Message for International Dance Day 2020 by Gregory Vuyani MAQOMA

Gregory Vuyani MAQOMA from South Africa is dancer, actor, choreographer and dance educator.

It was during an interview I had recently that I had to think deeply about dance, what does it mean to me? In my response, I had to look into my journey, and I realized that it was all about purpose and each day presents a new challenge that needs to be confronted, and it is through dance that I try to make sense of the world.

We are leaving through unimaginable tragedies, in a time that I could best describe as the post-human era. More than ever, we need to dance with purpose, to remind the world that humanity still exists.  Purpose and empathy need to prevail over years and years of undeniable virtual landscape of dissolution that has given rise to a catharsis of universal grief conquering the sadness, the hard reality that continues to permeate the living confronted by death, rejection and poverty. Our dance must more than ever give a strong signal to the world leaders and those entrusted with safeguarding and improving human conditions that we are an army of furious thinkers, and our purpose is one that strives to change the world one step at a time. Dance is freedom, and through our found freedom, we must free others from the entrapments they face in different corners of the world. Dance is not political but becomes political because it caries in its fibre a human connection and therefore responds to circumstances in its attempt to restore human dignity.

As we dance with our bodies, tumbling in space and tangling together, we become a force of movement weaving hearts, touching souls and providing healing that is so desperately needed. And purpose becomes a single hydra-headed, invincible and indivisible dance.  All we need now is to dance some more!!!!

Message for World Dance Day is an initiative of International Theatre Institute (ITI). Message of 2020 wrote Gregory Vuyani MAQOMA, South Africa’s dancer, actor, choreographer and dance educator.