South Afric­an cho­reo­graph­er Nel­isi­we Xaba’s piece is a per­form­ance in the dark, a solo per­formed out of the public’s sight, which calls on all the oth­er senses.

Nel­isi­we Xaba’s new piece, Blind Spot/Blind Date, is, as the title explains, a blind per­form­ance. The South Afric­an cho­reo­graph­er pro­poses a pecu­li­ar piece, on a dark stage full of wafts of smoke; the per­form­ance hap­pens before the pub­lic but out of its sight, as a mov­ing body cre­ates rhythms and motifs, smells and sounds – breath­ing, run­ning, fid­get­ing, or the rust­ling of a spe­cially designed cos­tume – all amp­li­fied by the sound arrange­ment. To call on our sense of hear­ing, Nel­isi­we Xaba cre­ates a 360° ambi­ent sound­scape which will immerse the audi­ence in a sound cre­ation intric­ately con­nec­ted with the body, whose noises will be caught by micro­phones and pro­cessed live. By pla­cing vari­ous senses and sen­sa­tions at the heart of the pro­ject, Nel­isi­we Xaba con­firms the import­ance of the stage in the per­form­ing arts, after a long peri­od of pan­dem­ic lock­down where many shows have been per­formed and seen behind a com­puter screen. The cho­reo­graph­er opposes the dens­ity of a space shared by an artist and the audi­ence to online digit­al performances.