Dada Masilo’s The Sacrifice gives Stravinsky a South African twist

Following successful visits to the UK with her reworkings of Swan Lake and Giselle, Soweto-born dancemaker Dada Masilo has begun a 14-city tour of 2021’s The Sacrifice, a 60-minute work inspired by Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It opened in Brighton last week followed by two nights at Sadler’s Wells.

Stravinsky supplied the launch pad but his music plays no direct part in The Sacrifice. Instead, four South African musicians were asked to listen to his score, then channel its energies in their own composition. Soprano Ann Masina, a frequent collaborator with artist William Kentridge, supplies the most powerful element, unleashing beguiling streams of cardinal vowels together with shorter passages of (untranslated) text. The score’s sound salad of percussion, whirly tube, berimbau and swanee whistle (all nimbly played by Mpho Mothiba) mirrors the strangeness of Stravinsky’s orchestration, but is let down by the easy-listening keyboard and violin.

Masilo’s previous works were a skilful fusion of African dance and ballet, but The Sacrifice is rooted more specifically in the Tswana dance of Botswana — said to be modelled on the flickering speed of the meerkat. The dancers, handpicked for the tour from Johannesburg’s Dance Factory (Masilo’s alma mater), are impressive. Eutychia Rakaki’s sinewy jumps and seemingly boneless flexibility consistently draw the eye. Lwando Dutyulwa also impresses in his gruelling barefoot solo, much of it performed, meerkat-like, on three-quarter pointe.

All 10 dancers boast strong, springy feet, eloquent upper bodies and the ability to change the temperature of the performance with a slap of the hand or droop of the head. In the first half, when Masilo is establishing them as a tight-knit village community, the ensemble interacts with the four onstage musicians, grumbling at their unsustainably rapid tempi and fanning themselves with their skirts and revealing big scarlet knickers.

Sadler’s Wells posted a “partial nudity” warning on its website, and the nipple count seemed unnecessarily high — particularly when the ever-changing costumes are so attractive. David Hutt’s designs — skirts, frocks, flowing palazzo pants — enhance the dance and help create attractive stage pictures, backed by Suzette Le Sueur’s unsettling projections of leafless leadwood trees.

The sacrifice itself remained a bit of a blur. In the programme note, Masilo grandly declares that her aim was “to create a story that is deeper than a chosen maiden dancing herself to death”. This seems a peculiarly dismissive view of the original Stravinsky/Nicholas Roerich scenario, particularly given the powerful work that choreographers such as Kenneth MacMillan, Pina Bausch, Michael Clark and Michael Keegan-Dolan have since made of it.

Masilo has sought to reframe the sacrifice in terms of Southern African ritual, but her portrayal of an almost willing victim, the consoling presence of Masina as her spirit guide and the lack of musical urgency rob the new story of dramatic force. Even lousy Rites — and there have been plenty — remain supercharged by the relentless power of Stravinsky’s polyrhythmic masterpiece. Without it, Masilo’s sincere but ill-defined ritual never quite catches fire. Friday’s audience was on its feet by the hour’s end; I was left entertained but strangely unmoved.

★★★☆☆

Touring to April 12, danceconsortium.com