They have seduced the globe with their contagious vitality that celebrates the traditions, colors, and rhythms of South Africa. Although the company carries the name of one of Johannesburg's most challenging townships, where unemployment and crime prevail, the performances produced by Via Katlehong Dance embody the festive energy of South Africa's multiracial ferment. The group is known for shows that effortlessly blend indigenous street dance (pantsula), tap dance, and the gumboot dance of miners, delivering a unique energy and rhythm to the audience with breathtaking unison. Via Katlehong has an unmistakable style, a company with a twenty-year history led by Buru Mohlabane and choreographer Vusi Mdoyi.
Via Sophiatown is their latest production featuring nine dancers and three jazz musicians. The title refers to a legendary landmark for South African artists: the eponymous suburb of Johannesburg that was forcibly cleared by the government in the 1950s, symbolizing the fight against apartheid. Sophiatown was indeed a ghetto, but as Nelson Mandela wrote in his autobiography, "it had a special atmosphere; for Africans, it was like the Left Bank in Paris and Greenwich Village in New York. It was the refuge of writers, artists, doctors, and lawyers. Sophiatown was both alternative and conventional, lively yet peaceful at the same time."
Spotlight then shines on 1950s Sophiatown for this musical comedy, which is a tribute to the legendary neighborhood symbolizing "Happy Africa." The black-and-white photographs in the background blur the line between past and present, paralleling the gestural dialogue of couples that is both sexy and carefree, evoking the ancient dances that preceded pantsula, such as tsaba tsaba or kofifi, along with rhythmic virtuosity expressed from head to toe and the nostalgia for some hit songs from the 1950s by Dorothy Masuka and Miriam Makeba.
