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In the Studio: Dada Masilo: From Soweto street dancer to ballet star

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Dada Masilo: From Soweto street dancer to ballet star

24/03/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - In the Studio, Dada Masilo: From Soweto street dancer to ballet star

The choreographer and performer re-imagines Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring

The choreographer and performer re-imagines Stravinksy’s The Rite of Spring.

Growing up in the township of Soweto, Dada Masilo never thought to dream of ballet training or world tours. She liked street dancing to Michael Jackson and was only introduced to ballet two years after the end of Apartheid, at the age of 10. It was a strange world, she says, of pink shoes and tights. But she loved the discipline and went on to train internationally as a classical ballerina. Still only 34, she now tours the world with her very contemporary takes on traditional ballet. Her Swan Lake tackled Africa’s AIDs epidemic with male dancers playing the love triangle. Her Giselle is a feminist revenge story conceived long before #MeToo. She’s celebrated at Arts festivals from Perth to California, but the themes of her work make it less welcome in parts of Africa.
Now for In The Studio on the BBC World Service, we accompany her on a very personal journey that takes in the struggles of contemporary South Africa and asks what sacrifice means today. She begins with the complicated music of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, but she and her dancers take a route that goes far beyond that. There is laughter as they imitate meerkats in traditional tswana rituals that celebrate life, the land and tradition; there is anger as they consider their own stories of homophobia, abandonment and fear. Masilo herself comes to terms with the father she never knew. They emerge from it all with an exhilarating new work - The Sacrifice.

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