Radio Havana Cuba
Downloaded May 8, 2008
TOPIC OF THE WEEK

The Director of the South African International
Ballet Competition, Dirk Badenhorst, visits Havana
by Damián Donéstevez

Dirk Badenhorst is a founding member of The South African Ballet Theatre, the first fully independent professional classical ballet company in South Africa. He danced and toured the world with different companies Danza Lorca Spanish Dance, the Josè and Helena Montoya Spanish Dance and with the Performing Arts Company of Transvaal (PACT) Ballet, and started his professional ballet career with CAPAB Ballet Company. Badenhorst is currently Chief Executive Officer and Artistic Director for the South African International Ballet Competition, and directs the only full-time Ballet and Dance Academy in South Africa. During his recent visit to Cuba, Radio Havana Cuba's Damián Donéstevez caught up with Badenhorts and, in an exclusive interview, he had this to say:

- What your interests in Cuba are while you are visiting the country?

I'm the Director of a ballet competition -the South African International Ballet Competition- in Cape Town, which will have its next event in July 2010, right after the World Cup Soccer; I'm also the director of a contemporary dance company called Mzansi Productions and of a Ballet and Dance Academy in South Africa aiming to train dancers hopefully remotely as good as the dancers we find at the National Ballet School of Cuba.

I think the most impressive thing about my visit to the National Ballet School was the energy and love of dance that you see with the dancers, it's really incredible to see how these dancers were constructed from different spaces and places in their minds and in their bodies, and then toward the end have an incredible high level of training, the high standard we see whenever we travel the world where we have Cuban competitors and dancers.

That's what I'm hoping to achieve and that's why I wanted to come to Cuba to see what is happening in the world of dance in Cuba, what is it that's making the dancers as spectacular as they are when we see them on stage.

- Could you tell me about your academy -the Ballet and Dance Academy-, your company, what does it do, who are its dancers, what their training is.

The Ballet Academy is the first in South Africa, we have a full time ballet academy based on the system that you have at the Paris Opera or the Royal Ballet, where kids have auditions at the age of 9 or 10 and then they enter this program, which is a mixture of Vaganova World Academy of Dancing and something African, and then train so that when they leave school, which is by the age of 18, they have the option to be professional dancers in any company in the world or if they want to become a doctor or a lawyer they have the option to do that.

We have a teacher from Russia who is helping me develop the school, we have South African teachers, and I'm always looking for inputs from around the world to improve the level of training that we can offer the children.

The company is made up of classically trained dancers, and that's very important to me because I do enjoy classical ballet but they are also supposed to, in the next year or two, to develop a repertoire that is more representative of what we have in South Africa, the energies, the rhythms, the fields, the music, so that we can start having a real South African dance identity and not try to emulate the Royal Ballet or the Kyrov or the Bolshoi, so that we really start having something of our own.

- And what about the contemporary dance ensemble that you direct?

The contemporary dancers are part of this company and they are all classically trained with a tendency or a gift to be contemporary dancers as well. They are the ones that will definitely start mixing it up for us that will start achieving the integration that I would like to have in South Africa.

For many years in South Africa we had ballet companies and dance companies and that's changed in the last six to eight years, I was the Director of the South African Ballet Theater and at that time we had taken our company from having only one black dancer in the company when I started to a quarter of the company actually, close to a third of the company were black dancers, and I think it's very important for us to start showing in our arts what is happening in our lives, I think that arts reflects society and that's what we are trying to achieve with our dancers, our company and in our choreographies.

- Going back to the National Ballet School which you saw this morning, what influences do you see in the Cuban ballet style in terms of training, of how they dance?

I do think we can never say that it's completely only one thing, even though what I saw today is definitely Cuban, no doubt about it. Speaking to Mr. Fernando Alonso was an amazing experience to see what was the thinking behind what he was trying to create, but it's also fantastic to see that there is certainly an impact from the Russian dance training, the Vaganova, but there is also the very, very typical Cuban rhythms, the dancers' use of the hips, so you have a wonderful dance technique: fifth positions, turnout, beautiful Pointe work, wonderful balances, fantastic turns, but there is definitely an influence from the Russian styles.

