After Buru Isaac Mohlabane’s passing, the dream for a Pantsula Dance Academy lives on

Mary Corrigall

In December 2025 choreographer Buru Isaac Mohlabane, longtime co-director of the South African dance company Via Katlehong, passed away unexpectedly at 42. His death complicates the future of what he hoped would be the first formal school for pantsula – a dance style first born on Johannesburg mines before being popularised in townships during the apartheid era.

“Dance saved my life,” said South African choreographer Buru Isaac Mohlabane. “It took us from the streets and gave us the tools to live life in a positive way. We learnt discipline and how to take the right direction in life.” Mohlabane helped bring Pantsula to international prominence during his career.

Mohlabane first encountered pantsula in the late 80s, when it was passed down informally by and then more formally through the dance company Via Katlehong which he would later come to be a co-director. Due to the role Pantsula played in his life and his desire to create a safe space for the next generation, he was determined to establish a formal school for a Pantsula. But with Mohlabane’s unexpected passing at 42 in a car accident the project’s future is uncertain.

The Pantsual Dance Academy was envisioned as a multi-layered institution. Alongside a technical training center, it would house a media and research library documenting pantsula’s legacy from the 1950s onwards – including music, fashion, oral histories, and regional stylistic differences across South Africa. Hoping to provide a sanctuary for the next generation of youngsters facing tough social and economic conditions, Mohlabane was determined to establish the school in his former neighbourhood. 

Learning pantsula at a community youth club offered Mohlabane survival, structure, and a sanctuary amid the political and racial violence that defined the apartheid era. Through dance, he found a way to escape the conflict, a sense of belonging, and eventually a career with the Via Katlehong company that took him, and this distinctive urban dance form, to international stages. 

Via Katlehong was founded in the early 1990s as a community organisation with a clear social mission: to remove young people from the rough township streets and offer discipline, structure, and creative purpose through dance. From its relatively humble beginnings, Via Katlehong went on to achieve widespread international artistic acclaim, despite not being recognised as a legitimate academic dance discipline. 

Originating in the mining compounds near Johannesburg and shaped by influences such as gumboot dancing, jazz, marabi culture, and township street life, pantsula communicates the rhythms of labour, migration, resistance, and survival, carrying within it both the origins of the city and the enduring ingenuity of its citizens in the face of political and social adversity. It has evolved into one of South Africa’s most recognisable cultural symbols, frequently performed at events of national significance, such as the November 2025 G20 summit in Johannesburg.. But the lack of established training programmes and dedicated institutions for pantsula has hindered the art form from achieving the recognition and discipline Mohlabane believed it merits.

In 2006, Mohlabane and his Via Katlehong co-directors Vusi Mdoyi and Steven Faleni reached the decision that a formal school for pantsula needed to be established. Yet the plan was later abandoned because they “didn’t want to build the structure on rented land,” recalls Faleni. “We wanted to own and have the rights to the land.” Mohlabane, however, couldn't let go of his “ dream to create a peaceful and safe space for the next generation while keeping pantsula culture alive,” shared the choreographer a month before his tragic death. 

He sought support abroad – primarily in France, where he received support from the country’s Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Centre national de la danse (CN D), which helped fund research, curriculum development, and institutional networking, while also lending the project legitimacy and momentum. “The main idea of our support was to create all the opportunities so the school could open,” says Davy Brun, Director of the CN D in Lyon since 2019, who worked closely with Mohlabane on the project for the past years. International residencies were central to this emerging vision. By welcoming artists and researchers from abroad, the academy aimed to position pantsula within a global conversation on contemporary urban dance while generating incom@e streams that could subsidise training for local students.

Because the future Pantsula Dance Academy was being administered through a private company registered in Mohlabane’s name, his recent passing is now creating legal and organisational challenges. Whether the project continues through Mohlabane's structure or returns formally to Via Katlehong remains unresolved, according to Faleni.

Despite these obstacles, “The dream is not going to die,” insists Faleni, who says he intends to resume the plans Mohlabane had set in motion. “Everyone [in the pantsula community] supports the idea of the academy.” Mdoyi echoes this sentiment, emphasising that what matters most is not individual legacy but institutional continuity. For him, the academy represents a long-held collective aspiration: a school of excellence capable of sustaining itself, archiving its knowledge, and giving pantsula the recognition it has long deserved.

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

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