part of the group,” says Sibongiseni Shabalala.
“When we rehearse at home, we rehearse with him. He is still teaching us new songs.”
While the ensemble continue to travel across the globe, one of the senior members, Albert Mazibuko, is entrusted with keeping Joseph’s ways. Mazibuko is Joseph’s cousin and is the only original member left in the group.
“I’m so supportive to him. I make sure the group keeps together when we are going to places and that we keep our promises. I make sure the uniform is perfect,” says the 66-year-old Mazibuko, who designs the group’s shirts.
The men of Ladysmith Black Mambazo say it is not a group you can just join; it is one you grow up in. Music becomes part and parcel for all family members. Msizi, who is also part of the management team, says his father allows the families to bring their children to rehearsals so the different generations are able to work together and generate fresh ideas.
When the time came for the third generation to join Ladysmith Black Mambazo, even Msizi’s eldest son, Babuyile, had to serve an apprenticeship.
Before joining the senior team, Babuyile, along with two other relatives, founded Young Mbazo in 2009. It is a group where the younger members of the family sing isicathamiya and want to not only keep it alive, but make it more appealing to the younger generation.
“This type of music, it looks like a rhino, it’s about to be extinct. It’s not cool to be isicathamiya. It looks like you’re backward. But we are moving forward, using contemporary genres like RnB, kwaito, soul and hip-hop and we fuse that with isicathamiya,” says Babuyile.
As the day is about to end, I steal a moment with one of the most reserved members of the group, Msizi. He helped register Ladysmith Black Mambazo as a company. Msizi says they are trying to sell merchandise and also buy back albums from record companies so that they can all be distributed and sold under one umbrella.
For now, the group will continue performing in internationally to sold-out auditoriums. The group can spend up to four consecutive months touring.
Back in 2008, Joseph announced that his youngest son, Thamsanqa would take over as the leader of the group when he retires from international touring.
“The mission and message will continue. When the time comes for me to finish touring and to stay home, they will carry on my dream,” says Joseph.
With that said, Ladysmith Black Mambazo will continue to produce more albums, maybe even adding more Grammy Awards. And to think a dream started it all.

