Tavaziva Dance: Boy’s Khaya

Peckham Theatre, London
September 29, 2023

Bawren Tavaziva, a Zimbabwean choreographer and dancer, who has made London his home, chose a biographical theme for his new production, Boy’s Khaya. It took place at the modern 200-seater Theatre Peckham, an award-winning venue that strives for artistic excellence and social change.

Tavaziva is also hoping for social change. He notes we still live in a world of segregation where an apartheid system operates in England, America and even in China then moves on to draw focus to the Black Lives Matter movement. However, concepts lose meaning when applied with too broad a brush as they are here, and the performance would have benefitted from a tighter focus.

The ‘Khaya’ in the title refers to the servant’s quarters in colonial Africa, in Tavaziva’s case a miserable room with a toilet where, as a child, he would be locked in while his parents went to work. The misery of this time remains to haunt him and inspired the work.

Boy’s Khaya has dance, music and spoken text but the elements do not always find themselves on the same page. The theme becomes most real when Tavaziva speaks of being born in love with the text accompanying a woman’s solo. Here there was a clear relationship, albeit one that needs to be developed further.

Tavaziva’s choreography, a fusion of contemporary, ballet and African dance is predominantly up tempo, and deftly articulated. The work has many duets in diverse mixes of male and female in various combinations from the two men and three women. Although Tavaziva enthuses of a time when black and white dancers would work together, his dancers, good, experienced performers, are all white. However, they approached the African style of movement interspersed with ballet steps, with vigour and enthusiasm.

In the voice-over Tavaziva described his youth and his sense of an unequal world but it seemed to have little connection with the action on stage. However, the costumes, designed and made by Ben Voorhaar and Sabrina Zyla, flesh-coloured tights with a red rope trim, hint at a type of bondage. Tavaziva’s message is important, Black Lives do Matter. The dancers did well and delivered performances with passion, but the choreography needs to engage and excite more to get the message across.