Rekindled Ketima manifests life

Challenging, seductive discovery. A unified readiness. Balletic toes tap in pointe to a pulsating, driving beat. Anticipation. The unison disintegrates as each dancer creates their solo of shuddering swirls, twirls, and gliding leaps.

“[There’s a] limited opportunity to be ourselves in the world we live in today – so when you do get the opportunity to break away from something so strict … claim your space.” With this statement, Gregory Maqoma provides guidance to his cast during a rehearsal of Ketima, a dance work which melds curiosity and the essence of the individual within its exploration of a return to youthful innocence.

Originally created in 2003 as a solo, then developed into an all-male quartet, it is now reimagined as two quartets – one female and one male, created with the exceptional dancers of Vuyani Dance Company.

Maqoma asks the performers, “What does it mean to you? As a young man or female? What does it mean? How does it translate?” Maqoma’s works are recognised for being imbued with focussed intention and meaning-making. In Ketima, he explains, each dancer’s own experiences allow their bodies to “grow” the choreography. He is more a catalyst than a provider of steps.

With this in mind, Maqoma says the language and aesthetics of Ketima have developed vastly with the new generation of dancers. Significantly, he says of the way he works with dancers: “[I] take what people bring, what lives in you … don’t reimagine you, use what’s already in you.”

Yet the performers must concurrently ‘unlearn’ what they know. Maqoma requires them to strip away what dance training has taught them to deliver during performance, to find the authenticity and simplicity beneath their phenomenal technique. In each performance, room must be left for improvising, to fill the gaps in the moment; not every move is stringently set. “When things go wrong” it gets exciting, he says. Possibilities open up in the immediacy.

No planned choreography is taught in rehearsal. From improvisation tasks, the dancers develop what they’ve remembered. It is interesting that memory is used as an important tool in the choreographic process as it speaks directly to the thematic explorations in Ketima. As does Maqoma’s preference for keeping the performances vulnerable and alive. Here too, resonates his well-known use of live music. It allows for the dance – and the performers – to become the score. It adds layered depth to the work and keeps it dynamically in the moment. As he says, “it is life”.

World renowned Maqoma’s explosive revival of Ketima captures a questioning desire to find freedom from the stranglehold of social convention. Life cycles and spirals emerge in this simultaneously philosophical and tangible work. There is never a stopping point. All is absorbing. Exposed is an intriguing cyclic unravelling towards the freedom of un-knowing.

– Sarah Roberson

Ketima is at the Dance Umbrella on 02 & 03 March at 20.15 at the John Kani Theatre (Market Theatre).

• This article was produced during the Dance Writers Workshop funded by the Goethe-Institut.