The Riel Thing

In July the Bushmans Kloof Nuwe Graskoe Trappers will be flying across the Atlantic to represent South Africa at the World Championships of Performing Arts in Los Angeles. (Coincidentally I will be in L.A. in late July too.)

A dozen pairs of feet, all clad in red veldskoene and white socks tap dancing and twirling. The young dancers who hail from the tiny town of Wupperthal in the Western Cape perform in farm clothes, headscarves and bonnets for the girls and feathered cowboy hats for the boys. 

Their dance is called the Nama Riel and it is being revived in festivals from the Kalahari to the Karoo. It’s a dance-descendant of the old Khoi and San fireside rituals and it became the Saturday Night Fever of sheep shearers and farm workers across the Kalahari and Great Karoo over many generations.

We first saw this unique form of dancing last March in the parade at the Cape Town Carnival. The crowd went wild as they made their way down the street stomping and spinning and kicking up dust -  or in this case, confetti. I was impressed and curious. I had never seen anything like it in South Africa. It reminded me of a cross between Creole Zydeco danced in New Orleans and Appalachian barn-dancing.

But it is a unique form of traditional South African dance. Ya know I love traditional dance! In Mpumalanga the traditional dances are the Gumboots and traditional Shangaan dancing; in Natal it's traditional Zulu and Gumboot. In Cape Town, it is Minstrel dancing, but in Bushmans Kloof in the Cederberg, it is the Nama Riel. The Riel is traditionally a courtship dance. The men imitate farm work and the movement of the animals, while the women imitate domestic tasks. A man might fling his hat up in the air and let it land on the ground; if a woman picks it up and places it on his head, she accepts his advance.

Best of luck in LA, Trappers! Hope to see you again when we're both back in South Africa.