Theatre – This is GISELLE but not as you know it – Soweto-born dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo’s latest production comes to Theatre Royal Nottm 8-9 Oct

The tour is an exciting addition to Dance Consortium’s 2019 performance schedule and continues the organisation’s unparalleled commitment to bringing the best international contemporary dance to audiences across the UK. Dada Masilo’s Giselle is a Sadler’s Wells’ co-production and marks Dance Consortium’s 45^th tour since 2000.

Dancing in the title role, Masilo leads her company of twelve exceptional dancers with theatrical mastery, accompanied by a hauntingly beautiful score from South African composer, Philip Miller, which fuses electronic sampling from the orchestrations by Adolf Adams, layered with African voice and percussion. Masilo was born and raised in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. Trained in classical ballet and contemporary dance she fuses these techniques with African dance steps to create her high-speed style. Giselle marks the fourth classic Masilo has reinterpreted in a decade and cements her growing reputation as a powerful and dynamic choreographic voice on the international stage.

This is Giselle but not as you know it. Opening in a lively South African village, Masilo’s Giselle tells the story of a trusting peasant girl who is thrust into a world of betrayal and shame when her lover rejects her. Spurned by her family and killed by heartbreak, Giselle returns from the grave as a supernatural being bent on revenge.

Mixing contemporary dance, traditional Tswana movement and the vocabulary of classical ballet, Masilo recontextualises the themes of grief and revenge inherent in the original and asserts a timely #metoo twist to the traditional Giselle narrative. Barefoot and grounded in her body, Masilo’s protagonist is the antithesis of the weak, frail and vulnerable Giselle with whom we are familiar. Myrtha is recast as a male Sangoma, or traditional South African healer, and the Willis – both male and female – are a vicious mob ready to exact their revenge.

As a dancer, Masilo has impressed with her signature speed of movement and the precocious theatricality with which she embodies her roles. As a choreographer, her fine instinct for staging and her deep love for the classics sees her tackle the established ballet canon with remarkable boldness and daring artistry.

Dada Masilo’s Giselle received its world premiere at DansensHus, Oslo in 2017, co-commissioned by The Joyce Theater’s Stephen & Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work, the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Lyon Dance Biennale 2018, and Sadler’s Wells. Additional commissioning grant from La Batie-Festival in Geneva, with additional funding from the Samro Foundation.

Choreography: Dada Masilo

Music: Philip Miller

Drawings: William Kentridge

Directorial assistance: David April

Lighting design: Suzette le Sueur

Costumes: David Hutt of Donker Nag Helder Dag (Act 1);

Songezo Mcilizeli & Nonofo Olekeng of Those Two Lifestyle (Act 2)

Dada Masilo / Dance Factory Johannesburg – The organization was established in 1992, in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the primary aim of creating a home for dance. In 1994, it moved from temporary accommodation to a renovated bus repair warehouse, where it now has a large studio and a 220 seat theatre. Based in the city centre, it is accessible to dancers and audiences from town and township. Between 1993 and 2001, The Dance Factory coordinated 9 annual dance festivals for Arts Alive, a project of the City of Johannesburg. These festivals were a platform for a wide range of dance: quality international guests such as Donald Byrd/The Group (New York), Rosas (Brussels), Scapino Ballet (Rotterdam), professional dance companies from across South Africa, tertiary dance programmes, community dance groups, youth groups – covering styles ranging from classical ballet to gumboot, from physical theatre to pantsula. The festivals also offered training to young aspirant theatre technicians, many of whom are now stalwarts within the profession. The participation of township youth groups (selected by audition), brought to The Dance Factory, many highly talented young people. One such, was the 11 year old Dada Masilo, with the Soweto-based youth group, The PeaceMakers. At the request of group leaders, The Dance Factory instituted a programme of formal training. For a good 10 years, this was primarily funded by The Royal Netherlands Embassy. What began as a once a week project, developed into an intensive 7 days a week programme, where up to 60 under 18s received training in ballet and contemporary dance and performed works by South Africa’s best emergent choreographers. The Dance Factory also accessed funding for formal education at the National School of the Arts and other establishments which offered quality academic tuition. Of course, many youngsters could not stay the course, but those who remained were assisted, on leaving school, to continue their training both in South Africa and abroad. On leaving the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios in Brussels, Dada Masilo returned to The Dance Factory, where she became Artist-in-Residence. As such, she had access to the studio and theatre and received technical and administrative support in order to develop her career.

Composer, Philip Miller was born in South Africa in 1964.  Based in Cape Town, his work is multi-faceted, often developing out of collaborative projects in theatre, film, video and sound installations. Philip Miller trained firstly as a lawyer at the University of Witwatersrand and practised as a copyright lawyer. He studied music composition in South Africa with composers Jeanne Zaidel Rudolph and Peter Klatzow at the University of Cape Town Music School. He completed his postgraduate studies in Electro-Acoustic music composition for film and television at Bournemouth University. Whilst doing so he studied with UK composer Joseph Horovitz. He then returned to South Africa to begin working full time in music. One of Miller’s most significant collaborators is the internationally acclaimed artist, William Kentridge. His music to Kentridge’s animated films, and multimedia installations, has been heard in some of the most prestigious museums, galleries and concert halls all over the world, including MoMA, SFMOMA, The Guggenheim Museums (both New York and Berlin), Tate Modern, La Fenice Opera House and Carnegie Hall. Miller’s compositional process could be best described as one of both musical excavation, fragmentation and then, rebuilding these fragments or shards working with both elaboration and layering and ‘sound collage” techniques.  It often incorporates samples of “ found sound’” recorded texts and  shards of conversations which serve as counterpoint to the musical context in which they are embedded, intertwining both acoustic and electronic sound elements into his work. His works reflect on his pre-occupation with using sound as a means of exploring memory, states of trauma and the re-examination of historical archive in a sound world of his creation.He has scored numerous soundtracks to film and television programs, including his Emmy-nominated soundtrack to HBO’s The Girl. Other recent scores include Miners Shot Down, The Bang Bang Club, Black Butterflies, and Phillip Noyce’s Mary and Martha. Miller is currently an honorary fellow at ARC (The Research Initiative in Archive and Public Culture) at the University of Cape Town.