Dada Masilo
(1985-2024)
Born in 1985 in Soweto, a township in Johannesburg, Dada Masilo trained mainly at the Dance Factory in Newton, Johannesburg’s cultural quarter, as well as at the National School of Art (Johannesburg) and the Jazzart Dance Theater in Cape Town. In 2005, she spent two years at Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s PARTS (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels, where she discovered the world of Trisha Brown and Pina Bausch, among others, and created ‘The World, My Butt and other big round things’.
On her return to South Africa, she created ‘Love and other four letter words’ in 2008, an evocation of the AIDS pandemic, and turned her work towards a rereading of classical ballets (‘Romeo and Juliet’ in 2008, ‘Carmen’ in 2009), appropriating their codes and transforming them, mixing them with humour and other choreographic aesthetics. In 2011, she received the Standard Bank Young Dance Award, one of South Africa’s most prestigious prizes, while the South African daily The Star singled out her work ‘The Bitter end of Rosemary’ for inclusion in its list of the year’s one hundred greatest successes: in it she examines the character of Ophelia from ‘Hamlet’, giving the character’s madness a highly vulnerable quality. This solo will be D. Masilo’s first piece to be performed in France, at the Anticodes festival in Brest in March and at the Fragile Danse festival at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in November 2011. She was invited to perform at the Lyon Dance Biennial in 2012, where she gave Swan Lake, which was widely performed in France in 2013 and 2014.
Dada Masilo’s shows have toured Tanzania, Mali, Mexico, Israel and Europe (Belgium, Holland, Italy, France, etc.), and have met with both critical and public acclaim.
She has collaborated with many leading figures on the South African artistic scene. In 2013, for example, she co-wrote ‘Refuse the hour’ with visual artist and director William Kentridge, commissioned and danced ‘In creation’ by choreographer Gregory Maqoma as part of the Sujet à vif festival in Avignon, and ‘Deep night’ with P. J. Sabaggha and his collective The Forgotten Angle. She also trains young dancers and regularly runs workshops in the United States.
