Gallery

2005 — Artscape performance of Spring Selection with Cape Town City Ballet

Zama dancers backstage with Megan Swart from Cape Town City Ballet

2004 — Artscape performance of Collaborations, directed by Debbie Turner

Glowing Embers was performed by Michelle Biyana, Monica Maxengana,
Phumza Maqongo, Mamela Nyamza and Ruth Mpuhlu

1992 — AA Life Vita Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg

"After a programme laden with dance of alienation, absurdity, abstraction and angst, the closing Glowing Embers from Cape Town's Zama Dance School came as a relief. It was a reminder that contemporary movement need not be preoccupied solely with the ugly side of life. Choreographed by Nandipha Gogela and Phumza Maqongo, assisted by Arlene Westergaard, it found freshness in simplicity, with skeins of basic movement developed in harmony. It was not only the long tangerine skirts and turbans for the five dancers which conveyed a hint of the Caribbean, for the supple backbends, rippling upper torsos, curving arms and billows created by the hems of the skirts were also evocative of the dance heritage from the Pacific rim. It was serene, lovely to watch and unpretentious — three elements missing from many of the other frenetic works on programme two."
Marilyn Jenkins, The Citizen, 7 March 1992 — Dance Umbrella Programme 2 review

"Yet again Zama Dance School from Gugulethu in Cape Town affirms there is a place for ballet in a new-look South Africa. Nandipha Gogela (19) and Andile Sotiya (15) dance Westergaard's Field of the Dead set to Prokofiev's Cantata for Alexander Nevsky with technical focus and feeling. The sombre lyricism of this duet for a grieving woman and a dead soldier fuses ballet technique and an African dynamic for a cameo work with universal and indigenous resonances."
Adrienne Sichel, The Star Tonight, 6 March, 1992 — Dance Umbrella Programme 1 review