Ja,nee

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“Ja, nee” – literally “yes, no” in Afrikaans –is a piece for eight dancers presented for the first time in France in an intermediate version at the studio of the Centre national de la danse in February 2003. The final version of the piece was performed at the Africalia festival in Brussels before going on a European tour [1].

A hybrid of dance, theatre and installation, “Ja, nee” is a piece spoken and sung in a mixture of Zulu and Xhosa, which resists an easy interpretation on initial viewing. Confronting “subjects as significant as child abuse, rape or AIDS, while seeking to explore the social fabric which connects all these situations” [2], it is described as follows by the choreographer: “In my collaboration with the actors, I tried to put forward and to unearth the dichotomy of an ancient culture which is colliding with another, with heavy Western, modern and urban influences. Through prayers (an ancient art), we go back to the origin of male domination in our cultures. Such domination is intrinsic to development and produces a pandemic threat which threatens to decimate generations of Africans. Young people in particular. I also chose the symbolic use of the gumboots, which are a strong symbol of exploited and cheap mass labour. I wanted to illustrate a powerful source of depravity, of ill-treatment in urban South Africa. The diamond, coal and gold mines where the men are exploited are also a prevalent source of the HIV virus. […] I also had to make a choice in the use of language. It was either get the message across to a non-African language audience and risk losing the strength and power of the language of my country, or capture the contribution and dynamics of the indigenous language and risk losing the audience. I chose the latter solution.” [3]

On the stage, a white cloth is spread out on the garden ground, along with a pair of the famous gumboots – symbol “of a male world, hard and hard-working, the antithesis of today’s society, where the men are experiencing a loss of identity” [4]according to the choreographer. In the courtyard, two performers hang black and white photographs by the photographer Val Adamson [5] on a clothes line, in which we can see some of the actors now on stage, stripped, wearing only weapons on their belt (AK47, axes and machetes) and carrying babies in their arms. Placed beside this installation, which the spectators are invited to come to look at the end of the show, a television set emits a bluish halo and plays a video about AIDS which seems to leave its single viewer in a state of shock. 

The seven male performers appear gradually when the darkness which accompanies the spotlight focused on a dancer is dispelled and replaced by a more diffuse light. Armed with clubs and sticks, they gesticulate and launch, in Zulu, into the songs of ceremonial prayers praising the prowess of the males and the virtues of their ancestors, a ritual also called Izibongo, an exclusively male privilege. The only female performer – Desiré Davids – moves among these dances (stick fighting and umzansi dance), in a kind of parallel dimension, sometimes like a tightrope walker, sometimes performing energetic solos, rejected by a ritual from which she is excluded: “No woman has ever been allowed to sing ancestral prayers, their status in society always being subordinate to that of men. Moreover, they never have access to prayers because once they are married; they lose their names to take that of their husband. Male dominance in African society has established itself successfully in this way; these prayers are part of this context.” [6]

Tackling AIDS, violence and male dominance in South African society head on, in this piece B. Cekwana is trying to bear witness to a feeling rather than to stigmatise it. Particularly praised by the critics after its performance in France in 2003, interest in “Ja, nee” was established and the piece would be performed again in 2004, at the Antipodes Festival in Brest and in 2005 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris along with “Rona”, another piece by Boyzie Ntsikelelo Cekwana.

[1] Utrecht, Ljubljana, Limoges, Geneva, Brest, Weimar, Berlin.
[2] Performance notes, Thérèse Barbanel – Les Artscéniques, 2003.
[3] B. Cekwana, Centre national de la danse programme for “Ja, nee”, January 2003.
[4] R. Boisseau, “Boyzie, Cekwana, les pas du passé sud-africain”, Le Monde, January 2004.
[5] Val Adamson is a photographer of Kenyan origin who moved to South Africa in 1984. She notably completed a commission for the Playhouse Dance Company in 2001, for the South African Women Arts Festival, entitled “Curve”, in which she celebrates the subject of women of all ages, in all their diversity.
[6] Centre culturel Jean Moulin programme for “Ja, nee”, Limoges, 23 September – 5 October 2003.

Updating: November 2013