Directed by Leilah Kirsten and Manuela Lucia Tessi. Collaborators team: Vintani Nafassi, Coila-Leah Enderstein, Tamara Ringas , Sumalgy Nuro, Nicolle Vieira, Thalia Laric
Lighting design by Frans Mandilakhe Zunguze
Thanks to Theatre Arts and Caroline Calburn for supporting the project since 2018
Manuela Lucia Tessi is a dance artist from Italy who lives in the Netherlands. Her great passion is music as It relates to movement. She develops dance performance in collaboration with musicians and composers from diverse backgrounds. Besides performing, Manuela teaches movement research and improvisation in various settings, and curates platforms that foster the interdisciplinary collaboration of music and dance in performance; including MusicDance in Cape Town, the Amsterdam ensemble Moving Strings, and Berlin collective Musiktanznulldreissig. www.manuelalucia.com
Leilah Kirsten, co-leading MusicDance this year alongside Manuela Lucia Tessi.
Leilah is a movement and dance artist with a necessity to express her experience as a human being through the moving body. She was born in Cape Town, South Africa and has been working as a freelance artist since 2012 having previously been engaged with two of South Africa’s most prominent dance companies, Jazzart Dance Theatre and The Cape Dance. Leilah is actively working with national and international mentors in the arts sector and seeking performance collaborations with artists and organisations who are interested in engaging with conversations around what it is to be human and creating works that transport audiences into a space of personal reflection and curiosity. Her long term vision is to create exchange opportunities and a residency space for South African artists that offer both artistic development and exposure to various approaches to dance training.
Leilah has touched the lives of countless artists through her intuitive teaching.
Thalia Laric is a dance artist from South Africa. Her areas of interest include real-time composition, contact improvisation and interdisciplinary performance. She studied dance at the University of Cape Town and completed a Masters in Choreography at Rhodes University. Since 2017 she has been facilitating performance platforms, teaching and creating real-time compositions.
Nicolle Vieira
With a background in Psychology from PUC Minas and in Dance and Philosophy from Université Paris 8, Nicolle Vieira has built a career that bridges the intersection of art and theory. Currently a PhD candidate in Artistic Studies at NOVA University of Lisbon, she focuses her research on improvisation as the core language of her practice. In her work, she weaves together experiences that intertwine music, dance, and text, always exploring new forms of expression. Nicolle has brought her art to stages and events in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, seeking encounters that nurture an international network of artistic collaboration.
Vintani Afonso Nafassi is a professional dance teacher, choreographer, musician and percussionist. Recently graduated with a Master in African Music and Performance at the University of Cape Town, he works mainly as a musician and singer-songwriter, originating from the lively streets of Maputo, Mozambique.
Music and dance are, for him, where emotions, landscapes, stories, experiences, and dreams converge. His goal is to explore, preserve and promote African traditional music and dance. In his performances he uses melodies and instruments from several countries in southern Africa, but mainly his own compositions and songs that he has learned in his childhood.
Sumalgy Nuro Is a dancer and musician born in Maputo, Mozambique. He graduated from the Postgraduate Programme in African Music Instruments in performance at the University of Cape Town.
Since 2005 he has been developing his understanding of music and dance by taking part in various apprenticeships, both traditional and contemporary, as well as working as dancer, musician, teacher and choreographer in numerous projects, performances and spectacles in different countries.
These opportunities have given him a space both for learning and for sharing with various artists and audiences. Close to his heart is a personal investment in the upliftment of young people and artists in vulnerable spaces. He believes that music and dance are forms of expression that nurture cultural identity and effect change in the world. https://sumalgyjafar.wixsite.com/suma
Tamara Ringas is a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and audio-visual composer from Johannesburg, South Africa. Tamara studied computer science and music technology at the University of Cape Town and works as an audio/recroding engineer and as a blockchain engineer. They release music under the moniker Tamrias.
Coila-Leah Enderstein, a South African pianist, artist and performer whose experimental practice spans multiple disciplines. She has a background in Western classical music and improvisation and has presented her own and collaborative sound and performance works in South Africa, Germany, Namibia, Morocco, the Netherlands and Sweden. Her recent work explores encounters with coloniality through embodied practices. coilaleahenderstein.com
Garth Erasmus is a visual artist and musician who plays mostly self-made instruments based on his Khoisan ancestry. He is a former art teacher at Zonnebloem Childern`s Art Centre in District Six, Cape Town and one of the founding members of a number of community-based cultural groups such as Vakalisa, Community Reflections, Thupelo Artists Workshop and Greatmore Street Artists Studios. He is currently a member of the Khoi Khonnexion whose work is based on the promotion of indigenous consciousness and is a prominent figure in the local free jazz community.
Frans Mandilakhe Zunguze
Technical Manager and Lighting Designer
Frans began as a rigger of lights at Theatre Arts in 2015, and now runs all technical aspects of the venue. He has a growing love of lighting design and specializes in lighting designed in real time, a skill he acquired through his collaboration as an artist in MusicDance.
musicdance.net 