united sorry

Under an email I received recently from Benjamin Vandewalle. A young dancer who studied at P.A.R.T.S. and who I met in a workshop Robert and me gave in Essen some time ago. His emailaddress: <plekie3248@yahoo.com> He likes to receive mail!

HALLO HALLO,

(this turned out to be a verry long mail so I advice to maybe spread teh reading over a few days , to not get to board of my writing. split it up in three cahpters. SOWETO, FAULTY TOWER OF ALL PERFORMANCES and PROJECTS Enjoy !!!!! o, please igore te spelieng mistaekesz as much as possibelle , i know iets baad) (could I ask to the people if they could forward it to the other Scouts people, the same goes for the Vandewalles ) For the woryd ones amongst you , I am stil alive. I havent yet managed to create a weblog so if any body has any knowledge on that matter and would like to help me out please do. I am getting a bit desperate ( As they would say here in South-Africa) i have so much pictures I would like to show to people. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH So much has happend these last past three weeks, I dont know where to begin. Lets start with now.

SOWETO

I am living and working in soweto ( south westeren township, its a township with 7 milion people. Belgium has 10 milion inhabitants ) , in the part called White City. THis is quiet ironic becquse me and Eve qre the only White's living there, qt leqts from whqt I know. Its really in the hart of Soweto verry close to the school where in june the 16th 1976 the historic uprising organized by the children started against theApartheid. They organized a peacful march against Bantu education ( Afrikaans was the main language and the part of the education was to keep them stupid and they where tought that they for example equal rights was something that wasent created for black people ) but the Afrikaaners opend fire on them and 1000 children died and 1000 more got injured. Nelson mandela also grew up here in the neigberhood together with all the other important acticists from those days. For those that dont know what a township is. During the apartheid the people in power ( the whites ) where afraid that the black people would invade there space to much. They wanted every body to live seperate ( apart ) so they created huge amounts of verry smal houses far far away from the city where the black people where forced to live. In these townships they also seperated al the people coming from different tribes ( 11 of them plus the colourds ) to live seperatly creating devision and conflict between them. White peopel where the masters and the blacks where considered a lower race with way les rights. Whites and Blacks couldent even talk to each other only if it was in relation to work. When walking on the street the blacks had to walk at least 3 meters behind the white people. But what the most scary part of all is that it has only been 12 years ago since the "system" as the blacks call it has been abolished. The memory of that time and the scars ( both in a normal an figurative way of talking ) are stil verry present. Every body older then 12 has lived with that system. But they are not stuck in them, at least the majorety. Poverty was gicantic during those days and conseceuntly so was crime. Crimenals where respected people those days because they brought food to the table. But things have changed and are changing, lukely. A Flemisch actor/director who has been working hear the last 5 years told the following. 5 years ago you wouldnt go to sleep without hearing some gun shots in the neighberhood. When walking on the street you would have people on every corner of the street showing there guns to you if you where new in the neighberhood, just showing you who is in power. When asking kids what they wanted to become when they grow up they al would answer " car jacker !!!" now five years later they all say , plumber, lawyer, doctor, teatcher; etc…. you hardly hear any gun shots any more and the guys on the corner are gone. People have made a click in there mind and dont wantto live like that any more. To me this story is hope ful, it shows that people and situations can change quiet drastically in just a few years. Dont get me wrong thow, its stil a verry rough place to live and every now and then you hear verry , lets say strange story's to say it nicly. I also disoverd that a lot of people that I have met of wich some have become my freinds have or are gangsters with quiet some story's to tell. But if you know your neighberhood, take care, dont go out on foot at night and dont go where you are not supposed to be its really ok. People here are verry freindly, every now and then you get the remark that they are happy that we are here so in general people like us and us beeing here, also the big "king pins" so that means we are protected. Me Eve and Lebo ( a guy from around here ( also a dancer ) who is taking care of us ) are renting a room in a tiny hous with three rooms from a mother with three kids whom we are sharing the house with. Its in a bighous split into three, two parts with three rooms and one with two. SO its each time three famely's living in one house. Thats why the smal gardens are always packed with "shecks" as the call them. Small rooms build from metal plates or what ever other material they ca find. The biggest part is filled with these kind of houses and there schecks. When i mean tiny , i really mean tiny. Also the acomadations are verry basic and i mean verry. Each morning we wash our selves in a plastic tub, its like the ones where you do your dishes in. Its quiet a chalenge to work out how to get clean in that way , but they have tought me how and I must say it works. Its nice because you do your morning exercizes at the same time you wash your selves. And the when you have washed your selves you wash your clothes from the previous day aswel in that same water, you might go "eeuuuh " but they are clean when finished. Its a way of saving water, plus if you dont have much clothes you always need them to be clean. We have only two electronic coocking plates but Margrite ( the mother ) manages ( in dont know how) to coock the most wonderful dishes on them, like steam bread and samp ( mais rice and beans) my favourit is pap ( its maiz meal coocked for 5 minutes until it becaumse a thick white past. I am stil a vergetarian but my macrobiotic dieet has taken a 5 month holiday, olthoug i did manage to smuggel some seewead into the country :-) Its a verry basic way of living but thats they way most people live here. Some lve in evenworse conditions like in the "squater camps" or slums. I have been living like this for the past two weeks and just today I have been into town ( Joburg ) to visit a flemish freind who is living here to use his pc and it was a really strange experience to enter his house. I was asking my self "what is all this stuf for?" I had gotten so used to living so basic that most of teh things in his house seems so "overbodig" excsesay.Another nice thing from S.A. and espacially Soweto is that there is a verry strong sence of BrotherHood. Every body says Brother or Sister toe each other " hey Brother from another Mother" they would say some times. Its commen that you pass your cigarets and jints to strangers when thay ask for it. You really live in a communety that helps eacht other when having a problem. peoples doors and houses are always open to every one. People pop in and out each others houses all the time. Its eve considerd bad luck to wait at a doorto see if some one is home , you must walk in imedialtly into the room. Every body lives and hangs out on the streets. Kids all ages as soonas they walk play on the streets. Its trully a nice enviorment to live in and I am enjoying it a lot. But ok ( this seems like its ging to be a verry long mail, I have so much Iwant to share with you guys and now thatI have free internet acces… ) WHat is it that I am doing here and how come I ended up here.

