Dancing through time and space with DreamScapes

Dreams are a place where reality bends, and the impossible seems just within reach.

Joburg Ballet’s 2025 season opener, DreamScapes, transports us to an otherworldly realm at the Roodepoort Theatre with weight, sound and emotion.

The dancers’ shadows fluttered and fouettéd against the theatre walls like ephemeral apparitions as opening night unfolded through the works that make up the three-bill ballet. Les Sylphides, new works Resonance and The Underworld, and Elsewhere invite us into a place beyond the reach of daylight where we might find love, beauty, justice, joy and spiritual resolution.

DreamScapes signals both transition and ambition as the company welcomes its interim artistic director, award-winning choreographer Dane Hurst. This mix of classical polish and contemporary dancing is as much about history and identity as it is about beauty and technique.

Hurst described the programme as “a mixed bill,” emphasising its broad appeal. “Our audience is diverse,” he said, “and everybody appreciates different forms of storytelling.”

DreamScapes migrates from the classical beauty of Les Sylphides to the avant-garde experimentation of Resonance and The Underworld and Elsewhere, with a striking musical palette that shifts between jazz, contemporary classical and traditional orchestration.

“The world of ballet is changing, and with that we need new choreographic language,” said Hurst.

Joburg Ballet’s ballet mistress Kim Vieira gives Michel Fokine’s 1909 choreography of Les Sylphides new life with elegant and fragile movements that pay homage to the tradition and unalloyed romanticism.

Leaning into ballet’s dreamlike sensibilities and meticulous execution, and reverence of the feminine form with a cast predominantly composed of women, it is visually delicate yet technically demanding.

Tilting the stage into more complex territories, Hurst frames his new work, Resonance, as a meeting point of history and modernity, drawing inspiration from apartheid SA’s underground jazz scene.

The work revels on joy but doesn’t shy away from the darker truths that run parallel. “[It’s about] people from different walks of life coming together in the dance,” Hurst explains.

Invoking places like Cape Town’s District Six, Joburg’s Sophiatown and South End in Hurst’s native Gqeberha, Resonance stands as a visceral reminder of how dance can act as both resistance and celebration. Acclaimed jazz composer and pianist Kyle Shepard’s hypnotic 2012 album South African History !X lends Resonance a lyrical and percussive soundtrack that pulses with triumphs and struggles of country still navigating its transformation.

Kitty Phetla’s The Underworld and Elsewhere digs into the metaphysical as it channels the forces that govern our existence. Born out of fascination with the lives before us and our unanswered questions of the existential elsewhere, Phetla’s choreography feels like a ritual and a prayer in its call to connect with the spiritually and ancestrally unseen.

“The answers are within the silence,” Phetla said. It offers a layered interpretation of dreams: some rooted in history’s scars, others in the unknown realms of possibility.

The trilogy holds a mirror to ballet’s capacity for storytelling and transformation. But at the heart of this programme is an invitation for audiences to see themselves reflected on stage, whether in the rigour of classical form, the freedom of contemporary expression or the fusion of both.

The programme serves as a kind of bridge. On one side, there’s the nostalgia of Les Sylphides, with its soft lines and precise, airy movements. And on the other, Hurst’s Resonance and Phetla’s The Underworld and Elsewhere brought something altogether more urgent: the shift towards a ballet that speaks to the now.

From the first pirouette to the final bow, the energy of DreamScapes is undeniable. Yet, the true essence of Joburg Ballet was revealed weeks before the production’s debut at the company’s open day.

Attendees watched beads of sweat form with each movement as the dancers were reminded of “Energy even if you don’t have any,” by rehearsal coach Thabang Mabaso. Far removed from the applause and finery of the theatre, we saw the rawness of the work that ultimately transforms into the magic on stage.

For Hurst, DreamScapes represents a moment of change for Joburg Ballet, but also a snapshot of where ballet in SA is heading.

“[DreamScapes] connects to every person’s dream for a better future,” Hurst said. His role as interim artistic director is, by definition, temporary, but his impact may set the tone for what’s to come. “What I can do,” he said, “is work from the inside out to develop a sense of unity within the company, to cultivate pride in what we’re doing and where we are.”

That sense of place is important and reflects on where the company is now and imagines where it could go. With its dancers moving ranks in the company and gaining international attention like the young Jayden Samuels and Tumelo Lekana, Joburg Ballet is staking its claim on the world stage.

Ultimately, DreamScapes invites us to witness the extraordinary and asks ballet itself to dream bigger. And that, in Hurst’s hands, feels not only possible but inevitable.

DreamScapes is at the Roodepoort Theatre until April 6