Gregory Maqoma is a South African dancer who visited Birmingham to perform "Beautiful Me" part of a trilogy of work. The piece was complex and difficult at times. It was about identity, it was about telling people that colonialism had torn people from their culture and rendered it inferior. Artists like Maqoma, and pioneers before him are part of a process of rediscovery, reinvention and re-presentation. It's a complex and difficult area because the past can be full of shame, guilt and anger and consequently something we want to bury and dismiss in the effort to create something "new" and "better" but it is also full of pleasure, pride and wisdom. One thing we can be sure of, as a recording played during the piece of Wole Soyinka stated, "The past never dies."
Maqoma's performance was riveting, accompanied by a quartet of musicians playing sitar, violin, cello and percussion who were as much a part of the piece as Gregory. During the question and answer session after the performance I was stunned to discover that the music had grown organically out of the dance, created by the musicians in response to the work.
Maquoma's style is eclectic and in this piece he "borrows minutes" from three choreographers to form the basis of the work in which he created a dialogue with the past, the musicians and the audience addressing us and at times using a bank of microphones as if he was at a press conference.
One of the most memorably moments for the audience, of which about one third was made up of children, was when he revisited his childhood in Johannesburg when he and his friends would copy the moves of their hero Michael Jackson. So there he is on stage, moonwalking.
I've definitely become a fan and can't wait to see him again.
Maqoma's performance was riveting, accompanied by a quartet of musicians playing sitar, violin, cello and percussion who were as much a part of the piece as Gregory. During the question and answer session after the performance I was stunned to discover that the music had grown organically out of the dance, created by the musicians in response to the work.
Maquoma's style is eclectic and in this piece he "borrows minutes" from three choreographers to form the basis of the work in which he created a dialogue with the past, the musicians and the audience addressing us and at times using a bank of microphones as if he was at a press conference.
One of the most memorably moments for the audience, of which about one third was made up of children, was when he revisited his childhood in Johannesburg when he and his friends would copy the moves of their hero Michael Jackson. So there he is on stage, moonwalking.
I've definitely become a fan and can't wait to see him again.
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