The creative allure of William Kentridge’s Centre for the Less Good Idea continues to be its commitment to collaborative, cross-disciplinary and experimental work that reveals the expansiveness of the arts and artmaking. Through this mode it sparks intellectual conversations on artistic processes, discoveries and beautiful moments of how we think about and experience art and its transformative impact. From deconstructing artforms, distilling epic storytelling and 11-minute shorts to artistic collisions with technology and exploitations of space and performance, the centre is a playground for nuanced creative excavations.
The appointment of composer, musician and installation artist Neo Muyanga in 2024 as the Centre’s impresario furthered this ethos with immersive work that investigates the dramaturgy of sound and the sonic character of moving images. His Collation series of “Visual Radio Plays and Sounding Pictures: Live Scores to Short Silent Films” puts the audience smack in the middle of process and commands deep listening for enriched and novel creative experiences. These involve staging a set of contemporary radio plays as though witnessing a live studio transmission and observing a live musical ensemble spontaneously composing a score to a series of silent films.
The third aspect in the series works with the pulse of the Maboneng Precinct - where The Centre is located - for site-specific performances that capture stories of the city and the spirit that underscores them in ”The Unexpected City".
Downtown Joburg — a creative forcefield
Season 11, which runs from November 26-30, is themed under the collective idea of ensemble work that characterises the centre’s evolving collaborative methodology. It brings together Joburg artists, theatre makers, musicians, writers, filmmakers and thinkers alongside international visiting artists. It is a culmination of Muyanga’s curatorial and producerial vision throughout 2024 and 2025 and includes explorations of his “Collation” series as well as new works that investigate the physicality of fine art intersected with dance as mark making, commissioned dance works, curated talks and newly incubated theatre pieces.
For Muyanga, downtown Johannesburg is the heart and impetus of the creative investigations of the season.
“We think of our environment as a cauldron of creative and economic activity where thriving is premised on principles such as flexibility, adaptability and collectivity,” Muyanga said.
“We, as a laboratory for multidisciplinary arts, see this state of play as a springboard from which we are able to test new storylines and to subvert assumptions and expectations by giving life to surprising collaborations between practitioners who may respond to similar impulses differently. A key interest for us at the centre is how we might learn more about our own story while being engrossed in an unfolding process of art-making.”
An ongoing component of the season is a series of performances and public light installations in and around Fox Street and Arts on Main, curated by Vienna-based SA artist Marcus Neustetter.
The motion of mark-making
A highlight of Season 11 is the opening “Moving the Mark" programme of new works that pair prominent visual artists and dancers for experimental investigations into dance and mark-making. The performances open up thoughts on how the act of creating art could be considered a dance and the possibilities in interpreting a mark as choreographic movement. Participating artists and dancers include William Kentridge, Vincent Mantsoe, Penny Siopis, Shannel Winlock-Pailman, Mary Sibande, Nandipha Mntambo and Kitty Phetla.
Mntambo, who works across sculpture, photography, video and mixed media, is known for her cowhide sculptures through which she explores the human form, identity and the relationship between humans and the natural world. She sees her involvement in the centre’s Season 11 as a continuation and broadening of her sculptural and painting practice and an exploration of performance.
“The private studio practice of sculpting and shaping objects while being conscious of how my body is in motion within this solitary space is now being expanded through working in conjunction with dancer Kitty Phetla in a ‘shadow dance’ of sorts, creating a call and response between our bodies, the canvas and stage,” Mntambo said.
“I’ve worked in a performative way for some time. Being able to create a project that is related to a studio that is not my own and in collaboration with other people has always been a challenge I have been eager to explore. I have realised that working within the space of improvisation and collaboration is very exciting. I’ve always been a careful planner when embarking on my artistic projects and endeavours; this process has brought new light into how I could tackle my future ideas with more spontaneity.”
Inspired dance theatre
Dance features more strongly this season. In addition to Moving the Mark is a guest performance in the form of a special double bill from internationally renowned dance makers Mantsoe and Winlock-Pailman.
France-based SA dancer, teacher and choreographer Mantsoe will present his latest solo, Desert Poems, which explores the contrasting extremes of a desert landscape in a spiritually heightened and physically immersive manner. Mantsoe’s dance is rooted in the spiritual practice of ubungoma (traditional healing) from which he created his Koba technique — a mix of indigenous African dance of the sangomas and contemporary movement.
Winlock-Pailman will present Oh, death! Where is your sting? conceptualised and developed at the centre. The work exorcises the ritual of burial and investigates the rhythms and movements of text in fresh stylistic ways. At heart it is a mourning.
“The work comes from a spiritual place. I lost my brother last year. I have been losing people over the years. But his death had a slightly deeper impact. So did the loss of my brother in dance and one of my closest friends, David April, this year. The work is a tribute to everything we lose,” Winlock-Pailman said.
She brings to the work a dramaturgy of dance — a strength she prefers over choreography. Her rousing footwork is gleaned from the eclectic toolkit of dance styles imprinted throughout her career. From her ballet roots and the Afro-fusion learnt from the Moving into Dance company in her formative years to the variety of techniques learnt at Belgium’s Performing Arts Research and Training School (PARTS) and the mix of Indian classical dance with the contemporary at London’s Akram Khan Company, where she spent 10 years.
As a coloured dancer, she struggled to find her voice due to being othered and belonging to everyone’s story at the same time. She found her place in storytelling and facilitating that for herself and others through dance and movement.
Season 11 of the Centre for the Less Good Idea (264 Fox Street, Johannesburg) runs from November 26-30. Find the full programme at lessgoodidea.com.
