I could get a thesaurus out and string a long list of glowing adjectives together to describe Dada Masilo’s interpretation of Bizet’s Carmen, but the description that immediately springs to mind is: simply superb!

The way Masilo moves is breathtaking, and that’s not to take away from the rest of the dancers, who all come to within a hair’s breadth of her mastery of the body, creating a work of dance that, for over an hour, never lets up in its capacity to absorb the audience.

Less frenetic than Macbeth, and more seamless than Romeo and Juliet, Carmen runs a gamut of dance styles: from Spanish through ballet, classical, contemporary – to simple violence. Yet at no point is the work bitty: the styles are integrated seamlessly into and through one another.

Masilo has shown that she can calm her restless nerves, can move away from the frenetic pace which was a characteristic of her work over the last two festivals, and can be pliable, and sexy.

There may never have been a bolder, more erotic, Carmen, who can beg at José’s feet en pointe (and barefoot) and then turn around and shake her becoming backside at him.

José, danced by Gustin Makgeledisa, provides a satisfactory counterpoint to Carmen, but this is a work which shows the women to best effect, although Makgeledisa and Mpho Masilela as Escamillio have some wonderful scenes as they clash over the red gypsy rose, and all the men play their parts fantastically.

Yet almost nothing is ever perfect, nê? While I can find no fault in the dancing, with all thirteen cast members hardly putting a little finger wrong, Masilo as an actress seemed rather stuck in insolence. While she does it so well, there were one or two places where – although Bizet’s Carmen was cast as supremely self-sufficient and disdainful of convention – I felt it could have been tempered, for even Carmen must have let herself go to the joyous demands of love, temporarily at least.

That said, Carmen joins the list of brilliantly choreographed and danced performances accomplished by the bright star which is Masilo, and the packed house and ovation on its opening performance is, if you don’t want to take my word for it, further testimony to the fact.

If you have the slightest glimmer of interest in dance, you cannot miss this work of art. And if you are not interested in dance in the slightest, you must see this work, for it’ll change your mind.

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