Digital programme: HATCHED ENSEMBLE

My name is Mamela Nyamza from South Africa. I was born in Cape Town in a community called Gugulethu. I’m a dancer, choreographer, and director, and I conceptualised, created and choreographed HATCHED ENSEMBLE.

The idea of HATCHED ENSEMBLE came without me consciously realizing it. It all began when I first stepped into the Western art world of ballet. In New York, my ballet teacher saw me as a swan and created a solo with me, The Dying Swan, which I performed in 1998. When I returned to South Africa the next year, I performed it again. It became a piece that resonated with many and inspired those who saw it. At the time, I was pregnant with my son and had just lost my mum. I performed The Dying Swan at a school I had attended. The music of The Dying Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns became very personal to me and that was the beginning of creating Hatch. 

Between 2003 and 2007, I changed it and gave it a new name – Hatched. I invited my son to be part of this creation. It became a connection between the generations—my mother, my grandmother, and me as a mother. My grandmother was the one who took me to ballet class, not knowing anything about dance, not knowing anything about classics. Ballet was something foreign to me, growing up in Gugulethu in the mid 80s, where I listened to pop music like Brenda Fassie. When I was introduced to classical music was something different. It made me able to “hear” the loss of losing my mum. You know, the pain of losing my mum. It allowed me to heal.

I fell in love with ballet, but dancing ballet in Gugulethu was different than going to an institution. When I was introduced to an institution, I realized that ballet did not accept my black body, and that's when I realized that I need to do something about this art form, so that one day, African dancers, African women, whoever studied ballet from Africa could actually claim it as their own. And that's when this creation started. Having my ballet teachers telling me that I will never make it as a dancer made me angry. 

So you see the anger of this young girl, kind of reflected on stage by the dancers and by myself. Also when I would dance the solo Hatched, you would see the frustration because I didn't have hair. I had shaven hair back then. I didn't have the perfect body. I had a typical black woman's body. I didn't have the best feet. But I did ballet, even though I was told that I would never make it. 

Having being ridiculed all my life, I decided to create something that would free myself and also free these young dancers that you will see on stage performing. So this work has been developed for many years. Even when I was at the Technicon University where I was studying Ballet, I just an understudy changing lights, I’d be studying ballet performance. So all those things made me angry as a black woman and that anger is now told on stage. I feel like sometimes as a dancer, I'm not using a pen to write my thesis. My thesis is written by my body, which I use it as a weapon, as my instrument, to talk about our issues on stage. 

So this work has been decades in the making from The Dying Swan in 1998. It being like a modern day woman, which was called “umakoti welixesha” – is a modern day married woman. And actually coming out as a queer woman. And now the dancers who are actually dancing in HATCHED ENSEMBLE are coming out as artists. So there's so many layers in this work where it's like you're peeling an onion. We are peeling all our tears, because so many tears were shed in those ballet classes and ballet institutions. They were so militant. But now creating this work, I'm liberating all of them. I'm also healing us. We're not mocking it. We're just making a statement of what we've been through as black women in the ballet. We’re talking body politics from head to toe.

I feel like the audience, too, who have been through this ballet world can also be liberated, because this work heals in a very spiritual way. So it's a continuation, and I feel like I'm still kind of creating it. I haven't stopped. Right now, I'm still tweaking it. I'm still creating it. I'm still looking at things that need to be highlighted in the work. It's a never-ending journey for me. 

This work was like a dream. You know, when I imagined it, I feel like I've seen it in my dreams, and I have visualized it. And the difference between ballet and African dance is that in ballet, we are so elegant. But then in my Xhosa culture, we are so grounded. We dance with our feet. We are stamping and stomping on the ground. We're using our feet and are actually “waking” our ancestors. 

Ballet has its elegancy but Xhosa dance also has its own elegance. So using the two – being “en pointe” on your toes, and using our feet flat footed on the floor. It’s a strong combination using these two techniques together.

Having performed the work for many years as a solo which was called Hatched, I realised that there was still something that needed to be told. I haven't said it enough as a solo artist, I feel like sometimes when we multiply ourselves, we tell the story better. People were asking for it, and I thought now is the time to actually recreate it for an ensemble of black ballet dancers from South Africa, to actually say something about ballet from Africa. 

Creating Hatched Ensemble hasn’t been easy. When it was a solo performance, things were a bit simpler. For instance, ballet shoes for the dancers were one of the biggest expenses. I’ve always had my own ballet shoes, so it was easy when it was just for me. But for an ensemble, it’s a different story. The same goes for costumes. In the original Hatched solo, I wore a red jacket that was made of cotton. But for this version, with the limited resources we have and needing costumes for 10 dancers, I decided to use recycled plastic. We also used clothes pegs, inspired by watching my grandmother hang laundry. She always had pegs with her, and I decided to exaggerate this idea in the skirts for this performance. It added a beautiful aesthetic, just like in the original Hatched.

In ballet, you often see large props, but I chose smaller ones deliberately. We wanted to tell our story through these props, reflecting where we come from and how we’re claiming space within the ballet world. The props represent the baggage we all carry—not just ours, but our mothers’ and grandmothers’ as well. It made me realize how intertwined our stories are, from my generation in the 70s, to theirs in the 80s and 90s, and even the 2000s. 

For the original Hatched solo, I used songs from CDs and tapes but we now perform and sing them live for HATCHED ENSEMBLE. The way I’m telling the story has changed because it’s no longer just my story—it’s other’s stories mixed with mine.

I’m excited to bring this work to the Barbican. It’s been a long journey, from my early days to this moment. I performed the solo version of Hatched at Dance Umbrella in 2011 with my son, but this new version is a fully-grown, fleshed-out work of an artist. The audience will see the complete picture of my artistic journey, from 1998 with The Dying Swan solo to a fully-fledged HATCHED ENSEMBLE empowering the next generation.

I hope that the Dance Umbrella audience and the UK's audience will experience the whole for me in my artistic work, in one work, that is my thesis, written by my body it's body politics at its best.

South African choreographer Mamela Nyamza, trained in ballet at Zama Dance School in Gugulethu, went on to attain a formal National Diploma in Ballet at the Tshwane University of Technology, and continued at The Ailey School in New York, deconstructs classical dance in groundbreaking works like The Dying Swan (1998) and Hatched (2007). Her pieces challenge norms with autobiographical themes and address social injustices in works like Black Privilege. Nyamza’s accolades include recognition at the Makhanda Standard Bank National Arts Festival as a Featured Artist in the Dance, and JOMBA! Dance Festival as Legacy Artist for the Year 2023. She was named the Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance in 2011 and received the Imbokodo Award for Dance in 2016. Invited to participate in events around the world, she aims to use dance for social commentary through her non-profit company, Mamela’s Artistic Movement.

For the 2024 Festival, Dance Umbrella has produced and curated a selection of innovative dance films, unique encounters with this year’s festival artists and a panel discussion. If you can’t be there in person, this is a great way to experience the festival from wherever you are in the world.

Featured artists include: Ioanna Paraskevopoulou, Hetain Patel, Lea Anderson, POCKETART, Abby Z & the New Utility, Rosemary Lee & Hugo Glendinning. You can also access live and recorded panel discussions.

The Digital Pass is Pay What You Can and will give you access to the entire digital programme, available online 9-31 October.

Find out more: https://danceumbrella.co.uk/digital-pass/