Save the last dance for me: Renowned South African dancer and choreographer Gregory Maqoma says the most important thing in his work is the audience. Photo: Marijke Willems Photography
On 14 December, in Los Angeles, the internationally acclaimed South African dancer and choreographer Gregory Maqoma will hang up his dancing shoes after performing in front of an audience for the final time.
“I feel like my days of being on stage have come to an end,” he says. “I always wanted to retire from performing when I’m at my peak. Right now, I feel I’m at my peak.”
He certainly is. Don’t be surprised, though, if this turns out to be not quite his final dance. There were similar pronouncements of retirement last year, ahead of his 50th birthday.
But calls to dance “one last time” have persisted — and it’s unsurprising. If you’ve been fortunate enough to see him on stage, you’ll have got the measure of a man — artist, humanitarian, teacher, groundbreaker, disruptor — who is not only physically statuesque, but possessed of a soaring spirit.
What you see is the sweat, the focus, the barrel chest and beefy shoulders, the eyes that seem to peer into another dimension. What you feel is the tireless presence of someone who personifies lightness, defies gravity.
It’s not possible to overstate the impact that Maqoma has had on South African dance. For three decades he has been an innovator and a challenger of the status quo and, in the process, has not only drawn global recognition as a performer but, as a choreographer, has shifted understandings of what the art form can be.
The piece he’ll be performing in California is a solo work called The Land We Carry, which was initially commissioned for Johannesburg’s FNB Art Fair.
It has been described as an exploration of dance’s “barrier-defying ability to communicate with the human spirit” and as a rumination on “the visceral release experienced through dancing and the collective rhythm that can be felt when humans allow themselves to connect, uninhibited by language, through movement and a spiritual awareness”.
The performance will happen at The Nimoy, at the Centre for the Art of Performance at University of California Los Angeles.
That’s a far cry from where Soweto-born Maqoma got his start, witnessing, admiring, and being stirred by the sweating, moving, liberated bodies of mineworkers dancing outside the hostels where they lived, far from home and isolated from their families, during what he calls “the dark heart of apartheid”.
Maqoma says seeing those mineworkers turned him on to the power of dance.
“They were men for whom dancing was the only escape, their only connection with their culture and traditions.
“Over weekends I watched them dance, competing amongst themselves. What I saw was their euphoria — it was something huge and it gave me that sense of escape.”
He knew that this was something he wanted to do — escape by dancing.
“It allowed me to feel the euphoria of escapism and it became something that helped me to deal with the trauma of the time.”
As Maqoma became a performer, and then a choreographer, he increasingly used dance not only to escape, but to tap into the traditions of his ancestors to reclaim African history and reclaim the black body from the colonial gaze.
He says he has always wanted to use his work to be “part of the solution”, and to be part of the discourse that brings healing where there are traumas, such as the ones he faced growing up in “dusty” Soweto.
And he has always wanted to inspire audiences to be part of that discourse.
Maqoma is never simply dancing but also connecting with something deeper.
“I’m kind of treading between the spirit of the living, the spirit of the dead and also the spirit of the unknown. That is something I feel we are all connected to — that spirit is what brings us all together, unifies us as human beings.”
That deep connection is not lost on audiences who, seeing him perform, experience him in a transcendent state. Watching him, you are aware of seeing someone who is gripped by some force beyond explanation.
While he loves to dance, and has always known that he is first and foremost a dancer, he turned to choreography because he needed to communicate something to the world in a language that was yet to be developed.
“Choreography came along as a means of commenting on the world that we live in and I wanted to create work in a way that didn’t yet exist. To be a disruptor, to bring work that questioned the prevailing ethos, questioned the status quo.
“That’s how I started making work — by questioning things I saw and responding very directly to my own circumstances.”
Nonetheless, he doesn’t make work to be intentionally political but rather “to evoke and provoke emotions in some way or another”.
Maqoma calls himself “a huge collaborator”, loves working with other artists, says he’s drawn to them because he’s curious about them, wants to know what it’s like to work with them.
“But the most important thing for me when making work is the audience. That’s what I always think about. Because, ultimately, it is about them. We’re telling a story that needs to be relatable to an audience. Stories they need to be inspired by.
“The audience is there with me in the space. So, when I create work, the audience is always my collaborator.”
Maqoma noticed early on, when he danced for his family at home, the power of dance to raise the spirits of whoever was watching.
“Whenever we had family gatherings, my mother would erect a small stage. I became the entertainer in the family. I would imitate Michael Jackson and Tina Turner.
“I noticed how it made people smile and cheer. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, something I’m doing is lifting their spirits.’ Those moments of performing for my family were an affirmation.”
That love of bringing joy to people by moving his own body became his superpower, something that was nurtured at Sylvia Glasser’s Afrofusion dance company, Moving into Dance Mophatong, where he remembers stepping into a proper studio for the first time, and had his talent nurtured.
Despite a brief time where he dropped out and considered a career in architecture, he ended up in Europe on a dancing scholarship.
Maqoma might have remained overseas had he not felt compelled to dance in the land of his ancestors and contribute to the changes that were happening in our young democracy.
Upon his return, he founded Vuyani Dance Theatre, a company for black dancers to express themselves and change the narrative.
“It was a deliberate action to create a space where we’re unafraid of telling our own stories in the way that we want to,” he says.
Maqoma believes, in a sense, all humans are dancers. “Because our hearts are already dancing — with the heartbeat.
“There is a dance in all of us. Our blood is never stationary. It moves continuously because our hearts beat constantly.”
That heartbeat, he says, is a focal point when he’s dancing.
“It’s the pulse that connects me to the universe. To get lost in translation. I don’t even know what to call it. Is it a spirit? Is it a force? It’s something that I’m connected to when I’m dancing. It’s what helps me move, allows me to say something.”
That same force is what enables him to carry on dancing, “to not tire” when he’s on stage.
“I engulf myself in that spirit, in that form, in that calling. And I just continue to move.”
Maqoma says when he does in fact “cross over” he does so “with caution”.
“I’m aware that I’m performing, and I cannot go overboard because, if I do, I may not know how to return. Yet, deep within, I allow that spirit to drive what I do.”
And whatever the next chapter entails, that spirit will continue to guide him.
