Nelisiwe Xaba / Mocke J van Veuren (ZA): Uncles & Angels

Nelisiwe Xaba / Mocke J van Veuren (ZA)
Uncles & Angels
Austrian premiere

Date: Wed, Jan 16, 15:00
Location: TQW / Halle G

In 2011, more than 30.000 young Zulu girls participated in the annual Reed Dance, a colourful celebration that promotes respect for young women and preserves the custom of keeping girls as virgins until marriage. This tradition has been re-established by the King in the late 1980s in response to the emergence of the AIDS crisis and today, the line of reasoning is that culturally enforcing sexual chastity for girls will be an effective means of curbing the spread of HIV. This at a time when gyrating young female bodies are used in election campaigns and the Reed Dance has become a tourist attraction. In light of this, South-African choreographer and dancer Nelisiwe Xaba and filmmaker Mocke J van Veuren explore questions of chastity, virginity testing, purity, and tradition, while at the same time casting a wry glance at the power relations encoded within corporeal interaction. Uncles & Angels presents a compelling examination of the manipulation of cultural heritage when looking towards tradition for solutions to contemporary problems and using physical and ethical arguments of intactness and vulnerability for political purpose.

In the framework of SCORES N°6.


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