Announcing Tuesdae Houston, Francesca Matthys & June Yuen Ting as our next Anti- Apartheid, Now project commissioned artists.

The Liliesleaf Trust UK is very excited to announce that Tuesdae Houston, Francesca Matthys & June Yuen Ting have been commissioned to create a film that explores themes of migration justice in relation to contemporary legacies of the struggle against apartheid.

The three dancers / filmmakers propose a crossover between documentary film and dance film which will interweave stories of collective struggles for Black and Coloured women of the South African diaspora in the UK across the last 50 years.

Beginning with the provocation “All Immigration Detainees Are Political Prisoners,” the film will ask, in what ways does the legacy of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK continue today in the fight for migrant justice?

“Tuesdae and Francesca connect on the journeys they have made and touch on what it feels like being young coloured women in London, the complexities that come with embracing new culture and losing parts of yourself. They agree that this project is one of stories, stories from women of colour who find themselves in foreign lands. This stirs up feelings to investigate, which they will bring into the studio, to make work ” (excerpt from Artists’ statement)

In conversation, they discussed their interest in the story of the activist Dulcie September, a former political prisoner who came to England in the 1970s and lived in exile, who freed other women incarcerated and tortured under the apartheid regime. Her story was to be the basis for a creative piece of dance-film.

But they also want to highlight current struggles faced by women asylum-seekers who fled from political and gender-based violence in South Africa and other African countries and who are currently held in immigration detention centres under the UK government’s hostile environment policy.

By bringing together archival materials, activist interviews, spoken word and dance choreography, this film hopes to invite its viewers to consider what the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the UK means today in the context of the anti-racist activism against immigration detention, border violence, patriarchy and the ongoing aftermath of colonialism.

Written by Matthew Hahn, Anti-Apartheid Now! Project Producer, December 2022

As an “embodied documentary,” the film will seek to highlight the lived experience of the struggles against apartheid, imprisonment and detention past and present as they are carried on the body of the South African diaspora and bring attention to the choreography of political campaigns and protests fundamental to social change.

Tuesdae Houston

A creative movement researcher and practitioner who began her performance education in dancing, acting and poetry in Cape Town, South Africa, where she was born.

A creative movement researcher and practitioner, who began her performance education in dancing, acting and poetry in Cape Town, South Africa, where she was born. Initially, she pursued a career in commerce but returned to dancing to obtain her second bachelors in choreography and dance and later a master's in choreography. Her research is embedded in nonverbal communication as she hopes her explorations may uncover new ways of connecting people and ideas through nonverbal transmission. She believes that culture and societal influence characterises the way people move and behave, consequently affecting their relationships, and the way people choose to perceive others through movement and other nonverbal cues. Her previous works include sound generation in choreographic work, enforced language barriers in the making process, spoken word with movement, movement conversations (focusing on gestures and the face), and more extensively at laughter in/as dance.

Francesca Matthys

A South African Theatremaker, Dance and Movement Artist, Writer, Arts Facilitator and Kundalini Yoga Teacher based in London.

Matthys is a South African Theatremaker, Dance and Movement Artist, Writer, Arts Facilitator and Kundalini Yoga Teacher based in London. Her work takes an interdisciplinary and textured approach, rooted in movement, text, collaboration, community and ancestral connections. Francesca has performed and collaborated with esteemed artists in dance theatre, theatre and film in South Africa and abroad and has produced her own work for festivals such as the National Arts Festival & My Body My Space Public Arts Festival in South Africa. Matthys has her writing published in Creative Feel Magazine online publications; EduConnect, ODD Magazine and Dance Art Journal. Her recent full length play ‘The Collector’ is soon to be published in South Africa. Matthys in collaboration with a team, has recently also been awarded funding by the British Council’s Cultural Exchange Programme. She is currently an Arts Facilitator at the Baked Bean Company and an Associate Artist for Theatre Rites.

June Yuen Ting

A movement researcher, cultural worker and community organiser. They are interested in movement making as community organising—or to put differently, the devising of collective choreographic situations as the building of embodied relationships toward social transformation.

Ting is a movement researcher, cultural worker and community organiser. They are interested in movement making as community organising—or to put differently, the devising of collective choreographic situations as the building of embodied relationships toward social transformation. They work in relationships - it is both a method and a desire. In their movement practice as relationship practice, they source gestures and momentums that give forms to liberatory possibilities—by excavating and reassembling embodied histories and cellular memories that emerge from the undersides of colonial modernity. In their practice, the process that unfolds in and through their relationships with collaborators is the work itself—the work of radical imagination for collective embodied liberation.

Still shots from dance rehearsals and preparative work by the artists, including poetry and project mapping

We look forward to releasing their finished piece in January 2023.

Anti- Apartheid, Now is a Liliesleaf Trust UK led project, funded by Arts Council England with support from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and, for some project aspects, London Borough of Islington’s Local Initiatives Fund.