By Sitha Maliwa:
There are performances you watch, and then there are performances that confront you. This April, Mamela Nyamza does not simply return to the stage – she storms it, bringing with her two searing, unflinching works: HATCHED ENSEMBLE and THE HERD/LESS, set to take over the Baxter Theatre from 29 April to 2 May.
Fresh from a sold-out Paris run and echoing across international stages, these productions arrive in Cape Town not as performances, but as provocations.
HATCHED ENSEMBLE is not reborn – it erupts. Once a solitary voice in 2007, it now expands into a collective force of ten dancers, each body carrying its own history, discipline and defiance. Ballet’s rigid spine collides with the pulse of African movement, and from that collision, something urgent and alive emerges.
On stage, nothing stays still – not the bodies, not the rules, not the expectations. Pointe shoes become symbols of both beauty and constraint, appearing and vanishing like ghosts of tradition. Movements begin in control, almost suffocatingly precise, before cracking open into wild, necessary release. The dancers do not ask for permission – they demand space.
Live music by Litho Nqai and Given Mphago does not accompany the performance – it breathes through it, haunting and lifting each moment into something visceral.
“I write my thesis not with a pen, but with the body on stage,” Nyamza declares. And in HATCHED ENSEMBLE, that body becomes text, protest, and liberation all at once.
If HATCHED ENSEMBLE is an explosion of self, then THE HERD/LESS is a reckoning.
Here, eleven performers step into a world where belonging and control blur into one another. Spears, knobkerries, whips and animal skins are no longer passive objects -they speak, they strike, they remember. The stage becomes a charged terrain where power is not hidden but exposed in its rawest form.
The question lingers in every movement: are we part of the herd, or are we less?
The performers move as one, then fracture. Unity shifts into tension. Harmony slips into obedience. Through sharp choreography and jarring sound, the work drags into the light the invisible systems that shape behaviour – within families, cultures, and nations. It is not comfortable. It is not meant to be.
Together, these two works refuse silence. They refuse neat answers. They refuse to let the audience remain untouched.
Presented by Mamelas Artistic Movement (MAM), the productions are recommended for audiences aged 13 and older – but their impact cuts far deeper than age. They speak to anyone who has ever felt confined, defined, or controlled.
International critics have already sounded the alarm. The Times called HATCHED ENSEMBLE a “strikingly original piece,” while audiences across Europe have described it as a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with something rare: truth, unfiltered. Now, the truth arrives in Cape Town. For four nights only, the Baxter Theatre will not just host a performance – it will hold a mirror. And not everyone will be ready for what they see.- @NewsSA_Online
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