Mthuthuzeli November: making ballet with humanity

Ahead of the premiere of his Rhapsodies for Ballett Zürich, and shortly afterwards of For What It’s Worth for The Royal Ballet, Maggie Foyer looks at the work of the in-demand South African choreographer.

Mthuthuzeli is an unusual name in the ballet world, but not difficult to pronounce. You start with a hum, add a ‘tutu’ and finish on ‘zeli’. Fiona Sutton, who first introduced Mthuthuzeli to ballet thought that with a name like ‘Tutu’ he was destined to be a ballet dancer and she was not wrong.

“She was an angel,” says Mthuthuzeli. “She introduced me to ballet in an environment of shared cultures, respecting both. She managed to let me stay African when I started. I didn’t have to leave my Kwaito dance behind.” Football was the other big attraction, but he made the switch and ballet is the winner. Now 30 years-old, this talented Capetonian is making quite a name for himself in Europe.

A scholarship to the Cape Academy of Performing Arts (CAPA) was the start of his formal training and opened many doors. He trained in ballet, contemporary dance, drama and choreography, in a creative environment where he worked with influential international choreographers like Jose Agudo and Christopher Huggins.

Director, Debbie Turner, is fulsome in her praise. “Mthuthu really took everything with both hands, all day, every day. He was so open.” At CAPA, he was encouraged to choreograph. Among his first works were contemporary dance solos which won him gold at the South African International Ballet Competition in 2012 and 2014. He was also awarded the South African Emerging Artist Award at the country’s largest national arts festival.

He graduated from CAPA with distinction as the top student and gained a scholarship to Central School of Ballet in London. Performing in the student company he was spotted by Cassa Pancho, artistic director of Ballet Black, a company of Black and Asian dancers based in London. He joined the company, rising through the ranks to become senior artist.

While still dancing with the company, he has created works for The Grange Festival, solos for English National Ballet’s Emerging Artist Award, Cape Town Opera, Cape Town City Ballet, Northern Ballet and Tanz Ensemble|Luzerner Theater. He and his dance partner at Ballet Black, Cira Robinson, had the thrill of performing a duet on the iconic pyramid stage to tens of thousands in Glastonbury 2019 as part of Grime artist Stormzy’s headline act.

However, it was at Ballet Black where he had the chance to develop his choreographic skills with a fusion of Western and African dance. In 2022, his ballet Ingoma won the highly prestigious Olivier Award and the Black Theatre Dance Award. A ground-breaking work, it tells the story of the South African gold miners’ strikes of 1946.

The strikes were driven by poverty and an overwhelming sense of injustice but Mthuthuzeli’s ballet focuses on the steadfastness of the workers and their women. The choreography blends contemporary dance and ballet, gumboots and pointe shoes, energy in labour and protest, but also the power of love that kept the community going. Peter Johnston, a contact from CAPA, wrote the music, with Mthuthuzeli adding text in his home language of Xhosa in a deepfelt fusion of human emotions.

Mthuthuzeli has since used other significant subjects. Nina: By Whatever Means is an award-winning work on the life of Nina Simone. His first film, Like Water, referenced the trans-Atlantic slave trade and garnered a slew of awards. Performed by Ballet Black dancers on a deserted beach, it successfully blends text in English and Xhosa, grounding an essential memory and interpreting it through the human experience. He has proved he can also get a handle on more universal themes. In The Waiting Game, he ponders existential questions of who we are and why we’re here in a thought-provoking work delivered in a highly entertaining package.

Mthuthuzeli stresses the importance of the music in his creative process. “When you find music you can connect to and that makes people feel something, you’re going in the right direction.”

Accepting the Ballett Zürich commission and taking over a work with title, design elements and music already chosen, was a huge challenge. He accepted it partly because he was familiar with the music, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, although it will be heard in its two-piano, four-hand arrangement, played by Robert Kolinsky and Tomas Dratva.

“It’s a great opportunity to make a work for the company but I needed to step back, think differently. Adjust but not forget who I am. As a Black choreographer there is the need to prove I can do the ballet and neoclassical stuff, but when I moved to Europe, I realised I wasn’t going to be anything if I tried to be a black Wayne MacGregor. I needed to accept that where I came from was the one thing that put me where I am, and I need to carry that with me.”

Mthuthuzeli loves the human voice and in the pause between the movements in Gershwin’s music, he has inserted a very personal moment. “I used the voices of the dancers to take us into our world. It’s the most emotional part,” he confessed. “Because so much of the work was already named and shaped, I needed to offer something of myself.”

Humanity shines through Mthuthuzeli’s work and it’s nurtured in the rehearsal room. “There is something important about a sense of community and I always start rehearsals in a circle checking on how each individual is feeling. There must be a mutual understanding that we are all there for the same thing. It’s amazing what you can get out of people when they trust you and they are having fun. I always channel my inner child. It’s something I got from Fiona. I remember as a barefoot child dancing to the music like no one was watching and the emotional feeling that I would get from that. I get such a thrill from entering a room and seeing how happy what I do makes people.”

There was recently one more great thrill. At the end of last season, Ballet Black toured to Toronto and Mthuthuzeli had the chance to perform with his younger brother Siphesile, who gained a scholarship to the National Ballet School in Vancouver and is now a principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada. For the first time, since they were children in Zolani the brothers danced together in My Mother’s Son.

Barely a month after his Zürich premiere, his first Royal Ballet commission, For What It’s Worth, opens on the main stage at Covent Garden. Mthuthuzeli November is definitely a man on the move.

Mthuthuzeli November’s Rhapsodies premieres as part of Ballett Zürich’s Timekeepers programme at the Opera House, Zürich on January 20, 2024.

For What It’s Worth premieres as part of The Royal Ballet’s New Works programme, part of the Festival of New Choreography, at The Royal Opera House, London on February 15, 2024.