Remembering Dada Masilo: The Choreographer who Transformed Classical Ballet Through an African Lens

Mary Corrigall

In December 2024, South African dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo passed away just a few weeks before what would have been her fortieth birthday. Masilo’s legacy, rests in her remarkable ability to deconstruct classical ballets such as Swan Lake and Giselle and imbue them with “an African identity.”

Though contemporary European choreographers such as Mats Ek and Angelin Preljocaj have also reinvented classic works, South African-born choreographer Robyn Orlin remarks that “It's almost as though the outside world was waiting for somebody like Dada to give a very contemporary African angle to what was predominantly a colonial art form.” 

Masilo's spirit will live on in Johannesburg's Dance Factory, an artistic hub in her hometown where she began her formal training at the age of 11. Even at a young age, “seeing her onstage was a game changer,” recalls Suzette le Sueur who runs the space and later became a producer of Masilo’s work. “She had an extraordinary stage presence and knew exactly where she was. She was completely at home in the theatre.”

Few will forget the vigour and energy that Masilo exuded as a performer. The characteristic manner in which her body pulsed and shuddered as if an electric shock was radiating through her petite frame captured the world's attention. Ultimately, it was the context in which she applied her unique gestural language, marrying ballet with traditional African dance in a drive to upturn Western classics that sealed her reputation internationally. 

At the age of 19, Masilo went to study for three years at Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s school P.A.R.T.S in Brussels, a place where Masilo also discovered the work of Pina Bausch, another strong influence. Though Masilo had been captivated by de Keersmaeker’s iconic contemporary work Drumming as a teen, Le Sueur recalls that two “did not always agree, but this pushed Dada to further articulate her own vision.”

Early on in her career, Masilo demonstrated a strong social consciousness that influenced the stories she sought to convey, says Gregory Maqoma, a South African choreographer and founder of the Vuyani Dance Company. Maqoma recalls working with Masilo on her first solo, Swan Lake, which debuted in New York in 2016. It centred on her aunt, who died of AIDS at a time when there was a stigma attached to this illness. The piece was “based on a text she wrote at 16, says Maqoma. “She was at that age already questioning society, norms and was concerned for humanity.”

For South Africans, Masilo's artistic vision carried further political import, challenging Western cultural domination by reclaiming and celebrating undervalued African traditions. Masilo was pushing this line before the term “decolonising” had become a Her anti-establishment bent included challenging norms around gender, race, or sexuality. “I don’t just want to be a body in space. I want to open up conversations about issues like homophobia and domestic violence . . . ,” said Masilo in an interview with Susan B. Apel. Her 2017 work Giselle, for example, sees abusive men avenged by women at the behest of a sangoma (a traditional healer). 

Masilo was often praised by critics for her “freshness” - an adjective that recurs frequently in reviews of her works. Much of that “freshness” relied on how she knitted traditional African dance choreography into the classics. And though positive reviews of her work may have followed most of her productions in Europe, she also battled critics. “There was this misconception, particularly from the die-hards who love the classics as they are,” says Maqoma. “They pulled her apart, looking at silly things - that her feet were not pointed.” Nonetheless, she received the UK Critic’s Circle 2020 National Dance Award for Outstanding Female Modern Performance and last year she received the Positano Leonide Massine Lifetime Achievement Award for Contemporary Choreography. 

In preparation for The Sacrifice, her final work that premiered in 2020 inspired by Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Masilo spent months with a Tswana dance specialist, according to David April, a choreographer who collaborated with Masilo on many productions. “She wanted to fully understand the vocabulary and find the meaning on her own before she brought in the dancers,” said April, who also tragically passed away in May of this year. “Whatever vocabulary she worked with it was with a deep understanding.” He believes that Masilo never set out to break boundaries, but followed the only path that resonated with her as an artist.

Mary Corrigall is a Cape Town-based arts commentator and director of the HEAT Festival.