Dance Umbrella - The Herd/less

About this event

Move through the power of the pack in this highly anticipated new work South African artist Mamela Nyamza is a vital choreographic voice in contemporary performance. Following critical acclaim for HATCHED ENSEMBLE , which opened the 2024 Dance Umbrella Festival and now the recipient of the 2026 Venice Biennale Silver Lion, she returns to London with THE HERD/LESS, a searing new work. Internationally acclaimed for her fearless choreography, Nyamza continues to push at the boundaries of form and convention. THE HERD/LESS draws on the dual meaning of the ‘herd’: a collective moving in harmony and a group controlled, shaped and directed by cultural and physical forces. Power emerges through ritual, repetition and the quiet surrender of the individual to the group. Cloth and cultural sticks – traditional southern African objects associated with masculine authority – become both symbols of position and tools of control. This breath-taking ensemble’s movements generate a live, percussive score, creating a sensory landscape that is as immersive as it is disquieting. Beneath the promise of unity and abundance lies a more violent reality: a collective stripped of agency, bound by systems that sustain both beauty and brutality. Nyamza exposes the fallacy of a beautiful world, revealing the tension between harmony and control that sits just beneath the surface of our day-to-day existence. Co-Commissioned by Dance Umbrella. Presented by Dance Umbrella & Sadler’s Wells Header image © Kim Stevens Header image description: A performer wearing a bright orange skirt and suit jacket stands in the foreground facing side on. They are straight-backed, holding up their skirt and wear a yellow hat. In the background are a group of performers wearing eclectic party clothes with sequins, bright colours and hats. They stand on tin cans attached to their trainers.