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Beautiful Me

Published Monday 18 June 2007 at 09:35 by Lyndsey Winship

“I am Gregory Maqoma, an African dancer. I have plenty of exotic stories to sell. Which one would you like to hear tonight?” Gregory Maqoma does have some stories to tell, but this hour-long solo offering, Beautiful Me, is not a monologue, more a series of conversations. There are conversations with the onstage musicians, a violinist, cellist, sitar player and percussionist. Then there are conversations with three choreographers, Akram Khan, Faustin Linyekula and Vincent Mantsoe, who have all contributed “minutes” of their choreographic material to Maqoma’s project. Rather than simply demonstrating their work though, Maqoma seems to be absorbing their ideas and hanging them on his own body, or using them to inspire his own words. You can spot moments that look like they might have come from Akram Khan, a choreographer whom Maqoma performed with recently at the Barbican. For example, a powerful passage where a repeated, stubborn stamping of the feet and a swift kathak-like arm movement swells into a trancelike ostinato. Movement, words, memories and remembered email exchanges are all part of the fabric of the piece. There are conversations with African history too, in one scene Maqoma announces the names of former African leaders and lays them to rest on the stage, burying them in order to create a new history. But while one minute he is struggling to forget South African president PW Botha, ten minutes later he’s having an imaginary chat with Michael Jackson, such are the twists and turns of Maqoma’s thoughts. Beautiful Me is a slight piece, but it’s definitely intriguing.

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