SHE HAD THE ability to grab your eye and hold it, even if she was not centre stage or under the main spotlight. Watching her dance could raise your blood pressure and dilate your pupils from its sheer visceral extremes. Dancer/choreographer Dada Masilo had fire in her belly and was never afraid to show it. She passed away suddenly after a brief illness on 29 December 2024. She was 39.

Masilo’s career path was meteoric. She first awoke the attention of the dance industry as an 11-year-old. She could move like electricity was soaring through her body. And she had an energy that made you remember to cherish being alive. It was then, in 1996 that she was selected to dance for Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands at the Dance Factory in Newtown, Johannesburg. She was part of a pre-teen dance group called The Peacemakers, at the time, which had a mission to keep little girls out of harm’s way and off the street.

It was also in 1996 that Masilo started training at the Dance Factory. This establishment was rudimentary as a venue, but central and rich as Johannesburg’s dance heart. The venue of choice for many Dance Umbrella fixtures over the years, it was a safe space for difficult things to be said and unformed things to be tested. Performance artist Steven Cohen remembers Masilo as “a bubbling child rejoicing”, in a place which was both refuge and sanctuary.  

Another of Masilo’s friends commented that she never just liked something. She invested her whole heart and spirit into loving and knowing things completely. And these areas of knowledge for her were as diverse as the work of contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Shakespearean tragedies, Tswana dance traditions and the heritage that Michael Jackson’s moonwalking had left on her childhood sensibilities. She changed a seasoned audience’s understanding of Vivaldi in a measured moment, and danced African rhythms to Prokofiev.

Born Dikeledi Masilo on 21 February 1985, in Meadowlands, Soweto, having weathered childhood in a violent city, Masilo grew up to fearlessly use many traditional ballet stories from Europe to explore the underbelly of damage that they evoke. The implied scene of a gang rape is hauntingly central to her 2023 work The Sacrifice based on Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring, which toured the UK. And none of the women in her work, from Ophelia to Lady Macbeth, Giselle to Juliet, are modest shrinking violets. They all have stories to tell, even if their presence in the original tale was a cameo.  

She matriculated at the National School of the Arts in Braamfontein in 2002, majoring in Contemporary Dance. It was a discipline which spoke to her sense of respect for structured training and something to which she often returned, taking part in warming up sessions with the SA Ballet Theatre often, over the years. She used the tropes of tutus and tulle, but her medium was never classical ballet: it was always contemporary with a balletically trained body.  

In 2003 she worked briefly under Alfred Hinkel at Jazzart Dance Theatre in Cape Town. This was in preparation for her training in performance at the prestigious P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels, Belgium, which shaped her understanding of the importance and difficulty of choreography as a field.  

Dancing with various established companies and in a solo capacity, but also with her own company which was based on a tour-by-tour basis and operated under the auspices of the Dance Factory from 2010, Masilo was recognised for her unique presence onstage. Evoking performers such as soprano/conductor Barbara Hannigan who is able to perform simultaneously on both sides of that ‘golden line’ on the stage – making and doing – Masilo was able to perform in the works that she choreographed. And mostly did. It was like she was leading her dancers into combat with the story, from the front line.

In 2006 she was celebrated as the ‘Most Promising Female Dancer in a Contemporary Style’ by the Gauteng Arts and Culture MEC Award judges. It was the same year in which she performed in PJ Sabbagha’s Macbeth, as the evil and ambitious Lady Macbeth. Just 21, she captured the energy of this character with a rollicking subversiveness, a joy in the simple complexity of being and an ethos that was unforgettable.

The following year, she was the recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance. The latter catapulted her career, her personal confidence in her work and her audience awareness into the international dance space, where she was adored and received the kind of critical reception she needed. Her work took her all over the world, from Sadler’s Wells in London to Dansenhus in Oslo, Hopkins Centre in New York and the Opéra Grand in Avignon, to name but a few.

She was prolific and explosive in her work and her ideas and bold in breaking rules. From being crowned as ‘most promising’ to being lauded as ‘lifetime achiever’, Masilo was no stranger to big awards. The prizes were stepping stones for her, but seldom goals. She was a ruthless perfectionist and always expressed amazement at audience response to her work.

Her collaborative accolades were also high profile and celebrated. She worked on a variety of projects with dance and art luminaries William Kentridge, Ann Masina, Albert Silindokuhle Ibokwe Khoza, David April, PJ Sabbagha and Gregory Maqoma, among others. Her work is distinguished by her utter unabashed fearlessness. Unafraid to go bare on stage and voice her own opinions, she effectively changed the shape and appearance of contemporary dance in South Africa.

But Masilo was also a gifted teacher. She spent countless hours working with children at the Dance Factory and conducted master classes in dance all over the world. Her ability to touch the creative enthusiasm of a young person was deep and potent. She knew how to be on their level of perception without patronising or downplaying them.

At the beginning of December 2024, she was acknowledged by the City of Joburg as one of 44 “artistic icons in the City of Gold” with a star embedded into the wall of Soweto Theatre. This award meant a lot to her. It was the most important acknowledgement of her career ‘at home’.

At the time of her unexpected passing, she was working on a new autobiographical solo piece about the loss of loved ones. It was like a circle turning: her very first solo that she spoke about in press interviews at the beginning of her career focused on the loss of a beloved aunt to HIV/Aids.

Masilo’s humility was never a forced issue. She was shy to strangers and took time to identify friends. But once she did, it was for keeps and without bars. Masilo always found time to celebrate her friends and listen to their problems. She didn’t miss birthdays and she often gave more in empathy than she was willing or able to share herself.

With her impish gap-toothed grin and her sprite-like existence onstage and in the interstices of the stories she was telling, Masilo leaves a legacy that shifted an understanding of what dance from South Africa can be, anywhere in the world. Her repertoire is on paper European, but in its gut, universal, and in its litany of movements deeply African. In her hands, exoticism is rubbished with a shout, tribalism extinguished, every rule in the book turned on its side and beauty given a potent, guttural voice that is seldom pretty, never ordinary.

She leaves her mother, Faith, who she referred to as her Queen, her older sister, Ntsiki and literally thousands of dance colleagues, close friends and fans all over the world, in deep, incredulous mourning.