After performing a harrowing scene in her version of Carmen 52 times, Dada Masilo is starting to hurt. "Why am I doing this to myself?" asks the diminutive dancer and choreographer. She has just finished rehearsing at the Dance Factory in Newtown, Johannesburg, the landmark institution where she began her training at age 11.Since then, she has won international acclaim for her fierce, feminist reinterpretations of classics. Masilo's rendition of Carmen is unique. She's fiddled with the narrative; turning Carmen's murder into a rape.Masilo's version of Swan Lake recast Siegfried (the main love interest) as a gay man forced into having to pay lobola for a wife.Masilo has been performing non-stop around the world since her version of Carmen debuted at the Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg in 2010.Be it performing Ophelia's haunting descent into madness in the Shakespeare-inspired The Bitter End of Rosemary or the rape of Carmen, Masilo is determined to reveal the suffering and abuse women endure.She said: "That's why it hurts so much to perform, because it's real. I'm not in the arts just to entertain. You need to make people aware of particular issues."She will have to relive that violent scene in Carmen many more times as before the end of the year she'll do it in Biaritz (France), Tbilisi (Georgia), Lausanne (Switzerland), Voiron (France),Vesoul (France), Istres (France), Ferrara (Italy), Bolzano (Italy), Brussels (Belgium) and Hamburg (Germany).Last week she performed, in a collaboration with William Kentridge, Refuse the Hour, at Yale and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.But being an international star is not as desirable a thing as you might think.Said Masilo: "My mother came and joined us in France this year. She was surprised to see that I was working all day. People think it is luxurious. We have class in the morning, a flamenco class, a rehearsal, then go over the notes. I do this every day."Masilo's dedication probably accounts for some of the popularity of Carmen, but audiences also turn out to see this chiskop South African take on the traditional western dance canon."Fast and furious" is a phrase that comes to mind when you see Masilo dance. It is not just the pace of her delivery that's so distinctive but the vocabulary: for she fuses Western and African dance forms with flamenco.She said: "I have to keep learning new techniques."Her rendition of Rite of Spring involves traditional Tswana dance gestures. She wanted to connect with her roots - she is Tswana - and in the process learn about traditional African dance, which is being eroded by its commercialisation for tourists."I first saw a Tswana dance at the Rosebank fleamarket. I got a proper teacher (to school me). I was waiting for the moves I had seen at the market but they never emerged. All I knew was the commercialised versions. The real thing is so hard (to learn)."Masilo will also participate in the Georgian International Festival of Arts (GIFT) in Tbilisi, Georgia, this November. She will perform Swan Lake at the Pittsburgh Dance Council in the US...