Artistic purpose

Heading north from Cape Town, Africa's last colonial bastion, just before the border with Namibia, lies the town of Okiep and its township, where extreme poverty is set against a superb and bewitching semi-desert landscape.

It was here that I had the pleasure of working (and learning a great deal) with the Garage Dance Ensemble, created and directed by Alfred Hinkl and Jon Linden, both natives of the town who chose to return to live and work there. They have created a troupe of dancers who meet in an old garage that has been converted into a rehearsal space. I found some incredibly talented people there, with whom I developed a very strong relationship that led to the collective creation of a new piece.

Exploited from the 1870s to the 1980s, the Okiep copper mines were considered to be the richest in the world. Afrikaans is the main language spoken here, and the locals prefer to be called Coloured, a term used in South Africa to designate populations of mixed ethnicity, who in the region are descendants of the Nama and Indian cultures.

"The Coloureds of South Africa are torn between ethno-nationalism and African nationalism...". 
Ismail Lagardien

Although Coloured people have been present in South Africa from the outset, they have suffered a great deal of discrimination. Not white enough at the time of apartheid and not black enough today. At the start of my work with the dancers, I asked them what they would like to talk about. After an awkward silence, they replied:
"We no longer want to ask questions about our ancestors.
"We'd like to talk about something other than our origins".
"We just want to say who we are and how we celebrate life".

So I asked myself where I fit into this equation and how I could respond to the dancers' questions.

The answer came from looking at the landscape around us.
After the winter rains, which fall from May to July in this region of Namaqualand, the semi-desert soils are completely covered, from August to September, with a magnificent carpet of more than 3,500 species of wild daisies, a flower symbolising peace and prosperity. 

And so, with the dancers, we created ...How in salts desert is it possible to blossom…. To share with the audience the breathtaking spectacle of this magnificent flowering that is taking over the desert!

Robyn Orlin