Llewellyn Mnguni is a South African dance artist, choreographer and an LGBTQIA+ activist. Their education in ballet and ballroom have added versatility to their perspective of contemporary dance, which utilises not only the classical, contemporary and showmanship of dance, but also the traditional South African dance heritage. They perform as Lulu Belle, and are currently based in Berlin, performing all around Europe.
TaikaBox: So let’s start from the beginning. You’ve said in other interviews that, as a kid, you used to just move around and knock things over, and your mother, being a dancer, saw this as something worth investigating!
Llewellyn: Yeah, as a kid, I kind of emulated what I used to see on television and all of the dancing shows that used to go on. I’d try to learn whatever was going on, whether it was Michael Jackson or Latin and Ballroom kinds of competitions that were shown on TV, especially on the BBC at the time. So I just danced around the corridors at home. And, you know, because I grew very quickly and always was this lanky, tall person from quite a young age, quite clumsy, I was knocking over vases, irritating my mother so much. So, she just said, “OK, let me take you to a dance school or something so that you just put that energy somewhere else instead of irritating me”. And that’s how I began my dance training.
I started with ballroom and latin dance, and it was just an amazing journey that evolved into other dance styles which I use now, but that’s how I grew up. And my mom actually used to do Latin and ballroom, but back in the day, you know, in the 70s and 80s, there was a lot of pressure for women to find a supposedly serious job. So her mother, my grandmother, told her: you need to get a real job, stop doing all of this stunt stuff. So she went into agriculture, and I now feel like she’s kind of living through me, with my career. But it’s really a lovely relationship we have in terms of the fact that I continued to do what she also loves.
How old were you when you started this journey of dance?
I was in primary school, something like 7th grade.
This would be in your early teens?
Yeah, early early teens – that’s when I started and it was only once in a while, maybe twice a week. It wasn’t very rigorous or serious at that point. I think things started getting serious only when I was like 14, 15, and then I was like I really want to do this.
In another TaikaTalk with a Tanzanian dance artist, he mentioned the importance of the community and what it meant to him when he was starting his dance education. Community has played a part in your development as a dancer as well, but it seems in a very different way, being femme.
Yeah… I come from a small town of Mafikeng in the Northwest Province of South Africa – three hours away from Johannesburg. It’s mainly Tswana people, and Tswana culture. Being queer has never been the easiest of journeys for me, especially coming from a small town. It was never something that I grew into or, you know, I didn’t choose to be feminine or or look like this. So it’s always been like an uphill battle. I grew up being teased and all of that stuff, but also in terms of like the dance community – like I never felt like I fit into any kind of box, you know. Everything is based on heteronormative storylines where the girl loves the guy and all that, and the stories about the woman falling in love with the man or the other way round. And I always felt like yeah, I’m in this story but I feel like a Joker. It never felt like I was appreciated or respected, just as a human being. So, it created this need for me to create my own stories, and to connect with people who have the same experiences, to uplift them and show up for them.
Some people might grow to resent those emotions and bow down, play the straight guy in a play or whatever, but you chose to do otherwise. How did you get on?
It definitely was hard at some points. But, in the beginning of my professional career, after going to high school and then going to university, it was a great time for me. I felt like I was in a safe space, able to create, and I wasn’t waiting for a paycheck – just studying and growing, and I never had in the back of my mind thought: “Oh, what if I don’t get hired for this because of that?”. I just was in a place where it was open for me to create and to be and to evolve. After university, I would look for the little moments when finding work, and I would end up not working for months upon months, because I wouldn’t change how I looked, even though I was very capable of doing the job.
It was – and it still is – really frustrating. It’s also funny because even my family was saying, “Maybe you should just give it up. You can see it’s not working out for you.” You know? Thank goodness I didn’t stop, because now I have regular work, I’m able to sustain myself, and also get to work with some amazing people.
So, when did ballet come into all this?
After doing Latin and ballroom, I kind of got tired because it started to feel like the same thing over and over again, all the time. It’s like a competition. We do the same dance. It just became too one dimensional for me, and I wanted something else. Then they brought in a new teacher from Johannesburg, who taught me my first contemporary dance class. And I was like, “wow, this is amazing, I love this, this is different”. It was more like storytelling, with just more context to it. And a friend of mine was applying to get into a Johannesburg art school for drama studies, and she told me about the school and showed me everything about it. I had just started taking those contemporary dance classes and got really excited about the school, and so I enrolled. I basically forced my parents to take me there. They really didn’t want me to go, seeing how serious this had become for me, but anyways, long story short, I got in.
When you first get there, you have to take at least one ballet class a week. So, ballet just became something I had to do. I would do contemporary dance, ballet, African dance, Spanish jazz dance, and all kinds of written subjects – history of music, history of dance. That’s where my journey with ballet began. I kind of hated it in the beginning, because it was so foreign to me. It was very difficult and the teachers, at least some of them, were from overseas from Europe or Russia, and it was very strict. I felt like I wasn’t being taken care of or explained to what the terms were, I was just thrown into it. But I kind of just persevered and just became good at it.
