The spasm of history GREGORY MAQOMA
THE HEAD & THE LOAD GOES BEYOND the burden of
war but also its legacy. When William Kentridge asked me to be part of the evolution of the work as a choreographer and performer, I knew straight away that my responsibility was to go beyond the euphoria of movement and to stay true to telling a story of Africans who went into a war that was not of their making, a war that was not to their benefit. The question was, where does one start? Peripheral vision, the music score, historical borrowed cultural forms emanating from war, and my own body movement archive and aesthetics became my tools in shaping the movement signature of the work. William’s vision was articulated clearly from the beginning, and I knew movement was to serve two purposes: first, to allow bodies on stages to find transitions in translating the African carriers’ ephemeral history on war; second, to ensure every movement gesture was in itself a narrative, without overwhelming the emotions but allowing the images to drive them. When working with so many entry points— props that overlay the stage, a cast that controls every object on stage, and projection—one must focus not only on the bodies on stage, but also on their relation to the images they project on the surface, and on those images in relation to everything else. It was also important to define choreographically what was crucial for the audience’s eye to see at a given point. At times we allowed chaos to happen, but always resolved to give a value to something, to an image, the music, or text.
Themes of war were developed and brought to life in a choreographic action: Running and Falling; Procession; Wounded Man; Orders and Commands; and many other references helped me to find a vocabulary of movement. In the end, all the elements had to come together and tell one story, to exist in a universe we got to understand through research. I believe The Head & the Load not only acknowledges the history of Africans in the First World War, but also responds to an ignorance in archiving and teaching about the history of my people. Even more importantly, the work gives African soldiers a name and an identity.
Soweto-born GREGORY VUYANI MAQOMA is an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, teacher, director, and scriptwriter. He is the founding director of Vuyani Dance Theatre, and has worked with British-based choreographer Akram Khan, the London Sinfonietta, the South African fashion designer David Tlale, the singer-songwriter Simphiwe Dana, and the theatre maker Brett Bailey. Maqoma won the Gauteng MEC Award in 2006 and 2007 for his Beautiful trilogy, and received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance in 2002, the Dance Manyano Choreographer of the Decade Dance Award in 2011, and the 2012 Tunkie Award for elevating the standard and visibility of dance in South Africa. Maqoma was associate artistic director of Moving Into Dance Mophatong, the Dance Umbrella festival in the UK, and the Afro-Vibes festival in Amsterdam, and curated the main dance program for the National Arts Festival in 2017. His collaborations with William Kentridge include serving as a curator for the Centre for the Less Good Idea, Kentridge’s interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts in Maboneng, Johannesburg.
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