Dance Artist/Choreographer Nelisiwe Xaba’s They Look at Me and That Is All They Think (2006) ‘refers to the story of Sara[tjie] Baartman […] the “Hottentot Venus”’ (2006. 9th Jomba! Contemporary dance experience 2006 programme, p. 7) who was taken from her homeland South Africa, and exhibited in Europe in the nineteenth century. After Baartman died in 1815, her remains were displayed in a museum in Paris until 1982. Xaba parallels the story of Baartman to her own experience of performing in Europe as a black South African woman. This article considers how They Look at Me and That Is All They Think exposes the politics surrounding the act of looking at a particular racial and gendered body in both the historical and contemporary context, and how the concept and articulation of the ‘superior’ European subject was dependent on the classification of Baartman, and other black Africans, as exotic others. In my practice-based research project How I Chased a Rainbow And Bruised My Knee (2007), which was a choreographic response to Xaba’s work, I theatricalize my identity as a white South African woman to make visible whiteness, its associated privilege, and how it is dependent on the representation of a particular type of blackness.

中文翻译：

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Saartjie Baartman、Nelisiwe Xaba 和我：看待南非身体的政治

舞蹈艺术家/编舞家 Nelisiwe Xaba 的他们看着我，这就是他们所想的（2006 年）“指的是 Sara [tjie] Baartman [...] the“Hottentot Venus”的故事”（2006 年。第 9 届 Jomba！2006 年当代舞蹈体验节目, p. 7) 她从她的祖国南非被带走，并于 19 世纪在欧洲展出。巴特曼于 1815 年去世后，她的遗体一直陈列在巴黎的一家博物馆中，直到 1982 年。 Xaba 将巴特曼的故事与她自己作为南非黑人女性在欧洲表演的经历相提并论。这篇文章考虑了他们如何看待我，这就是他们所想的，揭示了在历史和当代背景下看待特定种族和性别身体行为的政治，以及“高级”欧洲主题的概念和表达如何依赖于将巴特曼和其他非洲黑人作为异国人的分类。在我以实践为基础的研究项目“我如何追逐彩虹和伤到膝盖”（2007 年）中，这是对 Xaba 作品的编舞回应，我将我作为南非白人女性的身份戏剧化，以呈现可见的白人、相关的特权以及如何它取决于特定类型的黑度的表示。