Notes

Countering William Kentridge's ubiquitous concerns in his art with such socio-economic and political concerns as liberation, migration and displacement, land appropriation, and capitalism, Dancing Couple (1989) comes as a lyrical reprieve in his oeuvre. An intimate, private relationship plays itself out in the dance, pitted against a bleak, desolate public landscape that often constitutes the backdrop of many of Kentridge's work. This landscape, however, is ameliorated by the subtle use of such colours as soft blues, browns and greens in parts, enhancing the elegiac nature of the dance. One is reminded of Kentridge's film, Johannesburg, 2^nd Greatest City After Paris (1989), in which Felix Teitlebaum - a melancholic artist and eternal, deep thinker - subtly seduces the wife of his arch rival - Soho Eckstein, a greedy industrialist and property developer - in a delicate dance sequence. The dancing couple frequently appears in Kentridge's work of the 1980s: The Conservationist’s Ball triptych (1985), comes to mind, as does Swinging Lady (1986), and the Flood at the Opera triptych (1986).

Kentridge's early work was inspired by the last vestiges of C20th European civilization that was wrecked by World War I; this spirit was depicted in works such as Max Beckmann's The Night (1918) and Otto Dix’s Big City triptych (1927). Rather than invoking the frenetic dancing in the nightclub scenes these two artists showed, Kentridge’s Dancing Couple rather reminds one of Marc Chagall's many lovers floating through the sky of Vitebsk, and later over Paris.

Similar in size and subject matter, Dancing Couple can be seen as continuing the three drawings of ballet dancers and dancing couples Kentridge made for the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 1987, when he won the Young Artist Award.