Identities informed by dissolved [racial, cultural, and artistic] histories often disrupt the direct connections to ancestral wisdoms and affect lived experience. The practice that I will consider in this paper, is inspired by my Master’s research and thesis: ‘Pulsating and Listening from the Spiritual Pelvis: A Kaleidoscopic and Holistic Approach to Intuition, Identity and Ancestral Wisdom through the Body’. Through an auto-ethnographic lens, this study, proposed the term My Coloured, by investigating the South African, coloured, female-identifying body’s ability to connect to the past through hybridised somatic practices. The study, informed by spiritual and artistic practice, included a compassionate yet rigorous studio practice encompassing somatic pelvis explorations, as a site that holds ancestral wisdoms, intuition, and identity, as well as original adaptations of the Nama Stap Dance. The Nama people are the descendants of the Khoisan of Southern Africa and this dance, part of my known DNA lineage, finds its origins in the Nama rite of passage ritual. The study sought to observe how one may connect to a sense of ancestral wisdom through acquired practices such as movement and spirituality, as well as an intuitive, idiosyncratic, and eclectic approach to cultural practices that are part of one’s lineage regardless of direct experience. Though the context of this research has been specific to the coloured identifying female body, this developing practice aims to offer all individuals an opportunity to delve deeper into their nuanced ways of connecting to ancestry through the body thereby encouraging alternative routes for exploring our ever-changing identities and an affirmation and validation within the self. Stepping in Situ has since developed into an improvisational choreographic storytelling tool that acknowledges connections and disconnections to ancestral wisdom through the pelvis and is in conversation with adaptations of the Nama Stap Dance.
Francesca Matthys is a South African Interdisciplinary dance artist, writer, facilitator and Kundalini yoga teacher based in London. Her practice is rooted in connections to ancestral wisdoms through movement, text, collaboration/ community. Francesca completed an MA Creative Practice: Dance Professional (distinction) at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (London, 2021) where she was a recipient of The Leverhulme Trust Scholarship & Gill Clarke Bursary. Francesca has collaborated in dance/theatre in South Africa and abroad with PJ Sabbagha, Mamela Nyamza, Marina Maghalães, The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative, Drama for Life, University of Johannesburg, Theatre Rites, Agudo Dance, Dance Umbrella SA, Dance Umbrella UK, Independent Dance, Dance Art Journal, Serendipity Institute for Black Arts & Heritage, London Performance Studios, The Place, Les Théätres de la Ville and Sadlers Wells. She develops her ‘Stepping in Situ’ practice in diverse contexts around the UK and premiered her solo Stap (St-AH-p) at Resolution Festival 2024.
Fabrice Mazliah is a choreographer and performer / dancer based in Frankfurt and Basel (Switzerland). He has initiated long-term research into embodied knowledge and the heritage inscribed into practitioners of the field. He is interested in renegotiating the relationship between our environments, its matter, and human bodies. Beyond others companies, he has worked from 1997 until 2015 with the Frankfurt Ballet / the Forsythe Company, both directed by William Forsythe. Over the past years, he has developed a large body of national and international works, either created alone and/or in collaboration with other artists and collectives. He also worked with numerous places. Fabrice was artist associate to DeSingel in Antwerp, part of the HOOD collective with a fellowship for two years at Pact Zollverein/Essen, is artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, he currently works at Theater Basel and with COME IN TENT in Hamburg.