‘The Cleansing’ at Botanic Gardens focuses on Earth issues

Jabu Siphika and Mthoko Mkhwanazi in ‘The Cleansing’. Picture: Val Adamson

Jabu Siphika and Mthoko Mkhwanazi in ‘The Cleansing’. Picture: Val Adamson

Published Mar 30, 2022

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In a new dance production presented by Flatfoot Dance Company, audiences will learn about issues affecting the planet.

“The Cleansing” journeys into the heartland of Earth issues using this performance moment to negotiate the true meaning of ecology – the connectedness of human existence to all existence.

Artistic director Dr Lliane Loots said the play was a ritual for humans and the Earth.

“It’s a cultural enactment of the sacred bond between the dancers and the ground they move on as they ‘cleanse’ themselves ready for a deeper connection to one another and to the Earth,” said Loots.

“The Cleansing” is set to take place at the Durban Botanic Gardens from April 20 to 24 at 6pm.

“What better site than Durban’s Botanic Gardens to open up this exploration of self to our natural world. In this moving dance work, the Botanic Gardens – itself bearing the scars of a colonial heritage – are transformed into a site of continued natural beauty and potential transformations,” Loots said.

Jabu Siphika and Mthoko Mkhwanazi. Picture: Dave Estment

Poet Iain Ewok Robinson lends his words to the play.

“Very loosely based on the impulses of Stravinsky’s 1913 music ‘Rite of Spring’, this site-responsive dance work asks of all of us what we will sacrifice for spring to finally come.

“In this instance, and after a 2-year lockdown, ‘spring’ is (perhaps) an imagined hope for different and intimate relationships with each other and our world around us,“ says Loots.

The work is jointly created by Lliane Loots, Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika, Mthoko Mkhwanazi, Sbonga Ndlovu, Siseko Duba and Ndumiso Dube.

“This is moving and powerful choreo-poetry that aims to subtly carries its audience to places of deep knowing and awareness. Created in the evolving collaborative creative process,” Loots said.

Tickets are R100 each. Audiences should bring their own blankets to sit on. Picnic baskets are allowed. The gates open at 5.30pm and the show starts at 6pm.

To book contact [email protected].

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Theatre