Nelisiwe Xaba

Nelisiwe Xaba lives and works as a dancer and choreographer in Johannesburg. Xaba began her vibrant career in dance almost thirty years ago. She received a scholarship to study at the Johannesburg Dance Foundation, as well as the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London.
Before launching her solo career, Xaba worked with Pact Dance Company and Free Flight Dance Company. Since then Xaba has been involved in various multi-media projects, collaborating with choreographers, fashion designers, poets and other different forms of artists.
Her solo works and collaborations, including **Plasticization**, **They Look At Me and That’s All They Think**, **Sakhozi Says “Non” to the Venus**, **Correspondances**, (a collaboration with Kettly Noel) **Black!...White?, Uncles & Angels** and **Fremde Tanz** have toured extensively in South Africa and internationally.

Xaba participated in the 2013 Venice Biennale at the South African pavillion, performing adaptations from The Venus. She was awarded the FNB Art Prize for the Uncles & Angels film created with Mocke J van Veuren that same year. In 2016, she created Urban Mermaid for the 50th anniversary of the Goodman Gallery and also performed the piece at the Berliner Festspiele. In 2017, Xaba created Bang Bang Wo, a solo performance that interrogates the politics of 'help.' The piece was funded by the South African National Arts Council and premiered at The Centre For The Less Good Idea.

Nelisiwe Xaba’s recent collaboration Hominal/Xaba, with the Swiss dancer/choreographer Marie-Caroline Hominal, premiered in 2019 and is currently touring. Xaba’s sound installation, Nzinga was created for the 2020 Virtual National Arts Festival in Makhanda. In collaboration with Mocke J van Veuren, Xaba initiated Fake News, a dance project that employs live video projection to engage young students of movement, film and multimedia from academic and non academic institutions. Fake News encourages both the audience and participates to consider and question the idea of perceived truth.

Xaba has started InfluenZart, a live art, video and sound installation platform that first showcased at Carfax, on the 2nd of September 2022. Xaba is the recipient of the prestigious Villa Albertine residency in NewYork.

Projects

Listen to Nelisiwe Xaba & Mocke Jansen Van Veuren discuss their project, Fake News: