Dada Masilo, the South African choreographer-dancer of classical Western European ballets have captivated the international dance world, is returning to New York’s Joyce Theatre with one of her own works, “The Sacrifice,” from May 23–28.
with an Africanist presence that grounds the story in a new, more diasporic reality as Masilo wrangles the classic canon into a contemporary mode.While her fusion of classical ballet and African dance forms have been applauded internationally, Masilo said, “Some people have gotten annoyed when I pick the classics. They say, ‘How dare you!” But I’m like ‘Do you have copyrights on this work? I’m not taking anything away from you, I’m just introducing something different.
Three commissions from the National Arts Festival resulted in her versions of “Romeo and Juliet” , “Carmen” , and “Swan Lake” ,. In May 2017, she premiered her “Giselle” in Oslo and in 2021, ”The Sacrifice” in Vienna. Masilo’s “The Sacrifice” is an example of what happens when her indomitable spirit takes on that challenge. The piece first grew, she says, out of a dance exercise that involved learning a 3-minute segment of the Bausch work set to Igor Stravinsky’s masterpiece.
The result was shown in New York several seasons ago during the annual Fall for Dance concerts at City Center. But that wasn’t the end of it. Masilo wanted to do a full-length work of “The Sacrifice,” but the Stravinsky score was too short, “so I had this idea to work with live music and ask the musicians to listen to the Stravinsky score and then react to it. With the musicians, you’ve got voice, you’ve got keyboard, you’ve got violin, and then percussion.
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