What was also interesting is that there was a choreography that was done today that definitely has a Balanchinesque feel to it, it has the Balanchine traditions, Balanchine was actually a Russian trained dancer as well, who lived for many years and developed his style at the New York City Ballet, and so, that's definitely also there.

I think the most important thing about the Cuban dancing is the input that comes from the Cuban danseur, it's really kids from the streets of Cuba, from the life of Cuba that are interpreting their lives in their ballet training, so the ballet training is basically the same as what you get all over the world in good schools, with certain technical changes and definitely the Cuban influence.

- Was your interest in Cuban ballet and dance motivated by what you've seen worldwide, by the Cuban dancers who are dancing in international ballet companies or you had heard about Cuban dance?

In South Africa for many, many years we were not allowed even to know about Fidel Castro or we were always kind of told about him what we were hearing from the United States of America, but what he has achieved and accomplished in Cuba was something I always read about and then when I started seeing the Cuban dancers surface around the world, that's when I became interested in seeing how dance training and development was happening in Cuba. Particularly because Cuba was isolated from the rest of the world, I'm not talking about now, I'm talking about probably ten, fifteen years ago, and yet you have developed and created some of the best dancers around, and that's what I wanted to come and see, how did you achieve that? What's the magic that you have in your water that are creating these wonderful dancers, and I came to realize that the magic is not in the water, it's hard work, it's a dedicated teaching style both artistically and academic, because that's also very important, that your dancers need to understand what life is about, you want to have a thinking of the dancer on stage that at a certain moment he has to reflect life and you can't reflect life if you don't have a life to reflect.

-Do you think you could take this experience to your academy or benefit from this experience in your academy?

I'm hoping that there is a lot of benefit that's going to take place from this visit to Cuba in my Academy. First of all, my absolute enjoyment will come with me when I get on the plane, it will come in my suitcase, it will be around me but it will hopefully come in the way of future exchanges. I would love to have a system whereby we can take or invite some of the Cuban teachers and dancers to come and dance in South Africa, but reverse that as well, and hopefully have some South African dancers come and train and dance in Cuba as well.

There are so many different layers that could take place in, teachers, professional dancers, student dancers, so that's something that I will investigate into the future. Part of my visit to the school today was seeing what is happening from a medical perspective in your dance training, what facilities you have.

Now we have in South Africa a very strong exchange with doctors that come from Cuba to South Africa, and that is something I would like to look into as well, to see if we can, through the Department of Health and Department of Culture in South Africa, facilitate a process whereby we bring some of your doctors also to South Africa, because we all know that from a medical perspective taking care of dancers is a specially art form skill and I want to see how we can develop that in South Africa too.

- Would you like to see some students from the National Ballet School participate in your contest?

I would love that. I would definitely like 2 or 3 of your young dancers to come and dance in South Africa. It's so fantastic, it's an experience but it's really hard to emulate in any other way, except through these competitions, to have dancers from around the world share the same stage, share the same changing rooms, share ideas, learn from one alike, I think it's such an amazing experience, and then look at technical aspects of dancing. I would love that, yes.

- Maybe some students from your Academy or you yourself, or some teachers from your Academy could participate in the International Encounter that takes place here every year, this International Ballet Academies Encounter, which takes place in Havana, Cuba, in Easter, maybe that could be an opportunity for you.

That's definitely something I would be looking into, as well as hopefully your International Ballet Festival, so that's also something I would like to look into the next two or three years, but the Academic Encounters would be a fantastic way of initiating these exchanges, that would be fantastic for South African teachers to come and see what is happening here and again how life is impacted through the world of dance and to learn from your Cuban teachers, because I think there is so much that we can learn from one another, but in particular the Cuban teachers.

- You also visited the headquarters of the Danza Retazos Dance Ensemble. What are your impressions?

I was very fortunate, actually yesterday when I was walking in the streets of Old Havana, I was actually seeing of the young dancers rehearse on a square outside the studios, and I didn't know who they were and I was really impressed by their technique and the level of the choreography. Today I just went and met with ensemble director Isabel Bustos to see what we can also do in the future maybe together.

I just want to say: thank you very much to the whole of Cuba for supporting the development of the arts in such a fantastic way.




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