Speaking with...Nelisiwe Xaba. Re-Dancing a Body, Re-Imagining a Continent

In July 2010, Annalisa Piccirillo met the South African dancer and choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba at the 4th edition of Teatro Civile Festival in Monte Sant’Angelo (Foggia), where she was presenting one of her recent productions, The Venus, in its first Italian performance. The production combined two solo pieces inspired by the figure of Sarah Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus”. Piccirillo sees Xaba’s work as a choreographic and historical re-vision of the dark “body-continent”. Her conversation with Xaba includes reflections on the connection between the female dancing body and the African continent as a single entity, concealed, fixed and essentialized on the Eurocentric stage by the colonial gaze. In the provocative and political act of re-dancing the Venus’s body, Xaba’s artistic and personal experience intersects with and participates in the performative act of re-imagining Africa.