A PHENOMENON
He saw a poster advertising “Flowers” - an adaptation of a Genet novel - performed by the Lindsay Kemp Company. He admired Genet and the other Existentialists and had studied them at University prior to leaving South Africa. This was a part of the philosophy curriculum which the lecturers failed to cover. Any sort of discussion about the existence or non-existence of God, even at University level, was considered sacrilegious!
During the performance, at a particular point when Lindsay leapt across the stage, Ampleby turned to Frynwyd and said:
“Am I a pile of ashes”
‘??……..No…….?? What are you talking about??”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“That flash of lightening?”
“….Nooo???” Frynwyd turned to look at him.
“When he leapt? That flash of lightening when he leapt?”
“No.”
“It struck me.”
Kemp was giving movement classes in one of the rooms at Covent Garden. A week later Ampleby found the room and stood outside. Too terrified to enter, he watched the hour-long class through the window and could not remember blinking once. He returned the following day, entered the room before rigormortis could set in, and joined the class.
Completely out of his depth.
He was stiff and awkward. Nobody minded. They noticed but took no notice. He was amongst the strangest creatures on earth. Ethereal, light, committed. He felt intensely elated. He was in a dream. He entered a dream world.
It was here that it all started.
Learning to teach taught him how to teach himself. But it was here that that self developing core in him took root. The beginning of an inner clearing. An inner clarity. A new conceiving. He could not get himself to say anything to Kemp. When Kemp spoke to him he had no voice to answer. Lindsay must have thought him a cretin.
He joined a gym for the first time. He did stretches, sit-ups and exercises every day in his lounge to increase his fitness and suppleness.
Some months later, during one of the Kemp classes, a storm broke:
Lindsay, as intuitively attuned as ever, used the storm in his class. An improvisational synergic process of man and nature wove its way into the hall, slowly, magnetically, alchemically. The thunder claps struck straight into Ampleby’s African heart. He had not heard a storm quite like this since leaving Africa, and suddenly something awoke in him: the fecundity, the danger, the untamedness of Africa. While this storm was brewing into an intense fierceness, it was nothing like an African storm. He felt as if he was imbuing this storm with his Africanness. As the heavens opened, he opened. He became infested with a manic energy, as if the lightning strikes struck his very soul, the thunder claps igniting a fire in his blood. Into movement. He began to lose himself. Submerge himself. He was ready to soar. Kemp noticed the strange transformation that enveloped him, and as all true masters of the inner journey know (seeped within an ancient and inviolate integrity) he deftly guided Ampleby, within the class, without the class noticing, through this treacherous yet phenomenal journey.
At a crucial point Kemp said: “Spin!”
That was the afternoon that Ampleby flew.
The storm created havoc in central London. Basement flats were flooded. Underground lines were closed.
He had intense dreams about performing with the Lindsay Kemp Company:
The Company was performing in a huge barn. Long, oblong. Wooden. A stage at either end with the action taking place concurrently on both stages. To get to the stage at the other end, the actors swung on a rope like a trapeze artist, looping down above the audience, then alighting at the other end. This was a part of the performance. The stages would also see-saw independently - at times high, at others, low. The audience were mesmerised, excited. The audience participated, were part of the performance, talked incessantly, as if they were in a night club. He was enveloped with a sense of belonging.
As intense as these dreams were he knew that performance with the Company could never be. Apart from the fact that he never felt ‘ready’, Kemp was European, he was African. The storm over London showed him that. Why had this become such an important difference? How does a white male explain what it is like to be African? Particularly when that European world had its own version of what being African meant? Particularly when that version was more linked to picture postcard illusion, than hard core reality. All those preconceptions one had to wade through. It was as if the English carried an inverted version of what it was like to be African.
The same inverted version that he carried about what it was like to be English.
A reality that blurred in translation, from one continent to the next.
One aspect of Africanism was an indefatigable relentlessness. A relentlessness that gathered strength if you were alarmed by it, if you ignored it. If you showed disbelief, responded negatively, it hammered into you, until you could not ignore it any longer. Like water, it had an inherent cohesive and adhesive force. An energy fed by its own energy….an autotrophic energy. A mysterious magnetism. Like water, it could not be squashed - a determination not to be subdued.
It was as vast as the ocean, and you were the moon.
And of course much has been written about Africa’s ubuntu. It’s the same indefatigable relentlessness, applied expansively, compassionately.
