1. Do your homework. My first visit to teach in South Africa came just a few years after the fall of apartheid. Many of the people I met had voted for the first time in the post-apartheid 1994 democratic elec- tions. There was palpable optimism now that Nelson Mandela was lead- ing the country. To better understand the political, cultural, and socioeconomic con- texts I would be teaching in, Stanford Dean Arnold Rampersad advised me on which books to read about the history of South Africa. A South African Stanford professor, Grant Parker, taught me a course about the country’s culture. My advisor, Claire Sheridan, the founder of the Lib- eral Education for Arts Profession- als (LEAP) Program at St. Mary’s College, where I was completing my bachelor’s degree, worked closely
elegant begging (fundraising) which continues to this day. My former teacher Richard Gibson offered them a place in his summer course at San Francisco Academy of Ballet, and they lived at my home with my husband and my two teenage sons. [Read an interview with Mbulelo Ndabeni here.] Since then, in 2006, we’ve brought dozens, from two to five at a time, of students over to study, always with a dance academy offering scholarships. Students have studied in training programs associated with American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey, San Francisco Ballet, ODC Dance Commons, Kaatsbaan Academy, New Ballet in San Jose, Peridance, Manhattan Youth Ballet, Zohar School of Dance, Menlo Park Academy of Dance, and most recently Houston Ballet and Alonzo King LINES Ballet. The sup- port and guidance offered by these programs and the indi- vidual teachers and admin- istrators within them always result in a burst in growth in the young artists. At the same time, former students became colleagues
with me to articulate and define goals and desired learning outcomes. Preparing this way—seeking to understand the history and politics of the environment in which I would be teaching ballet and defining what I hoped to accomplish—was critical for my journey. 2. Build your team, and keep building it. Gugulethu Ballet Project has had many different iterations, each shaped by the members of my community, dance or otherwise, who stepped up to make the work possible. The edu- cational institutions I was involved in were crucial to the early years. My first trip to South Africa, I trav- eled alone, financed by a grant from Stanford University. Shortly after my first trip, I worked with Claire to develop a course on
Under the racial segregation of apartheid, Black people were forcibly relocated from their homes to undeveloped land. Gugulethu, established in 1962, means “Our Pride” in Xhosa.
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Headshot of Lwando Dutyulwa for Lion King (London)
teaching dance in another culture. This enabled me to bring fellow LEAP students who were profes- sional dancers with me on my next trip, some who brought choreogra- phy from world-famous choreog- raphers like Jir Kylián and Mark Morris, as well as classical variations and original choreography. What an experience for these young peo- ple who had never been exposed to such work, let alone the chance to embody it! For the next five years, the LEAP students who accom- panied me to South Africa gifted the students with many different
perspectives and expertise. They were in turn gifted by the kids with their culture and open minds. In tandem, I identified many prom- ising young dancers and believed the next step was to reveal the possibilities that their talent would provide them if only given the chance. I began working to organize oppor- tunities to study dance in America. From my first trip, two students in particular, Mbulelo Ndabeni and Bathembu Myira, stood out as being ready for an overseas experience— personally mature and artistically strong. In short order, I began my
in the work, connecting me to new communities and expanding our partners in South Africa. As my col- laboration with the LEAP program ended, Nathan Bartman, a multi-fac- eted dancer and musician who I first met as a teen dancer at Dance for All, became my partner for each trip, traveling with me to different town- ships to teach contemporary dance while I taught ballet. While Dance for All was in a primarily Black town- ship, Nathan is from what is con- sidered a ‘coloured background’—a multiracial ethnicity in South Africa whose members may have ancestry
Young student of Mbulelo Ndabeni in Ugie, South Africa
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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