SIYABA – Found Among Translations
Intercontinental – interdisciplinary
South Africa - Switzerland 2012-2015
Intercontinental transdisciplinary collaboration 2012-2015
SIYABA: Found Among Translations’ is a collaboration between the Swiss composer, performer and visual artist Charlotte Hug and the South African Contemporary Dance Company, Forgotten Angle Theater Collaborative (FATC), choreographed by PJ Sabbagha.
‘Siyaba’ is a word with a dazzling array of possible translations. It can mean to inherit, to steal, to move, or to share. This transdisciplinary piece focuses on natural springs or sources, also in the metaphorical sense. It delves into the question of fragility and change as seen through rituals and living traditions on both continents and the immediacy of the universal power of these encounters and connections.
Unlike the classical staging of music transposed into dance, Hug's composition consists of Son-Icons - visual music. The dancers develop their language of movement using the structures of the Son-Icons. The music, conversely, is inspired by the individual interpretation of each dancer. Hug docks onto it and meets it with the vocal and string cascades of her own sound world - a heterophony emerges.
In this way, through her encounter with the dancers, she creates an energised interaction, which is continually reconfigured for each choreographic constellation. Sound, movement, and image open up a multidimensional performative translation into the ‘choreophonic’. Waters, rituals, sources, origins, and an engagement with the ancestral, which each participant brings to the project, are echoed here.
Choreography: PJ Sabbagha
Son-Icons Visual composition & music performance: Charlotte Hug
Dance: Fana Tshabalala, Thulani Chauke, Thabo Kobeli, Nicho Aphane
Lighting: Thabo Pule https://forgottenangle.co.za/
Background:
Initial investigations began in 2012 in Nairs in the Engadine high mountain valley in Switzerland. Hug followed the ‘Quellmeister’ of Tarasp for over two months. (Quellmeister: both hydrogeologist and water diviner, literally translated ‘Master of the Springs’) She saw how he tested the mineral quality of the water and was also introduced to the tradition of finding new springs with a divining rod. The very diverse, highly mineralised springs only exist thanks to the forces of continental drift, the interlocking of the African and Eurasian plates. While listening to the different sounds and rhythms of the springs, she translated them into drawings. Hug brought the rhythms of the springs back to Africa as visual sound.
Thanks to a Pro Helvetia artist residency of several months in South Africa, Hug was able to carry out site-specific research and works in South Africa with PJ Sabbagha and the dancers of the Dance Company FATC, such as the Sterkfontein Caves (Caves of the Strong Springs) and the Sudwala Caves. The following year SIYABA was performed at festivals during a tour in South Africa & Mozambique.
Siyaba VIDEO
