Mafalala2 + Há Mais

In 2008, ZOO/Thomas Hauert is celebrating its 10th anniversary by reviving its very first show, Cows in Space, as well as Há Mais, a piece that is very dear to Thomas Hauert. For this re-run, Há Mais will be presented with the piece Mafalala2 by the Mozambican choreographer Panaïbra Gabriel and his company CulturArte. The same dancers perform in both shows.

Mafalala2, performed by four dancers and a saxophonist, is inspired by Mozambican society, more specifically by ordinary utility objects that can be found in the streets of Maputo. They help us survive and their presence becomes just as important as life itself. Mafalala was one of the first suburbs of Maputo. Before independence, it was inhabited solely by black Mozambicans who arrived from the countryside to work in Lourenço Marques, as Maputo was then known. Lourenço Marques used to be inhabited by white Portuguese. Today, both Maputo and Mafalala experience a thorough mixture of cultures, people and ways of life.

Há mais (There's more) was created in 2002 by Thomas Hauert with 5 dancers from Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. It is a cross between traditional Mozambican and contemporary Western dance. Hauert and the dancers chose twelve traditional dances, distilled from them their basic motifs and incorporated them into a new entity. During the performance, this choreographic phrase is modified by the interaction with time, movement and space. The dancers keep to a circuit that is rooted in extremely precise systems of spatial organisation, which is a topic that frequently recurs in this company’s work. The performance also leaves room for guided improvisation, which is again typical of ZOO. The result is a wide variety of movements performed by the Mozambican dancers with staggering virtuosity. The African dance motifs are set alongside short musical passages by Stravinsky, most of which refer to old European dance forms.