Dance: moving in the right direction
The story of the Garage Dance Ensemble is one of hope, help and upliftment
I’ve had a standing invitation for years to visit Okiep in Namaqualand during flower season (the area is quite something in spring). But earlier this year, when I committed to getting behind the wheel and heading determinedly to the Northern Cape, it was to see the polishing of a dance work by Garage Dance Ensemble. Its production Mooi Genoeg om Engels te Praat is set to the poetry of Ronelda Sonnet Kamfer-Trantraal.
The road to Okiep from Cape Town is long and desolate. Some drive it in six hours. I need closer to eight, being unaccustomed to road tripping. But my journey to the dusty former copper mining town close to the Namibian border was fairly straightforward compared to the career path of my hosts, Alfred Hinkel and John Linden, who, more than three decades after they had formed the first multiracial dance company in Namibia, returned to Okiep to establish Garage in 2011...
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