Performance Art
by Leán Bakker
Dance background:
Leán was one of the founder members of the PACT Contemporary dance company in 1988 - 1992. Later dancing for the Arts Council of Bophuthatswana 1992-1994.
She has performed and choreographed for all the major stages and arts festivals in South Africa. in 2001, her full length dance production "Vlees" won top accolades at the Aartvark Prize.
She continues to dance as a way of life and sporadically creates performance art pieces to give expression to her life.
Live Transmission from Brazil
11 July 2025. Serra Grande, Bahia, Brazil
While visiting Brazil, I decided to create a performance art work. I call this 'Live Transmission'. During the performance, I channel Life-force energy. It feels like a ball of life moving me from the inside. This is also my own celebration of my 56th birthday. I chose the accompaniment of the Berimbao. The musician is called Mapinha. She is from Italy and she regularly visits Brazil to further her study in Capoeira and the berimbao. She has been studying this art for twenty years. I am from South Africa and she is from Italy and we are both giving expression to our art in Brazil. During the performance we tuned into a mutual frequency to create the music and the movement in the moment. Watch and listen how the sound and the movement are one.
I worked with the elements of the snake and of water as a representation of the flow of life-force and how it touches our bodies. The screen was added an hour before the show to hide building rubble behind the scene. The shadows added an unexpected dimension to the work and I am humbled by the beauty of the accidental light play.
Why is it Performance Art?
Performance art serves the purpose of giving the audience a somatic experience. The art is in the experiencing of a feeling. This feeling will be experienced from a different perspective by every viewer. During the performance it is apparent (especially in the live transmission) that I am in Full-body Gasm. I am dancing my Gasm. The entire performance is me dancing 90000 Gasms through my body. Being confronted by the Full-body gasm, can be highly triggering for many. For others it will spark a remembering. Performance art is not meant to please. It is meant to bring a message. One that can be felt. And these physical experiences may or may not have an impact on some people's lives. But I am offering the opportunity to witness what is usually only talked about. This transmission is an experiment to test if I can transfer this life-force awareness somatically to the audience. I only had a few people watching. The audience, the camera man and the musician all reported to feeling a vibration tremble through their bodies. Some said it was a radical and crazy experience.
I find that when I work with the transmission of life-force, she creates with me in miraculous ways. So many elements of this transmission were given to me in a magical way. I will name some of these synchronicities: 1. The space I am performing in is on the property where I am renting a little cottage for two months. The space was completed a day before my show. There is a blue star depicting the directions on the floor, you will see it if you watch closely during the water scene. 2. I decided the birembao will be a good collaboration with the energy of Brazil and also this particular region of Bahia I am in. I also felt the sound will be complementary to the sound of falling water. Three hours after deciding on this instrument, I find the woman who is house-sitting the main house on the property here, sitting on her windowsill, playing the birembao really well. I love that we are both women and she totally understands the energy we a transmitting. 3. My dress is from a friend who makes clothes from natural fibres and dies. I wanted to wear something of high quality. I had received some money for my birthday and decided to treat myself on this beautiful silk dress. The same friend lent me her bedsheet for the screen and even fixed a frayed hymn before the show started - this screen added a surprise dimension to the piece. 4. Another friend has a pep talk with me the night before and urged me not to hold back. This helped me tremendously. She also tweaked the lighting before the show. Something I could not see from where I was standing on stage. This element strengthened the shadow play. 5. We had a coincidental videographer. He is a friend of the musician and offered to film a bit on his phone. Turns out he is a masters student in visual anthropology in Manchester and is making a documentary about the birembao. He also practices the art of capoeira. While filming, he had an incredible fluid way of delicately moving around the periphery of the dance. The people watching said, he became a very gentle part of the show. I love this. His footage is the close up shots and I love it.
My sound is too big for this confined space
Performed during 'Infecting the City' 2012 and again in 2019 in Capetown and at Grahamstown National Arts Festival 2012
Endless rows of cars lie between you and your family. A traffic jam, again. Annoyingly, the car next to you begins reverberating with sound. You look over. The driver is contorting themselves into all manner of expressive ways. This is going to be a jam like no other. What looks like simple, impatient finger-tapping, progresses into an expressive,“how-does-she-do-that?!” limb-extending dance across the dashboard and the seats of the car. The next encounter is an impatient cussing driver, her insults to the other road users explodes into a slam of poetry weaving from hate to love to home to work... Then there is this guy in the fancy car with his opera playlist – has he no shame that all can hear his passion bursting from his chest? The performers are responsible drivers, always keeping an eye on the flow of traffic, but they own good sound systems and get carried away by the music. It begins as a fantasy in their heads, but becomes a reality in the confined space of their sedans.
