Dada Masilo The Sacrifice Festival Theatre Edinburgh 10th March 2023 Review
Dada Masilo’s “The Sacrifice” presented by Dance Consortium is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh for two nights only (Fri 10th and Sat 11th March), and if you like the idea of the story behind Igor Stravinksy’s “The Rite of Spring” being re-interpreted in music and dance by Dada Masilo and her company of all South African dancers and musicians, then this could be a show not to miss for you.
If anyone reading this review is not familiar with composer Igor Stravinsky and his “The Rite of Spring”, it was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company and is also widely performed as an orchestral work. The story behind this work is at its heart a celebration of the coming of spring and the renewal of the earth and life, but there is a dark twist to this wonderful story and equally wonderful music. For this story, Stravinsky has imagined all of this happening in a pagan society where this renewal of the earth is only possibly by the sacrifice of a young virgin who has been specially chosen by the elders to dance herself to death.
To re-imagine this story, award-winning Dada Masilo is both as a choreographer and a dancer fusing her South African heritage with her training as a western classical dancer and here, in The Sacrifice, she has taken many of the rhythms and themes in Stravinsky’s original music and developed and expanded them into a blend of new music and dance. For Dada Masilo, “The Sacrifice” takes her on a personal exploration of South African rhythm and dance. To accomplish this, Dada and her company of dancers have had to learn Tswana, the traditional dance of Botswana, from the very beginning. To re-imagine the music to be performed live on stage with this dance, composers Leroy Mapholo, Tlale Makhene, Nathi Shongwe and Ann Masina have, along with Dada, created a new and very South African traditional soundscape, but it is still a fusion of many styles of music and if you listen closely you can hear many forms of music in here including Celtic, Latin and of course thematic elements of Stravinsky.
To bring this new vision of “The Rite of Spring” to the stage, Dada Masilo has chosen to do a few major things differently. The first is not to do a simple re-telling of the original ballet as that has been done so many times before. The second is to stay true to the spirit of the original story but to change the sacrifice from one of a violent death to one of a more serene passing, and this is accomplished both in dance and by the wonderful vocals of Ann Masina who really opens and closes this new story. For myself, I still find the ending (as I do in Stravinsky’s original) to be something of great sadness as a young woman loses her life to sacrifice and by default all the days and experiences of that life that should have been hers by right of birth.
For many dancers, their performance is often to the sounds of an unseen orchestra or pre-recorded music, but here, “The Sacrifice” changes all of this and the four musicians on stage - Mpho Mothiba (percussion), Leroy Mapholo (violin), Nathi Shongwe (keyboards & vocals) and Ann Masina (vocals) are part of the on stage performance (as musicians would be in traditional music), and this leads at times to a far more connected and at times improvised performance between dancers and musicians.
With the Rite of Spring and The Sacrifice, both Igor Stravinsky and Dada Masilo have touched upon something that is very old and almost instinctive within us, that celebration of renewed life coming to the Earth once more after so much has gone from it in the winter. Although many in our society still have that connectivity to a regenerative and living landscape, our modern life has dislocated all too many of us from this never ending wonder. With The Sacrifice, Dada Masilo reminds us all that if we stop to look at everything that is around us that magic really does happen.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
If anyone reading this review is not familiar with composer Igor Stravinsky and his “The Rite of Spring”, it was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company and is also widely performed as an orchestral work. The story behind this work is at its heart a celebration of the coming of spring and the renewal of the earth and life, but there is a dark twist to this wonderful story and equally wonderful music. For this story, Stravinsky has imagined all of this happening in a pagan society where this renewal of the earth is only possibly by the sacrifice of a young virgin who has been specially chosen by the elders to dance herself to death.
To re-imagine this story, award-winning Dada Masilo is both as a choreographer and a dancer fusing her South African heritage with her training as a western classical dancer and here, in The Sacrifice, she has taken many of the rhythms and themes in Stravinsky’s original music and developed and expanded them into a blend of new music and dance. For Dada Masilo, “The Sacrifice” takes her on a personal exploration of South African rhythm and dance. To accomplish this, Dada and her company of dancers have had to learn Tswana, the traditional dance of Botswana, from the very beginning. To re-imagine the music to be performed live on stage with this dance, composers Leroy Mapholo, Tlale Makhene, Nathi Shongwe and Ann Masina have, along with Dada, created a new and very South African traditional soundscape, but it is still a fusion of many styles of music and if you listen closely you can hear many forms of music in here including Celtic, Latin and of course thematic elements of Stravinsky.
To bring this new vision of “The Rite of Spring” to the stage, Dada Masilo has chosen to do a few major things differently. The first is not to do a simple re-telling of the original ballet as that has been done so many times before. The second is to stay true to the spirit of the original story but to change the sacrifice from one of a violent death to one of a more serene passing, and this is accomplished both in dance and by the wonderful vocals of Ann Masina who really opens and closes this new story. For myself, I still find the ending (as I do in Stravinsky’s original) to be something of great sadness as a young woman loses her life to sacrifice and by default all the days and experiences of that life that should have been hers by right of birth.
For many dancers, their performance is often to the sounds of an unseen orchestra or pre-recorded music, but here, “The Sacrifice” changes all of this and the four musicians on stage - Mpho Mothiba (percussion), Leroy Mapholo (violin), Nathi Shongwe (keyboards & vocals) and Ann Masina (vocals) are part of the on stage performance (as musicians would be in traditional music), and this leads at times to a far more connected and at times improvised performance between dancers and musicians.
With the Rite of Spring and The Sacrifice, both Igor Stravinsky and Dada Masilo have touched upon something that is very old and almost instinctive within us, that celebration of renewed life coming to the Earth once more after so much has gone from it in the winter. Although many in our society still have that connectivity to a regenerative and living landscape, our modern life has dislocated all too many of us from this never ending wonder. With The Sacrifice, Dada Masilo reminds us all that if we stop to look at everything that is around us that magic really does happen.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com