Vincent Mantsoe’s intuitive performance brings immediacy to his presence

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A question I like to think about when it comes to dance is how the form can actively distinguish itself from other live performance – what can dance do that theatre and music cannot? Watching Vincent Mantsoe perform in Toronto last week, I found myself thinking about the unique way that dance can frame "presence," and I mean that in both senses of the word – the present tense and that elusive quality that we attribute to the most compelling performers.

The South African dancer is currently touring Canada with two solos in his repertoire, NTU (commissioned by the National Arts Centre in Ottawa) and Skwatta. Over the past 20 years, Mantsoe has built an international reputation for himself as a choreographer and dancer, fusing African dance with Martha Graham technique, martial arts, classical Indian dance and tai chi. Critics have been consistently impressed by the emotional force of his work and the trance-like focus that makes the movements appear so internally motivated that they seem improvised.

The funny thing about watching Mantsoe perform is that a well-landed turn – the sudden incursion of technique – comes as a kind of surprise. It's as though we've forgotten that the performance is set and, at least to a certain degree, technique-based. Instead, his choreography appears to be so charged and intuitive that there's a feeling that anything could happen, and not just from our perspective as spectators. Flung wildly into a sequence of rash and combative steps, Mantsoe looks as though he might surprise himself. And when this is coupled with the physical intensity of his performance – we hear him breathe, see him sweat, watch him exhaust himself – there's a sense of contingency and suspense that glues us, intractably, to the moment.

I wonder if these qualities can be connected to the way Mantsoe began dancing. When we speak on the phone before his Canadian tour (his dance company, Association NOA, is based near Clermont-Ferrand, France), he says that he isn't sure that he would be a dancer today if he hadn't grown up in Soweto during apartheid. With the subpar educational facilities in his black-segregated township, he found himself, as a teenager, frequently killing time on the street with friends, looking out for police cars in order to outrun random beatings or watching for the threat of packs of dogs. The lawlessness of his adolescence demanded sharp reflexes and speed – he kept an eye cast over one shoulder, always ready to take flight.

"We were already so physical," Mantsoe tells me. "We wanted to run away or were busy wondering when the police would arrive. So basically there was no future for us. Either you thought your future would be jail or that you'd be shot."

Growing up with so much anxiety around movement, and the sense that the future was irrelevant, Mantsoe and his friends were drawn to music videos of street-dancing. Inspired by the expressive freedom that young black men had in the United States, they copied Michael Jackson's thrusts and pivots, while studying some of the flashier choreography from the movie Fame.

But it was Mantsoe's simultaneous exposure to spirituality that solidified his passion for dance. He comes from a family of sangomas – traditional female spiritual healers who played an important role in the black community throughout apartheid because (as Mantsoe tells me) of their ability to communicate with the dead.

"When I was young, my family and I woke up every morning at 4:30. We'd wake up and beat the drum and dance for two or three hours."

"You did that every morning?" I ask.

"Oh yes." He chuckles. "Every morning."

"With your whole family?"

"Oh yeah." He laughs again at my incredulity. "I mean it would depend. Some people, of course, would be tired. But I'd wake up early with my mum. It was a whole ritualistic process of trying to find myself." Mantsoe tells me that he has just returned from leading a two-week-long choreographic master class in Chad, before which he was teaching in China and Egypt. He is frequently in international demand, having performed many times in New York and across Europe. But he explains that he doesn't perform very often in France, despite it being his base, because of some wariness on the part of a few French curators.

"I think they want to see something extreme or something where there's nothing there. For example, people come onstage and they do nothing. Or they want to see something more intellectual. And I don't do those kind of things. I move my body. I speak with my body. Of course, the audience, when they see me dance, they can feel the spiritual force behind my movement and they appreciate the honesty. But the curators, worrying about the image of the theatre, are looking for something else."

I sense a similar frustration when he relates his recent tour of Skwatta in the U.S.

"U.S. audiences found it very complicated. Of course, people who aren't familiar with African history or the spirituality of the movements might find it very difficult to read. I tend to say: You don't have to try to understand too much or analyze the piece, but try instead to feel the spirituality of each character – try to be open-minded."

I found myself mulling over this quandary when I looked around at the many empty seats on opening night at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. It made me think that Mantsoe's advice is worth passing on to audiences in Ottawa and Vancouver, who shouldn't miss the opportunity to see such an electrifying performer: Resist the urge to fall back on preconceptions or jump forward to interpretation and commit, instead, to the immediacy of Mantsoe's presence.

Vincent Mantsoe performs NTU and Skwatta at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Feb. 5-7 (nac-cna.ca), and the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver, Feb. 11-14 (firehallartscentre.ca).