HOT LUNCH | Healing the world though choir and ballet

Neo Muyanga forgot to eat yesterday. Who can blame him?

Somewhere behind us, deep inside the Joburg Theatre, 70 choristers are warming up their voices, the dancers of Joburg Ballet are marking choreography, and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra is tuning before the final dress rehearsals of The Bacchae.

The ancient Greek tragedy has been revisited and reimagined by Muyanga, inspired by Wole Soyinka’s radical adaptation of the 1970s. The result is something he believes has never quite existed before: a choral ballet bringing together more than 120 performers to tell one of civilisation’s oldest stories.

Despite the scale of it all, Muyanga seems preternaturally calm. Still, he concedes that after surviving almost entirely on black coffee the previous day, breakfast might be a good idea. We settle into the newly renovated Stages Café in the theatre foyer.

“This is what rehearsals do,” he laughs. “Yesterday I got home and realised I hadn’t eaten anything all day. But this production is enormous. Seventy singers, around 30 dancers and a full orchestra. It’s an enormous act of collaboration.”

Collaboration, it turns out, is one of his favourite words.

He grew up in Mofolo South, Soweto, before political upheaval forced his family to leave during the state of emergency.

“I left Soweto when I was 11 and became, in many ways, peripatetic from then onwards. I lived with relatives in the Free State, spent time with grandparents in rural Botswana and eventually found myself in Italy. But Soweto always remained home.”

My choir master didn’t speak a word of English, so for months we communicated almost entirely through music

—  Neo Muyanga, artist

Music travelled with him.

“My whole family sang. Nobody was a professional musician, but everybody sang. Choirs became the thread running through every chapter of my life.”

That thread deepened when he won a scholarship to the United World College near Trieste at 16.

“I didn’t speak Italian,” he recalls. “The first place I found belonging was the choir. My choir master didn’t speak a word of English, so for months we communicated almost entirely through music.

“He introduced me to madrigals, and suddenly I discovered something extraordinary. These Renaissance compositions reminded me of African song-making. Every voice carries equal importance. Every singer has to listen deeply to everyone else. It was European music, but somehow it sounded like home.”

The conversation drifts naturally towards why human beings sing at all.

“There’s a way in which certain sounds connect directly to your body,” he says. “Certain frequencies literally cause your heart to vibrate differently. Fear lives high in the voice. Anger often lives in the chest. But when you feel safe, when you feel held, when you truly feel at home, your voice settles lower. That’s where your authentic voice lives.”

But it is singing together, he believes, that changes us most profoundly.

“Choirs are machines for making community,” he says. “Think about it. If you and I join the same choir every Thursday evening, we don’t have to become friends immediately. We don’t have to agree politically. We don’t even have to know anything about each other’s lives. The simple act of breathing together, listening together and singing together every week slowly builds trust. It creates belonging. That’s one of humanity’s oldest technologies.”

He believes South Africans understand this instinctively.

“We are a singing people. Everybody here sings. People immediately know how to find their harmony. Visitors often ask me, ‘How do South Africans do that?’ I can’t explain it technically. It’s simply in our cultural water. At a time when the world feels increasingly fractured and polarised, knowing how to create belonging may be one of our greatest gifts.”

Science, he suggests, is only now catching up with what choirs have always known.

“I’ve started choirs all over the world,” he says. “Again and again, I’ve watched people heal simply through singing together. Sometimes the songs have nothing to do with their trauma. Healing isn’t necessarily in the lyrics. It’s in the act of making sound together.”

That philosophy flows directly into The Bacchae.

“Greek tragedy emerged during moments of societal crisis,” he says. “It wasn’t entertainment. It was a way for societies to think through upheaval together. The chorus wasn’t simply there to comment on the action. It was where communities built conscience. It was where people learnt who they were in relation to one another.”

The danger comes when we think we’ve arrived at certainty

Muyanga describes theatre as a spiritual experience.

“You leave ordinary life behind for a few hours. You gather with strangers. Together you think, you feel and you imagine differently. Then you return to everyday life carrying something of that experience with you. That’s what theatre has always done.”

Before he disappears upstairs for rehearsal, I ask the traditional Hot Lunch question: what have you learnt?

He laughs.

“I’m still learning. I’m still struggling to learn how to remain curious. I think that’s one of the great disciplines of our time — to remain curious about more than your own story, more than your own point of view.”

Then he leaves me with one final thought.

“I’ve never been convinced that answers are the most important thing in life. Every good answer should simply lead us to a better question. The danger comes when we think we’ve arrived at certainty. Curiosity keeps us alive.”

His coffee arrives in a takeaway cup.

The orchestra is waiting.

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