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Exit / Exist
Dans Exit / Exist, Gregory Maqoma, danseur sud africain « invente » la figure d’un chef tribal du XIXe siècle, héros de la lutte anti-coloniale.
Through a journey of initiation, the South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma explores the memory of his distant ancestor, the rebel leader of the Xhosa ethnic group.
If everyone is the custodian of a lineage of memories and stories, some bodies retain greater traces of these than others. With ‘Exit/Exist’, which he choreographed under the direction of James Ngcobo, the South African choreographer Gregory Maqoma abundantly proves this. This breathtaking work, supported by a remarkable musical composition by Simphiwe Dana, is taken from the history of Jongumsobomvu Maqoma, one of the most renowned Xhosa leaders, who was born in 1798, arrested when he ordered the English colonisers to liberate Xhosa land, and died in prison in 1873. Maqoma is considered a “factor of historical transformation”. However, instead of a history lesson in its strictest sense, Gregory Maqoma’s show is a sensitive journey, an exploration of memory.
His back to the audience, dressed in a silk suit, dancing to the gravely throbbing rhythm of guitarist Giuliano Modarelli, Maqoma seems to allow a melody to surge out of himself, a melody which gradually becomes a bodily rhythm. Each thought thus becomes an embodied movement; clear, precise and chiselled into the space. The shoulders, hips, hands and legs become the instruments of a bodily orchestra that invents its own score. When the singers Bubele Mgele, Linda Thobela, Happy Motha and Bonginkosi Zulu arrive on stage, Gregory Maqoma gradually adopts more traditional rhythmic lines.
Maqoma the contemporary dancer then becomes Maqoma, the ancestral Xhosa leader.
This is an extraordinary shift in identity that swims up the river of History. In this metamorphosis, he becomes an animal, a young bull whose attributes evoke the virility of the rebel leader as well as the importance of cattle in the pastoral life of the Xhosa people. By occupying their land, as with the useless sacrifice of cattle, the colonial power at the time destroyed the very foundations of the Xhosa nation. Trance translates this “loss” of both power and identity in an extremely evocative way. The final image of the shattered, defeated leader – shackled at the ankles, exiled from his native land – is particularly eloquent. When the piece ends on the piercing question “where is the herd?”, we do not know whether it refers to animals or human beings.
This vibrant homage to the ancestors through the recognition of their fight, which was not to be in vain, becomes an incredible history lesson in the noblest sense of the term.
Source : Maison de la Danse
