Gregory Vuyani Maqoma became interested in dance in the late 1980s as a means to escape the growing political tensions growing in Soweto, South Africa, where he was born. He started his formal dance training in 1990 at Moving into Dance, where he, later, became the Associate Artistic Director in 2002. He founded Vuyani Dance Theatre (VDT) in 1999 while undertaking a scholarship at the Performing Arts Research and Training School (PARTS) in Belgium, under the direction of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Maqoma has established himself as an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, teacher, and director.
In 2002, Maqoma received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for dance and was a finalist in the Daimler Chrysler Choreography Award. He was a finalist in the Rolex Mentorship Programme in 2003. Several works in his repertoire have won him accolades and international acclaim, including the Tunkie Award for Leadership in Dance (2012), and a “Bessie”, New York City’s premier dance award for Exit/Exist for original music composition (2014). He served as a nominator in the 2016-2017 Rolex Arts Initiative as well as curating the 2017 Main Dance Programme for the National Arts Festival.
The French government honoured Maqoma with the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Arts & Literature) Award in 2017. The following year, 2018, Maqoma collaborated with William Kentridge as a choreographer and performer in “The Head and the Load,” an opera which premiered at the Tate Modern Gallery in London, and is still touring Europe, and the United States.
Recently, he collaborated with Idris Elba and Kwame Kwei-Armah in the production, “Tree,” produced by Manchester International Festival and the Young Vic (2018). In 2020, Maqoma was honoured to deliver the prestigious International Dance Day message under the auspices of the International Theatre Institute and UNESCO.