Leán Bakker with Sipho Fubesi, Gita Galina and Jitsvinger
Unfinished at Youngblood
Movement improvisation with the Cape Town Youth Choir at YoungBlood Galley in Cape Town
- 2018
A Boat called "Me"
One woman show with 10 paper boats and a rope; expressed with movement, dance and voice.
Première at the Darling Voorkamerfest 2014.
100 Days of movement
In 2017, I created a one minute each day, for 100 consecutive days and posted these on Instagram. The process took me into a space of focusing on what I love most and stimulated my creativity.
Click here or on the image to watch all 100 videos
Cyclus
Performance with my daughter (age 11) at the Equus Gallery on the Cavalli Estate. September 2015
We are embodying the transfer of fertility. I am on the brink of menopause while she is about to blossom into womanhood. We repeat a cycle of giving and receiving. She slowly opens her umbrella while I slowly close mine and then we exchange. Mine always closing, hers always opening.
Song of intent
Performance during the Pieces and Puzzles exhibition at the Lovell Gallery in Cape Town. September 2013.
I rhythmically chisel a groove into a plank while singing to the rhythm of my work.
I am a Tree
Performance at David Straus' house in Bloubergstrand, Cape Town as part of the 2013 Spier Secret Food and Wine Festival Conference.
The Cape Doctor
Cape Town's "doctor" is loved and loathed. It is the wind that blows from the south-east, clearing the City of smog and pollution, the wind that is a Cape constant, the accompaniment to hot summers. This performance, accompanied by live drums and flute, uses ribbons, dresses, flags, bubbles and balloons to allow the wind to show itself as the star of the dance, revealing itself through all it traverses. The Cape Doctor celebrates the wind as a free and spirited life force that rejuvenates and cleanses the City.
Drummers led by Dingiswayo Juma, Marguerite Hottzhausen on Flute
Dancers from CAPA - Cape Academy of Performing Arts and guest performance by Verna Gower.
The Cape doctor was performed as part of the Infecting the City Public Arts Festival 2012
Rain Dance
Dance at the opening of the Angels exhibition 2011 at Grand Provence Gallery in Franschhoek.
Water sprays like wings to free the being from a crust of dry clay.
Mama
While I sing a lullaby, my breasts are emptied out... salt spills onto the table. This work is about giving.
Lean
Performance carried out by the participating artists in the one day only, group exhibition at the Mullineux Wine Cellar in Riebeek Kasteel 2010.
Lullaby
I use two red hair dryers to send my hair into a lyrical dance of unpredictable, wild abandon, yet somehow grounded in my stillness.
Performed at the Spier Contemporary exhibition 2010 in Cape Town.
Music: "Lullaby" by Mr.Cat and the Jackel.
Draw a line
I love this work - it is a performance video.
I place myself in 3 frequented areas in my home - The Kitchen, the bedroom and the lounge. Each time I draw a line in my environment that I then cross it with no noticeable consequence.
Recycled Tango
You are driving through the pristine countryside, you notice a plastic bag blown against the fence, it dances as it is teased by the wind. My tango is a response to the unpredictable flutters of my restless dance partner.
Music: "Two to tangle" by Zim Ngqawana
Straatgreep
Catherine Daniels and David McLellan at The Aardklop Festival 2002 in Potchefstroom.
I created this work for all the people at the arts festival that never attend any shows. The show was performed in the street where all the pubs are. A white cube is illuminated to reveal shadow pictures and dancing bodies.
365 Dinners
A site specific dance performance.
365 dinners is about a couple playing the seemingly mundane, yet eccentric rituals of having dinner together every evening.
Here I am performing with Meinhardt Joubert at his restaurant, Bar-Bar Blacksheep in Riebeek Kasteel, where he was sheff and owner.
Performance of 365 dinners in Pretoria with Izac Coetzee
Do the "waiting for the bus" dance
Image on the inside of a bus shelter in Huntly, Scotland.
Created during a residency at Deveron Arts in 2009.
Anybody waiting for the bus can entertain themselves by doing these simple actions that make up the dance.
Slow Cloud
I danced in slow motion and then speeded up the video 5 times.
Vlees
An hour long production where animation and dance are so integrated that it seems as though the dancers are part of a film.
Winner of the Beeld Aartvark prize for most most ground breaking production on the Aardklop Arts Festival 2001. Nominated for a FNB Vita award for best production in 2001.