On Stage Thursday: A Mix of Sound, Sight, Dance and Poetry from South Africa and Williamsburg

Pictured: from left to right, Here Be Dragons youth artists Zephaniah Ntshekisa, Sheldon Bennett, Nozuko Tshisa, Timothy Muniz and Mzukisi Ndabeni. Photo by John V. Santore.

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — A performance with a global perspective is coming to the stage at National Sawdust in Williamsburg on Thursday.

Hear Be Dragons is a mixed-media event featuring the collaborative work of young artists from Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Nyanga, South Africa.

The project began last year, when groups of teens from the two spots recorded sounds from their respective environments and worked with professional artists to turn them into audio pieces.

The works layer everyday sounds, like breathing, phones ringing and the static gurgle of frying food, with poetry and music (you can listen online to the pieces from both Williamsburg and Nyanga).

This spring, two South African artists, violinist and singer Kyla-Rose Smith and dancer Hannah Loewenthal — both of whom also led the audio project — brought three of the South African youths to Williamsburg to craft a stage production in conjunction with three of their U.S. counterparts, all of whom are connected to Williamsburg Latino arts and culture organization El Puente.

The previously produced audio pieces form a backdrop to the hour-long production, Loewenthal explained. But the show has added live music, puppetry, dance, rap and poetry, almost all of it original work by the young artists themselves.

An exception is a selection from the poem "The Child Is Not Dead" by South African poet Ingrid Jonker, which Nelson Mandela read at the opening of his nation's first post-Apartheid parliament.

Loewenthal said the work explores a variety of themes, key among them youth movements for justice. During a Wednesday rehearsal, the teens spoke of resistance to ongoing oppression in both countries, as well as more enjoyable things they had in common, such as their love of dance.

"They've kind of fallen in love with each other," Loewenthal said. "It's amazing how it happens. The connection is just immediate."