Walking in Plastic

Cape Town
Choreographer / performer: Mduduzi Nyembe
Poet / voice: Bandile Gumbi
Artist / director: Kai Lossgott
2009

Performance artist Mduduzi Nyembe presents a memory of a wounded woman, a dream for an absent father, and a dance in a street market for survival. They are ritual stories of the heartache of the slums – substance abuse, violence, gender inequalities, chronic unemployment, families’ incapacity to provide for and protect their children. Each of Nyembe’s characters, taken from his daily interactions in the township, is left, in the words of poet Bandile Gumbi, "a constant wanderer / always at the beginning of complete circles", trapped in the existential cycle of poverty.