By Assent Menwe

• Assent Menwe is a third year fine arts student at the University of Johannesburg. She took part in the arts writing course facilitated by Robyn Sassen.

PAINTING and dance, courage and tutus: Tamara Osso. Photograph courtesy http://www.thatspace.co.za

TAMARA OSSO’S NEW work, Tutu, which debuted at the 29th Dance Umbrella earlier this month, is backed by a tale of escaping and reorganising social, cultural and personal structures and a focus on the complexity of the ease or difficulty with which the body moves. Osso spoke to My View about painting and dance, tutus and tradition, paralysis and movement earlier this month prior to the performance of her work at the Nunnery.

The work, choreographed by Shanell Winlock-Pailman and Laura Cameron is directed by Osso. It comprises four danced characters: the aloof woman, the busy lady, the man who doesn’t want to be seen and the unstable man. It is performed by Winlock-Painlman and Cameron as well as Nathan Botha and Kgotsofeleng Moshe.

Osso’s inspiration to write the story behind this piece came from her own practise in visual art and her love for movement: in addition to her dance credentials – she learnt classical ballet as a child and has been associated with several contemporary dance companies in South Africa, including Ballet Theatre Afrikan, Free Flight Dance Company, La Rosa Spanish Company and Moving Into Dance Mophatong – she graduated with a Fine Arts degree from Wits University in 2014. Blending her visual art with her dance-based endeavours, Osso is intent on creating a dance language which is fresh and unique.

Expressing frustration with her ideas that have often been forced to leap beyond the boundaries of being paintings, she says that some of her paintings were compromised because she felt an urgent need to express herself through bodily movement as well as with paint on canvas.

But this frustration and sense of urgency to use as much of her energy as possible in creating her work, rests also on her personal circumstances. The mother of a young boy with hemiplegia which is a condition that causes one side of the body to be paralysed, Osso focused Tutu specifically around not being able to move properly. Her gesture reaches from the personal into the universal: We can all relate to feeling physically limited or stuck; effectively our sense of stability in the world is one of the powerful factors that makes us relate to ourselves and how we experience life.

Under Osso’s directorial hand, Tutu describes how we all move differently; some faster and more slowly, based on our personal vulnerability.