Art inspired by life
A conversation with Taselo Mbhele, Aphelele Nyawose and Cameron S. Govender
Taselo Mbhele sat down to chat with JOMBA! DURBAN DIGITAL EDGE grant recipients Aphelele Nyawose and Cameron S. Govender
Taselo Mbhele: Post the JOMBA! Digital Edge premiere, I had the pleasure of being able to ask a few questions to two of the artists that had shared their works with us on the platform.
Aphelele Nyawose and Cameron S. Govendor, the creators of imThwalo and Aikyam… reincarnating identityopened up their digital spaces to allow me a few questions about their creative processes…
I see performance and creativity as being a part of life and being timeless, given that our journey in life is unending, each step one takes is a part of their journey, part of becoming and even when we see ourselves as being done with a creative process, one can always see something else they could change and add onto, I thought I would ask the artists a few questions — this is how it went…
Taselo Mbhele: How long did the whole process in creating the piece take you and at which point did you feel like you were finally done?
Aphelele Nyawose: I created my piece within 3-days because my piece is based more on what I learn and what I see every single day. It is important as an artist to observe and learn new things every single day because what we observe is what we create and perform, what we learn is what we create and perform.
Cameron S. Govender: In all honesty is one ever really done?
I think as artists we are constantly working reworking critiquing editing… the initial process took about a month of introspection on feelings and self-observations. My feelings were then penned to paper, and I had shared it with those involved… We engaged in conversation around their feelings and how our feelings are either the same or different and if different why.
How does our intersectionality contribute to our individual experiences?
Once we assembled our skeleton, we started packing on the meat with improv and nuance-based movement influenced by Indian classical dance, ballet, and flamenco.
Sadly, all the months of planning and prep did not actually make the final cut.
Again, as an artist… we are constantly working, reworking, critiquing, editing… and in our case given our experiences the last 2–3 months, life happened, and the work recreated itself.
Taselo Mbhele: Fearing not establishing a background of the artists that I am engaging with I thought I would ask the obvious question of, “how long have you been a performer and how do you feel as a performer and creator in this new digital era?”
Aphelele Nyawose: I have been performing for 4 years as a performer and a creator in this digital era. I feel like visuals have an advantage and disadvantage which can lead to someone being lazy to research and put in more creativity and put all the trust in the magic of software to do the thing, the advantage is that I get a chance and experience to also be behind the scenes on the editing process since I already have what I want on my mind.
Cameron S. Govender: Ever since I could remember… I remember being two- to two-and-a-half- years old and constantly dancing or well, doing what I thought dance was at the time. I remember a few years later, when speech and mobility became something that I could understand and control more, I used to throw on anything I could find and entertain whomever came home…
Creating in this era is great. It allows us to share bits of ourselves on a bigger and larger platform… but … there’s always a but with me … There is nothing that can beat live performances! The rasa or overall experience and conversation had between performance and spectator is immeasurable.
Taselo Mbhele: Creating in the digital space is a really interesting concept as when you used to create for live performance, your thoughts and manners of structuring are still centred around live performance and adjusting your view to digital does get tricky. Their experience and love for creativity has guided them to creating their work and sharings.
Being someone that has been centred in live performance and had never thought about creating for the digital space, I thought I would ask the artists, “Did you ever think you would be creating work such as this for the digital space?”
Aphelele Nyawose: Yes, since I realised that many people don’t understand that you can tell a story without using any word but dancing or do a movement and the other thing is that some of us don’t even know that there is contemporary dance, that is why I thought of creating a piece that I can showcase online.
Cameron S. Govender: Truthfully — had Covid not happened I would have still created digital work… but creating digital work because it’s an option is different to creating digital work because it’s the only way to engage and interact.
Taselo Mbhele: Finally, I thought I would ask of the young performers, “Which part of creating your piece was your personal most challenging?”
Aphelele Nyawose: The challenging part was to create and choreograph since I had to understand that, not only artists or contemporary dancers will watch my peace but the are those people who don’t know that you can tell a story by using movements or dancing, so it was important to create something that they will understand or something that they can learn something out of it.
I also had a challenge on getting quality equipment on time, the editing process and putting together a team that will understand what I am looking for
Cameron S. Govender: I’d say when life happened
So back story — one of the dancers was involved in a Covid regulated show and came into contact with someone that tested positive, because of that they had to go into isolation which hindered our final rehearsal and filming stages… When we attempted to get back on track, we had regulations that forbade us from being out with the stricter lockdown… Once that eased up, we jumped straight into the most emotionally traumatizing period for all of us — the unrest/protest/looting/violence.
I was literally left with a day to film, edit and submit — with both dancers working full time but at different times, trying to sync schedules in the first moment anyone got the chance to breathe was a nightmare! So, in a day, the work changed.
We engaged body vocabulary, based on feelings and/or the lack thereof…
There was a moment in the car with Primeshni, the most ironic part about that was we actually sat in the car with each other and spoke and spoke for hours when we were supposed to be filming because it was the night before the work needed to be submitted.
I met with Pavishen in the day, we spoke about his feelings and danced and filmed based on what his body felt during it’s crazy journey the weeks or I’d say month or two leading to that recording…
I met with Primeshni that afternoon who rushed home from work showered got dressed and got to me just so we had daylight to shoot in but we couldn’t help ourselves- I couldn’t help having a 10 minute catch up which turned into a few hours of DMCing (deep, meaningful conversation), as I was saying earlier, we were meant to be filming but we couldn’t help but talk and talk and talk and we ended up balling our eyes out with each other.
For me in that moment of having been so bombarded by emotion — from having experienced the most traumatic time in my life, (and that says a lot given my history [a story for another day]) — trying to maintain the positive attitude and energy needed to keep my community United and acting appropriately — having meetings with necessary stakeholders — to have the world as you know it — the ground you walk on shatter and crumble into nothing and feel as if you’re just floating like an empty vessel — feeling everything whilst feeling nothing…
That was the most challenging part for me.
How do I dance when I needed to meet Bheki Cele to discuss a way forward?
How do I film when I was getting calls about people in the community losing their jobs due to the small/medium businesses they worked for being looted and/or burnt down?
I think I can’t even say which part of the piece was the most challenging because everything about the piece and our lives now as we engage in this interview is a challenge…
I guess that’s what inspired the crazy provocative story to be wrapped neatly with a pretty, pink bow — because despite the boxes we are each forced into, daily, for a brief moment, we all got the chance to come out and just breathe amongst friends whilst engaging our mutual suffocation.
The politics of cinema influences how we view everything, right?
So visually, I chose to use the idea of what we assume a film to look like visually with the political and conscious use of the cinematic style of videography to further the narrative of media’s control on how things are viewed i.e. Fe/Male Gaze.
I guess what I’m saying is, whilst we all felt that sinking feeling at the beginning of the film with the sounds of bombs and a sense of entrapment from the call to Allah. It slowly staggered and conflicted what we thought and opposed what we expected.
To spoken-word guiding our opinions, enforcing us to believe the narrative presented…
How does one understand what their challenge was or is if they are unable to even understand who or what they are beyond who society or media expects them to be?
Like for instance … I’m Indian, queer, Non-Binary, struggling to cope with the insanity of striving to seem sane in a world governed by the binary of just Black or White… to now have the association of being an Indian from Phoenix thrown into the mix which therefore labels me as a murderer.
How do I recreate the image created for me on my behalf by people who don’t know me?
Do I pray, dance, create, debate/ quit, walk away, give up?
I’ll answer it with a question — what would you do?
Taselo Mbhele: And I ask of you now the question presented by our performers, What can you do when you are challenged by life when you create from life?
