Kantel

The moment it tips

Contemporary dance · Woodstock, Cape Town

See the season

Who we are

Kantel is eight dancers and a sprung floor in a converted paint warehouse on Gympie Street, Woodstock. We make one full-length work a year, tour it to four venues, and then let it go. Nothing stays in repertoire past the season it was made for.

We build in the room. Nobody is handed choreography on the first day — the dancers bring material, we argue about it, and most of it is gone by week three. A piece is finished when the movement stops looking like choreography and starts looking like a decision.

Grondwerk

Fifty minutes for all eight dancers, made almost entirely below waist height. It started with a question Anele put to the room after a bad week — what happens if nobody is allowed to stand up — and we kept the rule for four months to see where it would break. It breaks twice, both times on purpose. Bokang Mosia plays the score live from the side of the stage on an upright with the lid off, working the frame and the floor as much as the keys. There is no interval and no curtain call. Tickets from R180, and R95 for students, working dancers and anyone who can show a Woodstock address at the box office.

The season

  • 14 – 24 March · Grondwerk · Baxter Flipside, Rondebosch. Eleven nights at 20:00, with a 15:00 matinee on both Sundays.
  • 2 – 5 May · Grondwerk · Barney Simon stage, The Market Theatre, Newtown. Four nights only, and the Saturday goes first.
  • 26 June – 4 July · Grondwerk · National Arts Festival, Makhanda. Nine performances at the Rhodes Box, plus an open rehearsal on the second Sunday morning.
  • 13 – 16 August · Open floor · Gympie Street, Woodstock. Four afternoons of unfinished material for next year's work. You sit on the floor, R60 at the door, no booking.

Four months in the room

Cut down from the Tuesday and Thursday rehearsal tapes between March and June. Nothing has been scored over it — what you hear is Bokang working the piece out in the corner, and the trains going past on the Cape Flats line. 9 min 20.

We are not trying to make it look easy. We are trying to make it look necessary.
Anele Ntsele · artistic director

Book the company

Touring, schools and co-productions