How do you feel now, when you utilise ballet in your performance?
I mean, I still have the same feelings. I did ballet just for the training and to understand my body. I never wanted to be a ballet dancer or to work at a ballet company, that was never my dream. I’m a contemporary dancer, but I still appreciate ballet and respect it for what it is, and I use it as a tool when I mix different dance forms. It really is interesting, especially when it comes to mean blending it or having it in juxtaposition with African dance. I love how it can be a contrasting dance form for me.
Your parents grew up and lived through the apartheid era, so they must have also thought that you need to have a steady income – because you never know what’s gonna happen. Were there any sort of remnants of it when you started?
I was really young, so I don’t remember anything of that. I remember that I went to one of the first integrated schools, so for me that was just normal. I never had a moment where I felt like, oh there is a separation between black and white people, because my first experience of grade one was like a mixture of races.
You’re quite cosmopolitan these days. Do you still regard South Africa as your home base? Is it something that you have to come back to, for family or friends, or just the country itself?
Mostly, for the visa [laughs]. I don’t know. I literally live my life on a plane or on a train. But I mean, I go home more often now because I get six months out of the year in terms of visa capacity. Next year I’m trying to move to Europe permanently, just so I’m not going up and down the map. I just really want to settle down and be where my work is, where my life really is. But I still love my country, I love my people. I still have friends there, and obviously my family is mostly why I go home.
Do you feel European by now?
I don’t know, I think I don’t even know what that means. I’m like a child of the world, an in between person.
Let’s talk about some of the stuff you’ve done. What do you see as your most important work so far at this point, if you have one?
I have a work called “Resilience”, which is my first collaboration with a visual artist or a photographer. That’s also the first time I got signed under a gallery as a performance artist. It was in Kalashnikov Gallery in Johannesburg, and they really mentored me and tried to push me to work with more visual artists instead of just dance choreographers. So, I created something that is part dance work and part film, but also a multidisciplinary show that has photography based on the actual dance piece. The artwork is sold, the performance is live, the music is original and I worked with the musician closely. So I really kind of went into the creation process with the musician, with the lighting, with the photographer, and kind of really had my footprint in every aspect of the show. And this happened during COVID! I created it during COVID because I was so frustrated without getting to move around. It’s based on telling quick stories and interviewing different kinds of people. I think it’s one of my favourite works because it was so hard to do.
It was originally going to be just a film. Then I thought, let’s do it. Let’s perform it, print out all the photography, sell the prints, and as everything started opening up, it happened. It was quite a big show and supposed to only be for a weekend or so, and it ended up being two weeks. It’s a great show that I’d love to bring back again, and to travel with it, hopefully.
Have you ever had the idea of collaborating the same piece but with other people, or do you stick to the original team?
I like to keep it as it is. To keep the idea as it is and not… I mean, I can expand on the idea, but I don’t like clutter. There’s one idea and already there’s so many people involved in this one show, so I like to keep the original kind of essence of it as it is. If I feel like something works, you shouldn’t do too much about it.
You’ve said that last year was a pretty good year for you – for instance, you had “Dark Matter” at the Antwerp Queer Festival, and that was a pretty big thing. That was a solo piece, wasn’t it?
Yes. That document is a new work, and it pays homage to killed queer and trans people, and those having committed suicide due to not dealing with life and homophobia, not being accepted by their families… It’s like this funeral procession that just says all the names of the people who passed away, and kind of lets these spirits be free. Because, in my culture, we always have to say people’s names, those who are our ancestors and who have given us support. It’s kind of a respect thing. So I did the Queer Festival and it was an amazing experience to be at a festival that was specifically for queer and trans people. It’s the most beautiful venue, a kind of a church chapel, which is alternatively used for aftercare for kids, an office space with a lot of NGO work, helping people who want to get married to have a space and a priest, and even a selection of wedding clothes to borrow. They do such amazing work. So, I felt like I had to perform there, especially with this kind of show, and this all happened last year. It was amazing to be able to get these opportunities and do that.
Looking back at the Dance Hack this May, it seemed to me that you somehow just took everything in your stride. You just came in and things started to happen. Is it always like that?
I don’t think so. I don’t know. I was just very comfortable, you know. Everyone was really lovely and easy, but also funny. And I just love comedy and life, I love to just be like “ohh, you know, let’s not get stressed about this or about each other”. It’s just, you know – let’s have a good time. It’s the best way to work for me, and I felt like everyone was on that level, and that’s why I just felt at ease. I didn’t once feel uncomfortable, and I was just ready to learn, absorb and just be with everyone. It was just such a joy.
