The Sunday News
Thobekisiwe Gumede Sunday Leisure Reporter
DANCING in Zimbabwe is an important aspect of the local culture, tradition, spirituality and history. There are many dances that reflect the culture of the people, although the dances may have changed over the years. Dance is a powerful tool that carries on traditions, and chronicles important events of people’s history and culture.
However, many of the local traditional dance groups seem to be failing of late with many if not all having difficulties in creating productions to stage in theatres during the year and only resurfacing when there are festivals or events like the annual Intwasa Festival.
Umkhathi Theatre Works dance troupe remains one of the best theatre organisations in Zimbabwe to have managed to stage productions that people look forward to watching.
Sunday Leisure, however, caught up with Kwabatsha Dance Company director and co-founder, Trust Madolo Gumbo, who said traditional dance groups were going down and noted that the downfall could only be attributed to lack of appreciation for traditional dance by people.
“We are having problems penetrating the showbiz industry but I strongly believe that our downfall should be attributed to lack of support,” he said.
As a result of lack of appreciation, he said, many dance groups had since resorted to choreography whereby they teach school children art.
“It is disappointing that many traditional dance groups have split because they feel like they are not being appreciated at all. Many of the dancers have since started to go around teaching dance at schools to earn a living,” said Gumbo.
“It is not like we do not want to stage our productions in theatres but the challenge which comes with taking our shows to theatre is that we run a loss. It is very painful that after advertising shows and preparing for them people won’t pitch up. I remember last year when we did our production, Usigqokinyawo, people did not pitch up and we ran a loss,” he said.
Kwabatsha Dance Group is based at Mzilikazi Youth Centre. Formed in September 2008, the ensemble is a remnant of Amawumbo Dance Group and was for almost five years involved primarily in traditional dance only to emerge with a musical release of their solo Bhatshi, which was mistaken for a South African song.
Since then the group has taken their new-found talent passionately, featuring in numerous singles which have topped music charts while releasing their own masterpieces.
Award-winning playwright and Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo director, Raisedon Baya, acknowledged that traditional dance groups were lagging behind.
“It is true that the dance groups are failing at some point.The only thing that they do is to wait for competitions and weddings to pitch up. The only group that has been doing something as far as traditional dance is concerned is Umkhathi Theatre Works,” he said.
“Long back people used to go and watch productions in theatres but these have since disappeared, there are no performances in theatres and we all wonder what happened to those captivating performances that were common among traditional dance groups in Bulawayo.”
Baya also noted that dance groups were somehow being affected by lack of knowledge.
“People want to see dance as a production. I think that people are having difficulties in producing such productions because we don’t have proper choreographers. I think we should ask ourselves if there are still good choreographers in the city.
“Dance groups are simply not telling stories but putting pieces of dance together to produce what they call dance. If you look closely at the issue one will find that it is one of the many reasons why we even struggle to select groups for festivals like our own Intwasa Festival,” said Baya.
He, however, said that it was important for these groups to take note of the cultural aspect of the dances as there was a tendency of contemporising them.
“There has been a tendency of contemporising our traditional dances for instance when doing amabhiza there is a specific way that the drum is supposed to be beaten and only a few groups know how to do that,” said Baya.
“So far I think that Umkhathi Theatre Works dance group is doing quite well when it comes to staging dance productions mainly because it’s a well travelled group and it’s now got experience.”
