The Duality of Man: All for One, One for All
By Ash R. Davis
Dancing, laughing and drinking, an ensemble of party goers teeters into believable belligerence. One performer, a man, Ijodee Dance Company’s Frank Konwea, in a blue polo and blue jeans, tip toes into a violent, drunken aggression as he sets his sights on a woman dressed in red, Flatfoot Dance Company’s Jabu Siphika. He attacks her. It is somehow free-form, visceral and deliberate all at once. In the crowd, no one seems to notice — or at least no one gets involved. Rather, everyone lingers. When he finishes, he leaves; so does everyone else. The woman, sobbing, is left alone, soon joined by a man, Flatfoot’s Sifiso Khumalo, dressed in all black. Her cries soon become the accompaniment to his dancing.
Adedayo Liadi and Ijodee Dance Company/Flatfoot Dance Company’s collaborative performance of Aye Asan (VANITY) turns duality on its head: the duality of man, the duality of mankind, the duality of shared experiences, the duality of Blackness and the dualities of dance itself pulsate through every moment of the piece, presented as part of the two-week Digital JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience. Fluctuating between mirror-like uniformity and a calculated disconnection of movements, moments of the performance repeat themselves in different utterances. What was once young bodies crowded beside one another, reconfigured into one moving unit. They become older, more adult-like bodies doing the similar motion. Consistent throughout Aye Asan (VANITY) is a protection and covering of one another that is markedly intentional as choreographer Adedayo Liadi offers an opportunity “for all human beings to show the kind of person they are,” as the program notes state. Moments of both distress and ease weave through the performance, in-protection becomes a necessary and driving force. Whether that be of oneself or of another is, I believe, a question in constant oscillation here.
Entitled “Vanity”, and defined as being about “the good, the bad, and the ugly in all of us — and the choices we make along the way”, what then, is Adedayo Liadi asking us as viewers to take away from this performance? The choices we make and the steps we take become a dance in and of themselves. Fluctuating in time and space, we become dancers; the world around us becomes a stage. A stage to, for, and of what, I believe Adedayo Liadi would say, is the choice we must make for ourselves.
