A hybridised dance form

The post-apartheid era is continually accompanied by a cultural evolution among youths, as epitomized in labels such as Loxion Kulcha, which developed at the end of the 1990s. This era seeks to celebrate and affirm the history of the South African townships, unlike the Sophiatown youth who were consciously rejecting it, as well as to embrace global, popular culture. This era is represented in a new generation labelled, Generation Y:

Sometimes known as the Y Generation, contemporary black youth finds itself straddling cultural spaces. On the one hand, this generation is linked to its collective political and cultural past. On the other, it seeks, through conscious innovation, to establish an identity apart from (though not free of) Generation X, its parent culture, the politically active youth of the 1960s and 70s. (Bogatsu 2002, 2)

Youth in post-apartheid South Africa are growing up in a time of great transition. This transition in the country is experienced as a double one; from apartheid to democracy and from a closed society to one suddenly exposed to the full force of globalization, observes Bogatsu (2002, 1). This is especially true for the youth who are now continually exposed to music, style and fashion on a global level due to television, radio, the internet and advertising. "While township culture and identity have existed as long as the townships themselves, it is the performance of township culture that has emerged with a new vigour in the contemporary context", says Nuttall (2004, 437). It is from the constant awareness of new modes of performing found in new media that the performance of a township culture such as isipantsula becomes possible:

The notion of acting locally but thinking globally frames the Y cultural ideology. While advancing with modern and global developments is regarded as a primary

aspect of the new generation, being rooted in traditional ideologies and demonstrating a loyalty to local culture is equally indispensable to this new, innovative culture. (Bogatsu 2002, 3)

Sophiatown forms a part of these traditional ideologies. While young people of post­ apartheid South Africa may be more exposed to global ideologies, it is also within the tradition of urban 'culture' to re-appropriate global styles and ideas and create new ones. While young people of the 1950s rejected local styles due to the oppressive nature of their environment, the youth of today embrace the past as characterised by resistance politics. Pantsula dance, as it is known today, is a result of the innovation of Generation Y. Youth of the 1980s, amidst the violence in the township, created the form that was an amalgamation of a variety of influences. The Soweto uprising and the introduction of television in 1976 heralded a new era; television opened young people up to new manners and modes in which they could present themselves. Television allowed young people to see what was happening around the world and the appeal of popular dance cultures made a huge impact on the dance scenes at the time. Gregory Maqoma, a renowned South African choreographer who grew up in Soweto, says:

When television was introduced in 1976, my life was flooded with pop icons like Michael Jackson, George Michael, and Prince. I wanted to be like them; I wanted to be a star; I wanted to dress and dance like them. I started reproducing their dance routines and mixing them with South African popular rhythms and styles. (Maqoma 2011, 66)

By the 1980s, in the midst of the violence in the townships, the pantsula dance performers preferred to distance pantsula from the criminal image originally associated with the dance form. The change in clothing of pantsula dancers is evidence of this shift. Initially, in the styles of the mapantsula, expensive shoes from shops such as Spitz and Italian cuts were the only way to present oneself (Mbembe, Dlamini and Khunou 2004, 505). From the 1980s the dress code shifted to the All Stars shoe brand, Brentwood shirt and pants or Dickies shirts, pants and hats (Samuel 2001-2002, 55). Martial arts and Michael Jackson became major influences (Sichel in Sulcas 2013) while Clint Eastwood and Bruce Lee were apparently the most popular screen idols of this period (Glaser 2000, 135).The emergence of Kwaito music in the 1990s led pantsula dance to a new stage as a mainstream urban dance form in South

African townships (Samuel 2001-2002, 55). Today, house music is starting to take over as the music of choice for more contemporary dances18.

The constant fluidity of forms of self-expression is embedded in urban histories and memories. In Anthropology of Dance, Anya Peterson Royce (1977, 155) looks at the use of dance as an 'identity marked. She reflects on how globalisation reinforces the need to maintain or revive unique characteristics of particular societies instead of becoming a part of a global, 'homogenous mass'. Pantsula dance could be considered a marker of the unique characteristics that township communities in South Africa hold onto in the face of globalisation. Pantsula dance has a long history that is syncretic by nature. Pantsula dance today is complex. It is embedded in memory and a history of mapantsula from the youth- gang era of the 1970s and is constantly undergoing transformations as, along with globalisation, South Africa emerges out of apartheid and into an era of a robust democracy. The local experience of place among pantsula dancers who have grown up in townships is reflected in the evolving dance style. In this respect, it is easy to understand Royce's approach to dance as "one aspect of human behaviour inextricably bound up with all those aspects that make up the unity we call culture" (Royce 1977, 17-18). Today, the global and the local and the past and the present, are intricately interconnected to create the social, cultural and political dance phenomenon that is pantsula.