Artists & Projects Directory

• Africa Consortium
• David Zambrano
• Dean Moss
• Faustin Linyekula
• Gregory Maqoma
• Lars Jan
• Leila Buck
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph
• Nora Chipaumire
• Ralph Lemon
• The America Project
• Voices of Strength

Gregory Maqoma/Vuyani Dance Theatre

Premiere North American Tour anticipated Fall 2013

In Exit/Exist, South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma reinvigorates tradition and animates ancestral memories to understand the complexities of our contemporary world. He is joined on stage by four exceptional South African singers (whose performance credentials include touring with Hugh Masekela) and Italian guitarist Giuliano Modarelli in songs by Simphiwe Dana, a wildly popular singer and composer from Maqoma's native province of the Eastern Cape. The entire cast is interwoven into Maqoma's vibrantly kinetic world.

In his warm and generous way, Maqoma uses his ancestral lineage as a lens through which we see the connections between past and present, even as we move forward into the future. His inspirations: Chief Maqoma, a 19^th century leader who struggled to maintain Xhosa cultural traditions of the Eastern Cape in the face of colonial dispossession; and his grandmother who, as she ages and begins to exit her life, leaves behind her memories and her adult worldview and returns to a childlike innocence. Though these ancestors are gone from or leaving this world, they live on in Maqoma. He becomes a figure of historical transformation, fusing traditional movement with his own unparalleled contemporary dance vocabulary, spirited live music and lyrical text, all against a rich visual landscape by celebrated Johannesburg artist Nicholas Hlobo.