Broken Chord

Gregory Maqoma

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.

Thuthuka Sibisi is a composer and musician based in Johannesburg, South Africa. His musical career began at a young age, at the world-renowned Drakensberg Boy’s Choir School. Here, his passion for music was nurtured. While studying music he also had interest in Physical Theatre and Movement, learning alongside Sam Prigge and Estelle Olivier. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Stellenbosch University in 2011. He completed his MA in Performance Making  at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

Sibisi has toured extensively, performing throughout South Africa as well as Asia, Europe and the Americas. Works toured as Musical Director of Philip Miller’s opera Between A Rock and A Hard Place (premiere, Stockholm) in collaboration with the Cape Town Opera. Further, he was Associate Conductor and Chorus Master for Bongani Ndonana-Breen’s oratoria Credo, which was written to commemorate UNISA’s 140th anniversary of its founding. Other engagements include Chorus Master for UCT Opera School: Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims and Four:30 – South African Operas. For Cape Town Opera’s ’17-18 season of Vliegendende Hollaânder he served as Associate Director.

Not only does Sibisi have interest in music but he too has fostered an interest in art, combing music and visual aesthetics. He has worked on art collaborations with multiple visual artists including, Johannesburg-based photographer and sculptor, Jake Singer, Joburg City Hustle (2015) and Intersections To This City (2014) – presented at Sustainable Empires (Venice, Italy) and Los Angeles Centre for Digital Art (USA).  Other exhibition work includes the performance installation Extracts from The Underground (2013) – presented in collaboration with Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (RSA). This installation was later presented at Wits Art Museum in 2014 as part of The Migrant Journey Series. In 2016 a sound and image installation The African Choir 1891 Re-imagined was presented as part of the Black Chronicles Archive Laboratory at Autograph ABP (London), University of Johannesburg’s VIAD FADA (Johannesburg, RSA), Iziko South African Museum (Cape Town, RSA) and The Apartheid Museum (Johannesburg, RSA) curated by Renée Mussai.

Sibisi is a collaborative composer and musician working as Musical Director to Philip Miller’s Pulling Numbers (premiere, China) and performed as Musical Director for Ciné-Concert presented as part of Notes Toward a Model Opera by William Kentridge. 2016 also saw Sibisi make his Italian debut as Music Director and co-composer for William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments to be presented in Rome, Italy. Further projects include a commission by Cape Town Opera for Musiques Sacrées d’Afrique et d’Europe, in residence at Festival International d’Aix-en-Provence (France). He has ongoing collaboration with Philip Miller and William Kentridge as both Musical Director and co-composer for The Head and The Load which premiered in 2018 at London’s The Tate Modern (UK) subsequently touring to Park Avenue Armory (NYC), Holland Festival (Netherlands) and the Ruhrtriennale (Germany).

He is a recipient of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans (2017, RSA), Ampersand Foundation Fellow (2018, NYC), American Academy in Berlin resident (2019, Germany), Bushwick Center resident (2019, NYC), Goethe Institut resident fellow (2019, Germany) and Performa Curatorial Fellow (2019, NYC).

Sibisi co-created Broken Chord alongside choreographer and dancer Gregory Maqoma which premiered at Grec Festival de Barcelona (2020).