FAULTY TOWERS OF ALL PERFORMANCES

So as I told the most of you I came here to work for an organization called ipac. I was suposed to train people who had the talent but dident have the possibelety's to get an education and to create a production with them. There moto was to create work via culture. It turned out not to be all that what it was supposed to be. They hardly had any money, no rehearsel space ( we where working in the living making a cabaret performance at the level of a bad amater group) and the peopel we where working with where quiet wel of and some already had a profesional training. Then after 10 days of working on the piece wich is stil full full of istakes we set of to perform it for a coal mining company in Secunda. Its for some kind of event they organized for the workers to celeberate the fusion with another company. Before leaving the technical director cals us in a panic because he only jus recieved the techincal plan because Muzzi the organizer and chief of communication ( worst ever) dident pas inthrew when he got it one month ago. In the bus on our way to the venue we fidn out that they ddent arrange a place yet for us to sleep they thought we where going to take care of that. When arriving at the venue we discover that we are performing in football stadium style like auditorium ona tiny stage designed for giving speeches. Its filled with kitch decoration and stones, making the stage even smaller. There are only 5 spot lights hanging up , giving only light to half of the stage. There is no lightning board, the only thin our light technician that we hired can do is turn it on and of. At least for the musical parts she can do this verry fast creating some kind of flickeringeffect. The mics that we asked for turned out to be mics for talking not singing so the singing and guitar playing is acompanied by the accasional sqeeck and scratch or silence. During the run threw one of the actors cuts his foot on the stones and is taken to the clinic. After the run threw Muzzi tels us " he guy I forgot to tell you earlier but 60 percent of the audience doesent speak English could you do the piece in Zulu ?". O…. ? we reply. He also complained that its not Africain enough, but he asked a belgian director to create a piece….. The day of teh performance we start 2 hours late because the sceduele was completly messed up. Right before we start they announce that the bar outside has been opend. So we had to start while the half of the 3000 spectators leave the hall. After 10 min of the show ( from the first half of 50 min ) they come up to the singer and guitar player while he is playing if we can stop. Why was never verry clear…………. The second half of the show was canceld. The second show that we where suposed to do in the next weekend was also canceld.We are stil not shore if Ipac wil get the other 50 percent of our money. People that did the work stil havent been payed yet. It was truely THE "Faulty Towers" of all performances. Oh la la la. Even for Africain standards this was a true disaster. I guess it was some kind of welcome to Africa. A vacination against theatre disasters, to experience the worst so that we are imune for the things that stil have to come.

