Beautiful Me

Gregory Maqoma wants to start a conversation; he is looking for an exchange with other artists, choreographers from his generation, those in power who have determined history and above all himself.

At the start of his internationally acclaimed solo Beautiful Me, Maqoma poses the question of how we can get such a conversation started. There he is, an African dancer with so many different stories, but what do we want to hear from him? It is a challenging and thought-provoking question which Maqoma uses to make you think about engrained images and identities. 

Beautiful Me is the third part of a trilogy consisting of the duet Beautiful (2005) with Shanell Winlock (best known for her work with Akram Khan), Beautiful us and Beautiful Me, in which Maqoma shares the stage with 4 musicians, a violinist, a cellist, a kora player and a drummer. Beautiful Me’s guiding principle forms the movement idiom of three choreographer friends whom Maqoma asked for contributions to the piece. All three are choreographers who deal with dance material from their own traditions in a very personal way. Maqoma and Vincent Mantsoe were school friends from Soweto and both went to study in Johannesburg at Moving Into Dance. Mantsoe is one of the pioneers of Afro-fusion, a mixture of ritual tribal dances, jazz, break-dance and modern contemporary dance. He collaborated with Faustin Linyekula during the 2000 ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna on the project Tales off the Mud Wall. He also shares Linyekula’s work approach in terms of space, the environment in which it is created. The final contribution comes from the British-Bengali choreographer and dancer Akram Khan. Maqoma met Khan, who is famous for his interpretation of Indian Kathak dance, when he was presenting Southern Comfort at the Southbank Centre in London in 2001. Their connection was immediate and led to them collaborating on Steve Reichs 70th birthday commission Variations for Vibes, strings and pianos with The London Symphoniata In 2006.

Beautiful Me starts in darkness with a single spotlight on the violinist. Maqoma slowly becomes visible and audible in his first ‘conversation with father’, a poem in Xhosa about a colourful peacock that dreams of flying, traditionally stamping and fluttering. Maqoma subtly blends this traditional dance with other movement material. Snippets from conversations with Maqoma’s artistic kindred spirits can be heard. Motion sequences are broken up with historical dates and names of politicians from Africa’s recent history. The Belgian king Leopold II, who once described all of Congo as his own private property, makes an appearance. One moment he is trying to forget former President of South Africa Botha, the next he is having an imaginary conversation with Michael Jackson – the depths of Maqoma’s quirky imagination are limitless.

Beautiful Me is an African artist’s search for his own authentic voice or, in the words of Akram Khan, ‘In his performances Gregory uses his body as a storytelling vehicle. He is taking African traditional dance into the future. He is an unbelievably good performer with strong internal concentration. His work is spiritual, yet also witty’. The result is a mesmerising fusion of movement, text and music. A quest for identity in relation to his history.

Frascati programme associate artists

For two weeks Frascati theatre will be the home of associate artists William Kentridge and Faustin Linyekula. Alongside performances by themselves and artists who inspire them, there will be a lot of work from their studios. These presentations show the importance of Kentridges The Centre for the Less Good Idea and Linyekula’s Studios Kabako, and how they function. There will be a unique and exciting programme in which the boundaries between various artforms disappear. Also, we will be organising a series of debates, called The Welcome Table, in which themes from the presentations (that are also topical in the Netherlands) are discussed.

Kentridge and Linyekula use The Centre For The Less Good Idea and Studios Kabako to give both young and more experienced (performing) artists the space, opportunities and inspiration to work on their oeuvre. For Amsterdam they selected work using different criteria: Linyekula is giving two young artists the opportunity to test new work on Dutch audiences as works-in-progress; Kentridge selected presentations from all the seasons thus far been organised at The Centre.

Choose one or more parts of the programme and be surprised by performances that not only add a new perspective to Kentridge and Linyekula’s artistry, but also tell new stories – from intensely political reflections, exceptional childhood memories and attempts to create new myths for a new era.