COCONUT/ the new white aesthetic
kemelo nozipho sehlapelo

This double bill is an examination of and confrontation with the Black diaspora. The performers converse with contemporary notions of blackness, whiteness and the surrealism of being required to fluctuate between the two. The South African dance artist, performer and author kemelo nozipho sehlapelo presents two works created as graduation pieces for her Masters degree in Choreography and Performance at Gießen which combine to form a resonant space.

COCONUT focusses on the experience of diaspora and diasporic dances. Drawing from the performers’ diverse personal bodily archives, varied experiences of Afro-ness collide through dances, texts and songs to create a world of hybridity. In this hybridity, a type of Afro-surrealism emerges and the performance becomes an attempt to reconcile the past with the present.

_the new white aesthetic_ is dance performance that re-enacts imagery of canonical marble statues. Using the movement practice of ballet – understood as an ethnic dance of the Indo-European diaspora – in developing a practice of dilapidation or “butchered ballet”, the bodies traverse the space. Transitioning from image to image, they dance an erased polychromatic history, embodying the crumbling of empire and of the new white aesthetic.