“On the tensions of freedom: its surfaces and depths”, August 2025

The intensive is framed by a research and educational endeavour which draws from the palimpsest of the historical and contemporary lived experiences of moving and movement in the city of Cape Town. The course and its artistic practice will focus on the corporeal, embodied accesses, regulations and restrictions as different individuals and groups of people navigate various parts of the city.  

The city of Cape Town with its historic (colonial) buildings is the backdrop for the contemporary socio-economic and political urgencies that produce surface tensions in negotiating various physical boundaries or obstacles in the city: taxis that stop abruptly, streetlights that do not work, homeless people obstruct entrances, soliciting at intersections are amongst the numerous challenges that compromise one’s path through the city.  The deep tensions are the historical and current psycho-social violences, cultural traces of hybrid beliefs, rituals and practices. Moving between the surface and depths of these tensions invites closer interrogation of how bodies have adjusted (or do not adjust) to the migration from ancestorial land to the urban spaces of a city, marked by historical-racial segregation; the topography of mountain and ocean that divides its population. What is required of the body in its intricate movements, adjustments and its negotiations when there is a constant threat of violence? What are the movement-tactics for survival in a city that is idyllically scenic but where its threats are inherent.  

The focus on this intensive is an exploration of how particular bodies move in a city:  awareness beyond surface impressions with specific movement strategies to navigate its historically violent and potentially threatening spaces – this is translated to choreography, dance and staging. How does one capture this on film towards an experience that is a visceral expression, constrained but evocative of potential freedom from the bounds of historical and current political controls.