Choreographing Rebellion: Dance Practice from South Africa to Japan

An auto-ethnographic account of a choreographic praxis developed outside of a Western framework, which engages with identity, decoloniality and transformation from a feminist perspective. Choreographing Rebellion details the methodologies employed in the dramaturgy and performance of 25 choreographic works produced by the author over three decades in South Africa and Japan. Drawing on these lived experiences, jackï job's starting point is the crafting of a signature dance language in 1994, called Daai za Lady, to respond to the oppressive and unjust socio-political system of apartheid in South Africa.The second part speaks to choreographies created in Japan between 2003-2011, where elements of daily life and principles of Butoh are applied to making dance performance. As a South African, the author uniquely offers a first-hand understanding of Butoh in the line of Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno.Her journey returns to South Africa, where the assimilation of Butoh into job's already existent and ongoing dance practice synergises and enables new meanings of personhood and transformation. Choreographing Rebellion resists singular categorisations of identity too often ascribed to dance performances and communities of people. It draws on psycho-physical practices and personal philosophies of the body, which are placed in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben and Henri Bergson, and argues for the transgressing of human-centric approaches to race, gender and class through a specific animal-human crafting of dance practice. Read more