Acclaimed former Durban producer Jay Pather returns to the stage at this year’s 25th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts that is set to begin on August 29.
Mr Pather, a JOMBA! 2021 Legacy Artist, together with the Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre, will stage a new work entitled Surface Tension.
The show, said Pather, uses large scale projections and dance to explore how surfaces attempt to hide but barely cover the underlying tensions of living in South Africa.
“The intention is to bear witness to how little of what is actually being experienced by people comes to the surface and how ‘going on as normal’ starts to set up a toxic, complicated environment. The body’s strategy for survival in this complex toxicity is to never be still, constantly trembling and moving, as if stillness will make the body feel the true impact of reality, and that is too much to bear.
“The production explores these ideas through dance, object and projections as well as comedy; finding intermittent relief from the sense of claustrophobia and hopelessness. The work, though, is cool as working with surface, outer layers, topography, or the epidermis of the skin imply with, of course, the occasional violent outburst or breakthrough when the outer layers can hold the boiling underneath. It is a quiet testament to the extraordinary resilience of ordinary people to keep going on the surface. How long though will the surface be stretched and how long will it last, is what the work asks,” he said.
Drawing his inspiration from his interest in dance and architecture, Pather said he was interested in how people, as South Africans, “just carry on, no matter what is flung at us”.
Pather reiterated the value and importance of the arts in society through his own experience.
“I was studying to be a lawyer in the ‘80s, and I followed instead my instinct for performance. Theatre and the arts was a means for me to understand and give expression to how I felt about the horrors of apartheid at the time.
“Before I knew it, I had a full Fulbright scholarship to go to New York University. Forty years later, theatre has continued to help express my innermost thoughts, anxieties and dreams. I have travelled the world and am now a professor at a university nurturing young artists because I listened to my heart and trusted my passion.”
Mr Pather, now based in Cape Town, is an associate professor and directs the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town. He is the curator of the Infecting the City Public Art Festival and the ICA Live Art Festival.
He also curates for Afrovibes in the Netherlands and for the Bienalle of Body, Image Movement in Madrid, as well as is a curatorial adviser for Live Art for Season Africa in various cities in France.
In addition to various other accolades, Mr Pather has chaired the jury for the recent International Award for Public Art; was appointed Fellow at the University of London and was recently made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of Arts and Letters) by the French Government.