Glittering Prizes  To The Soft Shuffle Of Feet

The South African Ballet was founded in 2001 by former members of the defunct State Theater Ballet, one of these dancers was Dirk Badenhorst. The company opened with a season of Giselle, which was performed at the State Theatre, in Pretoria. After some success, it was invited to perform in Russia, the first South African company to do so.
Badenhorst left the SABT because he wanted to explore and felt stifled.
“We started [the] South African Ballet Theater as an entrepreneurship… These young dancers that we train in South Africa need to be brought up with the idea that ‘I can create my own company. I can create my own work. I can create my own opportunities,” he says.
<div id="attachment_1168" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1168" class="size-medium wp-image-1168" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_0160-300x154.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="154" />Giselle &#8211; First Act</div>
In 2008, he cofounded Mzansi Productions—a classically based contemporary dance company—with Esther Nasser. That same year, he began the International Ballet Competition Gala, taking place every second year and bringing together dancers from across the world.
The SABT and Mzansi Production merged this year to form The South African Mzansi Ballet, (SAMB), of which Badenhorst is CEO. The new company will still perform the classics but will expand its offering to create a wider appeal. It’s a question of evolving to be more contemporary and relevant to an African audience.
Although Badenhorst enjoyed a dance career both in South Africa and abroad, he confesses to never being a fantastic ballet dancer, but has a passion for the art.
To most, ballet is an escape to worlds and times imagined. Not just for the audience but for the dancers themselves. Giselle is a great example. The first act is fun, flirtatious, colorful and light but then the second act transports you to a somber, whimsical, yet still romantic place as Myrtha—the Queen of the Wilis—dances onto the stage. You become transfixed not only by the story but by the amazing ways the dancers’ bodies move, their ability to be strong and graceful at the same time. It’s a beauty like no other.
A ballet patron and former first lady of South Africa, Zanele Mbeki, says it makes her feel as if her soul leaves her body and joins the dancers on stage.
“Ballet is inspirational and aspirational,” says Badenhorst.
The SAMB brought in Michaela DePrince to make her professional debut in its production of Le Corsaire, at the Jo’burg Theater in July. DePrince, from Sierra Leone, was adopted from a refugee camp after her orphanage was bombed. Her father was killed by rebels and her mother died of starvation. Despite this, she held onto the dream of being a ballerina, after seeing one on the cover of a magazine outside the orphanage; she carried the picture to her new home in the States. Once labeled a “devil child” by the care givers at the orphanage, DePrince is now a wonder child.
<div id="attachment_1167" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1167" class="size-medium wp-image-1167" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_3554-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />SABT/Air Products Development School, Alexander</div>
One of the reasons a merger between the SABT and Mzansi Productions made sense, was because it meant pooling the limited funds. The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund has been a great supporter of ballet in South Africa. The fund gives to non-profit organizations and is legally required to spend 95% of its money on three sectors—including arts, culture and national heritage.
There seems to be competition between classical and contemporary dance and Badenhorst thinks there shouldn’t be, since the audiences are so different. The competition lies in the fact that both disciplines go after the same pot of money.
“When you are fighting for survival, then people find it hard to share,” he says.
Badenhorst feels that the problem of funding hampers the growth of the industry. The South African ballet companies, according to him, are not on par with the rest of the world on a national level. Despite this he thinks that South African dancers have more passion and hunger.
“When a dancer in South Africa gets to a certain level, in South Africa, we lose them to overseas companies because we can’t pay them what they can. We don’t have the stability in South Africa that they have.”
Badenhorst agrees that there is less support from the South African government compared to international companies and their governments. It seems that the new South African government still hasn’t moved away from the notion that this is an art for whites which was generously supported by the apartheid government. In 1994, South Africa’s central government issued a notice ceasing all funding to performing companies. At the time of going to press the South African government had not responded to questions from FORBES AFRICA.
It was once written that South Africans criticized ballet for being “a cost-intensive, Eurocentric art form that has no place in an African country”.
Badenhorst notes that while the elitism of the art in the past was racial, it’s now about talent. He compares it to an Olympic sport.
Despite this racial criticism, companies and schools have created programs targeting disadvantaged children in poor areas. The SAMB has about 500 young ballet dancers enrolled in its program. The Cape Town City Ballet’s (CTCB) Outreach, Audience &amp; Development Training program has reached 310,000 people in the last 15 years.
“When you go to the township and work with the young kids and you see what it does on their ability of experiencing themselves, on understanding their bodies… on their imagination development, then I also understand why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Badenhorst reflects.
Ballet in South African townships can be traced back to the work done by the late David Poole in the 1980s, in Cape Town. Poole was a former ballet master and artistic director of the CTCB, after an international dancing career. Former principal dancer, Philip Boyd carried on this legacy with ballet classes in Gugulethu, Cape Town—back in 1991. Boyd’s Dance for All has been around for more than 20 years and now offers training in diverse dance styles in 2 more townships.
A British charity began giving ballet lessons to children in the slums of Nairobi, to keep them off the streets.
In Africa, children are most likely to be pushed into careers that are thought to pay more or carry more prestige—like being a doctor, lawyer or footballer—rather than ballet.
Ballet requires a lot of commitment and focus in order to excel. Andile Ndlovu is a South African ballet dancer who’s been dancing since the age of 10 and is in his third season with The Washington Ballet. It’s hours of work from an early age and Badenhorst believes that aspiring professional dancers need to be ready to enter a company at the age of 16.
It’s not cheap either. The running cost of a performing company, a year, is around $1.4 million. This money can be gathered through ticket sales, private business and the government—if its lucky.
The SAMB has 60 permanent staff members, including dancers, and employs almost as many temporary staff in season. This art form from the old age European aristocrats may have made its way to the “African bush” but it fails to enjoy the same popularity—leading to companies facing financial strain.
Only a few years ago, the SABT sent out an appeal for funding. Badenhorst, who was not with the company at the time, says that the companies need to be more frugal, cut down on staff and change their models to fit the environment. By 2010, the company had raised $793,000, a sure sign that ballet in Africa is not dead.
For years, Badenhorst has formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the National Ballet of Cuba. The international company is performing abstracts from its best work in South Africa and has included South African dancers, like Kitty Phetla, in the show.
Phetla became the first black ballerina to perform in Russia in her role as The Dying Swan.
Badenhorst’s parting words: “We have to go back and we have to not see it [ballet] as an expense, but as an investment”.

Tag: dancing

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Challenging Social Norms Through Body Art

From A Township To A Tutu

Glittering Prizes To The Soft Shuffle Of Feet

Pirouettes Under The African Sky