Critical Stages (Jun 2021)

Black Privilege in the Black Box: Mamela Nyamza’s Choreographic Resistance

  • Rainy Demerson

Journal volume & issue
no. 23

Abstract

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This essay examines Mamela Nyamza’s choreography and performance of Black Privilege at the South African National Arts Festival of 2018 in the wake of the #RhodesMustFall decolonial movement. Nyamza is an award-winning independent choreographer, performing and teaching internationally as well as at home. When she uses her own body to enact images and gestures of her own making, she crafts a counter-narrative to the exploited exhibited South African female body theorized by scholars such as Saidiya Hartman. Rather than try to perform a world without Black women’s objectification, Black Privilege makes it hyper-visible. I use Mishuauna Goeman’s theory of (re)mapping to explain how Nyamza carves a space for the recognition of both opulence and objectification simultaneously. Black Privilege exudes power through subtle yet potent poses and movements, re-membering the privilege and burden of Black womanhood as a spectacular non-spectacle. Nyamza’s choreographic and performative strategies induce an active form of witnessing that contributes to her ongoing process of becoming in the witness of others. Undermining tropes around the spectacle of Black flesh through re-membering and (re)mapping, Black Privilege contributes to the decolonization of performance in South Africa and worldwide.

Keywords