Dancer and singer unite for live show with a 'strong feminist standpoint'

Kristi-Leigh Gresse is the 2021 Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year winner for dance. She chats to us about her collaboration with chart-topping singer songwriter Msaki, as part of the musician’s upcoming Bassline Live concert to promote her album Platinumb Heart at the Lyric Theatre at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg next week.

How did this collaboration come about?

 I’ve known of Msaki and her work for a while but I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet her. Recently, we did a shoot together for Standard Bank and formed a relationship.  I’ve always wanted to work with live musicians. I’ve worked with a vocalist in my own work but I  hadn’t had the chance to work in a setting where it’s someone’s live performance of their album and I infuse that with my own aesthetic and choreography.

Are there themes Msaki deals with in her songs that resonate with your own work as a dancer?

Definitely. Msaki comes across as a strong feminist voice and in my own work that’s important. I have a strong feminist standpoint when it comes to the rights of women and their place and purpose in this world. Msaki has a few songs that address those issues — we clicked immediately on that subject.

A number of the songs also deal with injustices committed against the people of this country and the government’s mishandling of our transition from apartheid to post-apartheid, and how that’s affected people on the ground. That’s a recurring theme in her work, especially on this album. My previous work has addressed that. My work Sullied deals not only with gender-based violence but also comments on how the government has mishandled this problem.

Obviously there are Msaki songs that speak about love and everybody can relate to that. I think it’s nice that there are a range of topics to explore but I think we found a lot of commonality in our protest stance.

Have you had opportunities to perform live since the pandemic? How are you feeling about returning to perform in front of a large audience?

Luckily, last year I had two opportunities to perform live but those were t small audiences. This will be the first time in two years that I’ll perform in front of a capacity audience. There’s a little bit of nerves, but I have to trust my body and my mind to know that I can. It’s exciting to have the energy of people celebrating art and music in one space.

How do you hope audiences will react to the performance?

 The one thing I hope everyone will experience is feeling something, anything, whether it’s anger for a particular thing we’re saying or hope or joy. I’ve gone through a process over the past two years of experiencing an inward-looking state and feeling numb to things. I hope we can bring some feeling back and people experience some light and a little joy.

• Msaki presents Platinumb Heart at Bassline Live at the Lyric Theatre on February 25. Tickets at Computicket.