I also noticed how quickly you could change from ballet movement to a very traditional, rhythmic feeling – not necessarily moving a lot, but your performance with the mannequins was very intense. I started to wonder if this is something you actively develop or hone in your process.
I think I realised in art school that I’m actually a choreographer, I’m not just a dancer, and I really started to try and learn as many dance forms as I could, because I thought that if I’m a choreographer, the intelligent thing to do is to try to use my body as a vessel. Because, if I’m going to teach someone my choreography, I have to have the physicality to express what I’m trying to say, what I’m trying to choreograph. By learning as many dance forms as I can and really just pushing it will make it easier, but also, I love that. I love doing different jobs. I love learning new things, even as recently as two years ago I was learning about voguing. I also love deconstructing all of the things I’ve learned, especially ballet, because ballet takes over your body – you walk differently, you dance differently even with other dance forms.
Yeah, just to be able to, I don’t know, express yourself differently, or find out different ways to communicate. So I love doing that. I love transforming and being moldable. There’s so many calls for different emotions and different ways of expressing, in terms of music as well, and I don’t want to be one dimensional in the way that I can move. So, I think that’s just my process.
I felt that you were very comfortable using technology during the Hack. Does tech play a part in how you design a performance, or in your choreography? Do you usually use technology?
Yes, I mean I’ve done MoCap before. I’ve done a MoCap commercial and I really was interested in that, and at some point I want to expand that more. I love, you know, videography. I wanted to really get into video mapping more. I’m also a DJ, so music is like a big part of my whole journey. I usually choreograph if I hear something great, you know, music is my first impetus. So yeah, so for me, technology is like I’ve always been just interested in finding out what is new and what is interesting. There’s a lot of great South African choreographers and stuff, but they’re all doing the same thing, and I always want to stand out and do something new, something fresh, to have a different way of thinking about what dance really is and how it’s seen.
What sort of vision do you have for the near future? If we think about whether technology comes into it, or do you have some sort of stuff that you are eager to try?
Video mapping is definitely on the top of my list. I really want to do more of that stuff, more MoCap work, and I want to find a way to do some sort of movement process, creating sounds and music while moving, especially inside specific spaces – I love site specific spaces a lot. It’s just like being closer to the audience. There’s always a story about a building, where it comes from and its history, who has been there – I love that instead of a theatre, which I find one-dimensional, where you only see the person in, you know, just face value.
Some artists prefer venues that are designed for something else, using them differently. What’s your take on that – do you like to work in a very controlled environment, or do you just want to go on church stairs and start dancing?
During the Oulu Dance Hack, I think I only noticed on the fourth day that “Oh my god, we’ve been in this dark space doing all this stuff” – I mean, it didn’t really affect me that much, until someone mentioned it. And then it was like, “can we go outside?” But I think I love being in that kind of space, because I feel like the ideas are created in a space like that. If it’s open and there’s too much going on, it’s too distracting for me. So, I prefer a rehearsal place or a studio. It has to be a controlled environment, especially when you’re doing things with technology – you really need to be able to see what you’re doing, you need to play and not have traffic or lights or the sunlight coming in, all of that.
Then again, there’s the idea of using the venue as it is, but for something it’s not meant to. Use the pillars in the subway station, or the escalators, whatever there is. Do you have any sort of site specific performance you’ve done, but in a weird location?
Jeez… Yes, I’ve done a show for Spotify. A designer called Thebe Magugu did a kind of sonic experience with his favorite musicians from South Africa, and I was dancing for one musician. We performed at a lake. We were going up and down a hill and then into the water, and there’s dry ice being used, and… It was very like the elements, which was crazy, I was wondering “what is in this water?” You know, we’re just taking risks for the show. But it was beautiful, and it became such a spiritual experience because it’s just being with nature. The singer in question is a very spiritual singer, very connected with their ancestors and has an operatic voice, which made it all the more intense. Nature as an element to elevate a dance work, to a small audience.
Would you like to talk about the role of culture and dance in activism? In your case, sexual equality, specifically.
I try not to be a very political person, nor involved in politics, because it’s just messy for me. But I feel like different art forms, especially dance, are just really important in terms of reminding people of what life really means to you. I think there are so many things – expressions and meanings – that you can’t express in words. So I think it’s a very important life lesson that dance has, in terms of reminding us about what is really important, what life is about, what it really means.
I mean, I use dance like activism especially for queer people, for young people, you know? Youth currently lost in the world. We need to find a way to feel something around the chaos. Dancing is a healing mechanism, especially for trauma. There’s nothing like feeling your own body and really recognizing that there’s this living vessel that you are going through this chaos with, you know? So yeah, I feel that dance and movement are important and they remind us that we can feel, that we can heal, and that we’re actually here.
Llewellyn Mnguni was chatting online with Pasi Pirttiaho