He grew interested in dance at the end of the 1980s. It helped him to distance himself from the atmosphere of political tension that dominated in South Africa at the time. Maqoma began his dance education in 1990 at Moving Into Dance, and in 1999 he took a course at the P.A.R.T.S. school of contemporary dance in Brussels, led by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In the early 2000s, he was already making a name for himself all over the world as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and director. In this period, he collaborated with such famous names in the dance world as Akram Khan, Vincent Mantsoe, Faustin Linyekula, Dada Masilo, Shanell Winlock and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, among others.
Among Gregory Maqoma’s numerous awards and honours, he holds a Bessie – New York’s most prestigious dance prize – for the original musical composition of Exit/Exist (2014).
He served as a nominator for the Rolex Arts Initiative 2016–2017, and also curated the main dance programme for the National Arts Festival in South Africa in 2021. In 2017, the French government made Maqoma a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
In partnership with UNESCO, the International Theatre Institute entrusted Maqoma to be the official Message Author for International Dance Day in 2020, and in 2021 South Aftica’s Department of Arts and Culture presented him the Usiba award “for dedication to dance teaching”.
In 2018, Maqoma was a visting artist at the dance department of Virginia Commonwealth University. He was also a visiting teacher at the Ecole des Sables in Senegal.
His unusual choreography is often described as “deep” and “wild”. And the theatre that he founded – Vuyani Dance – invariably wins the hearts of audiences, regardless of their nationality or adherence to different cultural traditions.
