Mamela Nyamza was born in 1976 in Gugulethu, Cape Town / South Africa and is a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher. She completed her classical training in Cape Town and Pretoria. In 1998 she was awarded a scholarship to the Alvin Ailey Dance School in New York, where she subsequently danced for a variety of companies and in musicals. Since 2006 she has choreographed her own works, with which she has been invited to a series of international festivals. In these she combines her expertise in classical and contemporary dance with her knowledge of traditional African and Spanish dances and the movement vocabulary of jazz, mime and butoh. Her choreography is also informed by her personal biography as a black, African, lesbian mother as well as her examination of social grievances linked to the issues of HIV/AIDS, domestic and sexual violence and drug abuse. Her production ›Okuya Phantsi Kwempumlo (The Meal)‹ was awarded the Standard Bank Ovation Award at the 2012 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown