ArtSpoken & Reviews
Time of small berries poses questionsFNB Dance Umbrella 201003/10/2010 10:23:11 
Nondumiso Msimanga: What is the time of small berries? When you see this performance you will probably leave with that very same question. The question is twofold. First you may wonder at the performance itself and ask: what is the time of the small berries? Because even though this work has been commissioned by the FNB Dance Umbrella, does it really qualify as a ‘dance' performance? Secondly, even though we are given a brief explanation that the time of the small berries refers to ‘a time in the African calendar when people get together to celebrate, feast and bury things from the past', the lack of detail in the description leaves gaps. It is a question that the work itself presents as a point of contention in order to spark a debate about our nation's current state of affairs. Andre Laubscher, Peter van Heerden (of erf [81]) and Sello Pesa of Ntsoana Dance Theatre have come together to create a piece of work that poses many more questions than the ones described. The work begins before most of the audience realise it has started. Pesa walks, very nonchalantly, past the audience gathered outside the Dance Factory's side door, waiting to be admitted onto the stage (a hint at the unusual nature of it). He goes to a tap where he proceeds to take off his shirt and begins to scrub his upper body with a cloth and soapy water. He continues to wash himself thoroughly in an enamel basin for a few minutes, leaving the audience befuddled as to where the action is leading. But that is not where the bewilderment ends. Laubscher and van Heerden have staged similar interventions at the Dance Umbrella before. They performed 6 minutes in 2007, which explored the fact that every 6 minutes, a child is abused in South Africa. And, this is a fact that Van Heerden blurts out in this work when the debate about whether, as South Africans, we should be celebrating at all. The time of the small berries does not have the focus that the previous work had. Some of the audience is invited by the host, Laubscher, to be seated at a well-laid dinner table with microphones suspended over them and placed on the table in front of them. Certain ideas are thrown into the conversation such as people who are starving, the notion of culture, murder and rape; to list a few. There is a general critique of the state of affairs of our country, with Van Heerden interjecting at key points. He speaks radical statements to stir the debate, such as ‘Andre says, Mandela did more in his lifetime for the world than Jesus did'. He expresses anger as he grabs piles of ceramic plates and crashes them to the floor and then walks barefoot over them. His anger is at the apathy of our nation and Africans. He also gives some plates to the audience to join him in his anger. This is a performance of multiple events but another notable occurrence is that of Pesa putting on a domestic worker's dress and Voortrekker kappie over the apparel of a South African rugby t-shirt with khaki shorts and socks. He urinates into a metal bucket and then takes the slices of lamb placed there by Laubscher and eats the meat. The recent scandal at the University of the Free State when women workers were made to drink students' urine is clearly referenced. It is Pesa's complicity in the action - by the way Pesa is vegetarian - that is so intriguing. As the work ends as it began, without an occasion to mark that it is over, and the audience is left in a state of wondering. It becomes clearer that it is not about the performers' performance but about the questions that it leaves you to ask. These questions are put to the audience as complicit within the problems that are discussed. So, when as an audience member (you )join in the feast and drink Black Label and eat slices of lamb roasting on the spit at the door, you continue to wonder, what is the time of the small berries... Nondumiso Msimanga FNB Dance Umbrella 2010 nondu87@gmail.com Web site: http://www.artslink.co.za/arts
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