Performance Art: Dancing for your rights

14 June 2016 - 10:11 By Mary Corrigall

Michikazu Matsune couldn't stop laughing when he read a story about an African-American dancer called Abdur Rahim Jackson who was asked to dance in order to prove he belonged to the Alvin Ailey company. Passport control officers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport made the request in 2008 and exposed how pervasive racial and cultural profiling remains.Yet it had Matsune in stitches; for not only was the incident completely absurd but ironic - the Ailey dance company challenges the prejudices surrounding African-American identity and some of the routines are derived from the slave era.Despite not having a Muslim name or being African-American, Japanese-born Matsune could, on some levels, identify with Jackson. Not only is constant travel a routine feature of a dancer's life, but around the time of Jackson's airport ''performance" Matsune had travelled to 24 countries to perform his One Hour Standing For work. As the title suggests it involved the 43-year-old standing inert for an hour in front of major tourist sites around the world.Matsune said the video-work "was a choreographic statement. I wanted to make a work where I was not moving at all but I could show how the world moved around me and that even these buildings in the background might also change".Matsune' s ''standing still" routine might not have gone down well with immigration officers. Matsune might have resisted dancing altogether, as he had reached a stage in his career where he had grown weary of contemporary dance - "it had become too abstract and I wanted to say things with my art".Jackson's story struck a chord with Matsune, haunted him even - and he began to secretly film and photograph border control personnel at entry points to different countries. He wanted to reverse the relationship - so that they were being scrutinised, rather than him."They became such interesting portraits. Some are strict and some are friendly. Who has the right to survey you? You have no rights when you arrive at these desks."These portraits will form part of Matsune's Dance If You Want to Enter My Country!, which will enjoy its South African debut this week at the Goethe-Institut's Goethe-on-Main venue at Maboneng. The work more or less presents an imaginative restaging of what occurred to Jackson at Ben-Gurion airport with Matsune dancing significant and well-known routines from the Alvin Ailey repertoires. Matsune does not share Jackson's identity but this allows him to highlight debates around identity."Where do I fit into this image and how do I disturb it? What expectations do I bring?" asks the Vienna-based performance artist.'Dance If You Want To Enter My Country!' will be performed at Goethe-on-Main on Thursday (June 16) at 6pm and Sunday at 2pm. An exhibition of Matsune's work and performance programme including local artists will also be included...

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