Confined by Numbers: Fana Tshabalala.

Still from "Confined by Numbers" Fana Tshabalala

Fana Tshabalala.
"Confined by Numbers" (Dance work, filmed: 3 minutes, 32 seconds)
Featured in The Pandemic Project
(University of Johannesburg Arts and Culture)


Overview: Dance piece performed in the confined space of a laundry room, during Lockdown.  The performer is dressed in white.

All the artists in The Pandemic Project, based at the University of Johannesburg's School of Arts and Culture, have chosen a musical piece recorded by the university choir.  The artist for this work has chosen the song Sejedo (in the West African language of Fon) by Angélique Kidjo,  arranged by Sabelo Mthemb.  performed by the University of Johannesburg Choir.


*Video is at:  https://youtu.be/-xvZ9CMSlLk
Full page is at:   https://arts.uj.ac.za/article/the-pandemic-project-fana-tshabalala/

Artist's Statement:  The work is inspired by the UJ Choir’s rendition of Sedjedo by Angélique Kidjo arranged by Sabelo Mthembu and featured on When the Earth Stands Still.  My piece ‘Confined by Numbers’ is the exploration of the unstable mental state. The constant changes in its surrounding affect its ability to be independent. The only way to survive, is to re-imagine and re-create the context of every moment and experience.

 

Mark Auslander:  While we are dazzled by the dancer's virtuosic artistry, we also find  ourselves immediately recognizing the predicament before us. Untold millions around the world during the various forms of pandemic-induced lockdown have surely found ourselves wandering around the confines of a small space in our homes,  our minds filled by all manner of thought, from terror of contagion to the most basic question of what domestic task to turn to next.  Our dwelling spaces have become the theatrical stage for so much of our inner psychic lives of late.

 

Here, we are invited into the tumult of the protagonist's mind. The opening shots are low, showing the dancer twisting on the floor, his right arm then raised up as if aspiring to something higher. He stands up, still rotating, as his arms continue to explore the taut space around his upper body.  At one point he glances at the fingers of his hand, evidently referencing the work's title, "Confined by numbers." How many hours and days have we been locked down? How many more until we can safely re-emerge? How many are infected, dying, transmitting, recovering?  How many are out of work?  At one point he leaps upon the counter as if to rest in thought, but then immediately is standing again, momentarily grasping his temples,  his fingers then counting more numbers, more casualties.  Numbers are projected quickly across the screen.

His knees fall back to the floor, his arms resting on the sink, as his lower legs rapidly pulse back and forth. Bending to the floor, he seems to pick up something, more numbers to be counted sorrowfully on his fingers.  He fiddles briefly with the knobs on the washing machine, until the weight of the moment seems to pull him down back to the ground, where the work began, his body in the L shape described by the small room.   Is he evoking the death of those who have been lost to the pandemic, or communing with them, or finding a measure of peace after his mental journey? 

The title of the accompany musical work, "Sedjedo," is translated from the West African language of  Fon as "the wisdom that comes with age."  In Angélique Kidjo's recorded performances of the song, her lyrics praise a person of great integrity and we sense we may be hearing a funeral lament. We may read this dance performance as a struggle for knowledge amidst a time of sorrow and travail. The numbers and statistical modeling that confine us do not, in themselves convey wisdom: true insight comes through an interior journey, taking into one's very body the suffering and the aspirations of others, attaining great compassion for those who have gone on before us. 

It is perhaps of significance that Angélique Kidjo grew up in Benin's largest city, Cotonou, one of the major centers of the Atlantic slave trade. As a major site on the UNESCO Slave Route, the memories of the many millions gone now weigh heavily on the city, which seeks to memorialize through art those who passed through it across the many decades.  Might Tshabalala also, his body beautifully contorted within a confined space, be paying homage not only those ravaged by the current pandemic but to those long ago locked within the holds of slave ships, bound for the unknown horrors of the New World?  No mere array of numbers can convey the true toll of the Maafa, as experienced by the individual bodies and minds of countless souls. Are many ancestors, old and new, being summoned up, and honored, in this haunting work?