PROJECTS

The plan was ( wow this mail is getting verry long…. ) to stay in Soweto for the period in between the 2 performances. But as I said the second one was canceld ( we only found this out while staying in Soweto ) . But its in Soweto a big Bom of opertunety's exploded in our face. We met a guy called Lebo , a dancer ( trained inboth contemporary and traditional dance ) who introduced us to many many different Dance Groups and Youth Clubs. We got many offers to work withmant different groups and people that we know instead of having nothing to do have a over loaded agenda and have to start making chioces. At the moment I am working with kids every day after school to make a performance with them for the world Aids day, its the 1st of december. Its in a youth center called SKY ( sowetan klip town youth ) itsbased in a squater kamp ( when you walk threw themits like walking threw a movie its just seems toxtreem to be trew ) in the center of Soweto. The kids are amazing. This also goes for al the other kids andadults I have seen and been working with but the amount of Talent and Pasion here is just astonishing. Most of them als start dancing here at a verry youngage. Every day after school or work they get together to dance for at least 2 to 3 hours. They practice dances as Pantzula, Qaito, all kind of traditional dances from the different tribes and also contemporary dance, most ofthe time its Afro fusion. Its release but with a strongafricain flavour. The power, energy and dedication they do it with is one that I rarlyhave seen in Europe.So apart from working with the kids every day starting at 15.00 I teatch Yoga every mornig from 7.00 to 8.30 ( imust say so far I havent seen much students yet, igues its a bit to early for the africains here ). Then at 10.00 untim 14.00 I work with a group of dancers of wich some are profesional and others seriously dedicated amateurs ( People who havent had a education but have a verry high level ). We are doing some kind of exchange research thing whereby we giveclasses and they give classes exchangingour information , enriching our vocabulary's via exchange. hese africain dance are quiet something. The Stamina and power you need for them is something I almost never had to deal with before. Its funny because when we then teatch a release or a contact class its theopostite. Its al about softnes and releasing, letting the weight drop. At the moment we are just playing around but we might end up creating some kind ofpiece. It depends how things are going. I also met an organization called SOMHO ( sowetan mountain of hope). Its a project that has been running for the past 20 years. Mlantla ( power ) the guy who started the project with 50 cent as they say is one on the mos inspiring people I have met so far. The whole project that has been running for 20 years without funding turns around waste manegment but envolves al kind of projects that you can imagine that benifitsthe comunety. Afer hearing about them an talking to them I came up with a project that I wil be organizingin colaboration with them. Its called the "Garrbage Snake". Bassicaly the idea is to clean the streets via choreography. The Idea comes from a thig I learned inth scouts. When our big outdoor kamp of two weeks had ended and we had taken down all our tents and stuf we would stand in line at the edge of the grass feildand cros it , each person having his own line infront of him ( like in a swimming pool ). What ever kind of garbage you would come acros you would pick up. That way in a verry short period of time the feild was clean. The plan is to do something simular with the schoolkids but than in the streets. But know I would make some kind of Carnaval fanfare out of it. Infront you would have musicians playing on garbage instruments folowd by dancing kids followed by several rows of kids picking upwhat ever they can find ( all the kids get a chance to come infront and dance). At the back atruck would follow where the full bags would be thrown into. This action would start of by us going to schools as guest to introduce ourselves and after talk about the enviorment. It would be then foolowed up by a workshop to teatch the "garbage Snake" dance and the a test in the local street of playground. Then on a big day all the schools ( 6 of them ) wil all start together with there Snake. At the end of the day they would al arrive at the same place where the amount of garrbage bags would be counted. For every 5 bags they would get a tree that they can plant somewhere. The School with the biggest amount of tree's wil get a troffee of some kind. After that the garrbage they collect wil get sorted out and used in a "waste into Art" workship afterwards. Its school holiday's now so the project is due for end of januari wich gives us plenty time to prepare. Its all thanks to this organization that already is in contact with all the schools and has all the resources that we wil be able to acomplish this project. Then another thing i wil be doing here is shooting a short film. Some body in Belgum asked if I was intrested in participating in a project where by a choreographer creates a performane with a child in the bedroom of the child to perform it in the room of the child. As I am in S.A. now it wil be a bit hard to do that so I proposed to do it here. And film it. I hink it wil be great for the children in belgium to see it when its finished. Then ( it doesent stop ) I wil be working with other kids in a "art drop in center" during the summer holiday. I wil probaly be giving a workshop for dancers who work with a choreographer who lives here Soweto. His name is George Kumalo , he also studied at PARTS. I wil be creating a duet with Lebo. He is our gaurdian angel here in White City. I hope to take this work to belgium. I wil stop here, there are some other things but theyare not certain yet. Oh, just one more thing, its quiet likly that the guilliotine wil also do its touring around here….So I stopped working with this organization caled IPAC because of there badly organized organization and terribal way of dealling with people but I thank them al lot for bringing me here and passing by SOweto. Al the things that have happend until now and are planned for the futur are all to good to be true. I came here to take it a bit easy after PARTS but it seems hat I wil be even more bissy than before. But ILIKE IT. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh So thats about all that I wanted to say. Actually Iwant to say much much more but I had to cut al least some things. A mail wil follow with some pictures o colour your imagination. I just wanted to stay thank you to every one who has sent me some mails. Keep them coming in. I might not be able to answer to all of them but I shore like to read them. so keep on sending. I am enjoying life and that is a great feeling. A big kis to you all enjoy the cold as I enjoy the sun over here and take care !!!! GR BEnj