Genesis: The Beginning and End of Time by Gregory MaqoMa

Manor: You began dancing during a deeply turbulent moment in South Africa’s history. How did that time shape the way you understand the body as a site of memory and resistance?

Gregory Maqoma: I did not come to dance as an aesthetic choice; I came to it as a necessity. The body, in that time, was already politicised before we even understood what that meant. It carried fear, restriction, surveillance, but also defiance. So for me, the body became an archive. It remembers what language cannot hold. It remembers the violence, but also the strategies of survival. Dance, then, became a way of releasing, but also reconfiguring that memory, turning pain into articulation, into presence, into resistance.

M: How have your early influences evolved into a movement language that holds ancestral, contemporary and spiritual worlds simultaneously?

GM: I think I stopped trying to separate those worlds. They were never separate to begin with. What I have done over time is listen more carefully to the body, to history, to silence. The language you recognise now is not something I invented; it is something I have allowed to emerge. It is informed by tradition, but it refuses to be confined by it. It is contemporary, but not disconnected from lineage. It is a negotiation between what has been, what is, and what is insisting to be born.

M: What does “beginning” mean to you at this point in your career?

GM: Beginning, for me, is no longer about innocence. It is about awareness. At this stage in my life, to begin again is to confront everything I know and still choose to step into uncertainty. It is a deliberate act. A refusal to be defined by what has already been achieved. ‘Genesis’ is not about a first beginning. It is about the courage to begin again after knowing and to choose that I’m willing to take forward with me and leave behind what has not worked in the past.

M: What questions were you sitting with when you began creating this work?

GM: I was asking: What does it mean to continue? In a world that feels like it is constantly collapsing morally, politically, and environmentally, what does it mean to create? To hope? To rebuild? And more personally: What must die in me for something new to emerge?

M: How does Genesis speak to the current South African moment socially, spiritually, and politically?

GM: South Africa is in a state of contradiction. There is immense beauty and possibility, but also deep fragmentation. ‘Genesis’ does not try to resolve that tension; it sits inside it. It asks us to look at what we have inherited, what we have neglected, and what we continue to reproduce. Spiritually, I think we are searching. Politically, we are fatigued. Socially, we are divided. The work becomes a space where these fractures are not hidden but witnessed.

M: What does it mean to stage Genesis at Joburg Theatre? A space with its own layered cultural history?

GM: Spaces carry memory, just like bodies do. To stage ‘Genesis’ at Joburg Theatre is to enter into dialogue with everything that has passed through that space: the exclusions, the transformations, the aspirations. But also to respond to its naming; The Mandela and the ideals he lived for. It is not a neutral stage. It is charged. And that charge demands honesty.

M: How does presenting your work at home shift the energy and responsibility of the performance compared to stages around the world?

GM: At home, there is no distance. International audiences may encounter the work intellectually or aesthetically. But here the work lands differently. It is personal. It is recognisable. It is accountable. The responsibility is greater because you are speaking to people who share the conditions that shaped the work.

M: In a time where digital culture dominates, what continues to draw you back to live performance and the theatre as a space of encounter?

GM: Because nothing replaces presence. Live performance is risky. It is fragile. It can fail. But in that risk, there is truth. Theatre creates a shared time, a moment where we are forced to sit together, to witness together. In an increasingly fragmented world, that act alone is radical. While I embrace digital transformation and its immediate reach to audiences, I also still want to create a space where bodies can interact and congregate.

M: What does legacy mean to you now, having built a body of work that has travelled globally while remaining deeply anchored locally?

GM: Legacy is not about what remains of me. It is about what continues beyond me. It is about systems, opportunities, and ways of thinking that allow others to exist, to create, to question without having to start from nothing.

M: What do you hope younger South African dancers and choreographers take from your journey? Not just artistically, but philosophically too.

GM: Your work must mean something to you first. Technique will come. Recognition may or may not come. But meaning is the anchor. Also, understand that art is not separate from life. It is a way of living, of thinking, of responding to the world. And dare to challenge the walls that are closing in artistically and emotionally.

M: Beyond the work itself, what are you trying to leave behind? A method, a way of thinking, a way of being?

GM: A way of thinking. A way of questioning. A refusal to accept things as they are. For as long as humanity is attacked, I will continue to amplify the messages of peace and hope.

M: If future generations were to encounter your work as an archive, what do you hope they understand about this moment in South Africa, and about the people who lived through it?

GM: That we were in transition constantly. That we carried both hope and disappointment. And that, despite everything, we continued to imagine.

M: If Genesis is about beginnings, what are you, personally, beginning again?

GM: I am beginning again with less certainty. Less need to prove, and more willingness to listen to the work, to the people around me, to the moment we are in. Perhaps this is the most honest beginning I have ever had.