Broken Chord
Gregory Maqoma | Thuthuka Sibisi (South Africa) Featuring the Vancouver Chamber Choir
Co-presented with Vancouver New Music
From 1891–1893 a group of young African singers travelled by boat to Britain, Canada, and America. This ensemble of missionary-educated Black people, named The African Native Choir, were on a mission to raise funds for a technical school in Kimberley, South Africa.
Inspired by photography from that tour and using traditional Xhosa and contemporary dance styles alongside atmospheric soundscapes, choreographer and performer Gregory Maqoma and musical director Thuthuka Sibisi weave together recorded personal accounts of the African Choir, revealing a drama of global dimensions.
With a single dancer (Maqoma), four vocal soloists and an onstage a cappella chorus, Broken Chord not only reflects on an archive but triggers, critiques, and comments on urgent issues of migration, dispossession, borders, and paths of forced closure, raising important questions about the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, and either’s complicity in shaping and shifting a South African narrative—past and present.
A production by Gregory Maqoma Industries in co-production with Festival Grec – Barcelona, Manchester International Festival, Théâtre de La Ville – Paris, Weimar Arts Festival (Nationaltheater), Festspielhaus St. Pölten, Torinodanza Festival/Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale, Festival Aperto / Fondazione I Teatri – Reggio Emilia, Stanford Live at Stanford University and Sadler’s Wells.
With the generous support of The Hamber Foundation, The Hawthorne Foundation and the McLean Foundation
February 23-25, 2023 | 8pm
Vancouver Playhouse
600 Hamilton Street
Running time: 60 minutes, no intermission
Pre-show Talk 7:15pm each night in the Vancouver Playhouse Upper Lobby
Host: Jim Smith, DanceHouse Executive and Artistic Director
Guests: Thuthuka Sibisi, Broken Chord Composer, and Kari Turunen, Vancouver Chamber Choir Artistic Director
“A work sung and danced, but above all felt, of how to relive experiences that do not belong to us and try to understand once more (and as many times as necessary) the other world, the other reality that we have in front of us.”
Bachtrack
“ … a strange dialogue that hopefully serves as an example for the numerous and violent confrontations that the world is experiencing today.”
Diario de Sevilla
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.
Gregory Maqoma
Gregory Vuyani Maqoma became interested in dance in the late 1980s as a means to escape the growing political tensions 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 continues to tour 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.
Between 1891-1893 a group of young African singers travelled by boat to Britain, Canada and America. This ensemble of the missionary-educated black elite, named The African (Native) Choir, were on a mission to raise funds for a technical school in Kimberley, South Africa. Using traditional Xhosa and contemporary dance styles alongside atmospheric soundscapes, we weave together recorded personal accounts of the African Choir, revealing a drama of truly global dimensions, whilst simultaneously looking at the black body as a political site. Further, questioning the relationship between the colonised and the coloniser; and either’s complicity in shaping and shifting a South African narrative – past and present. Broken Chord not only reflects on an archive but looks to trigger, critique and comment on urgent issues of migration, dispossession, borders and paths of forced closure – a deliberate and disturbing gesture on the part of the West against the other.
We come from, and have been taught in, a music and movement tradition that stipulates itself according to this binary of the West vs the other. What then comes to the fore is how the West concretely safeguards itself and its boundaries. We want to disrupt this positioning by planting ourselves at the centre of this dichotomy thus becoming the friction that can summon, envision and engender a newer, more original conversation concerned with sonic-gestured worlds: who do we write these worlds for; whose stories are we to tell through these movements, sounds and text practices? Ultimately, this work serves as a deliberate and fiercely subjective act of self-beatification.
In this work we focus on the voice not only as a bearer of loss, hope, wisdom, and affection but also as an instrument of witnessing – of seeing and re-membering. What makes this work unique is the origin of the musical material – renderings and sketches adopted from a meagre and faint program of songs. From this arises a severe provocation; encouraging a want to dance, dart, ripple and rip apart; a desire to dive deep and far into imagining what these songs looked, tasted, sounded and felt like. Central to this we find our instigator; the messenger, the saviour, the destructor, the disembodied figure of a broken past.
Vanessa Richards
Vanessa Richards works as a transdisciplinary artist and facilitator, initiating cultural projects that move us toward life-affirming change. She brings this practice to her work in social enterprise as a co-producer and facilitator for the Social Venture Institute with
Hollyhock Leadership Institute.
At Simon Fraser University, she is an Associate of the
Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue and an instructor in the
Community Capacity Building Certificate.
While developing SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement she founded, and for 11 years led, the Woodward’s Community Singers, a drop-in choir until the pandemic.
She believes in you.
James (Jim) Smith
DanceHouse Co-Founder, Artistic and Executive Director
Following studies in music and then commerce, Jim worked in tourism for the Government of Ontario.
In 1990 he moved to Montreal and began working in the professional Canadian arts sector at La La La Human Steps.
After a move to Vancouver, Jim co-founded Eponymous, an arts management and production agency.
Under the aegis of Eponymous, Jim is currently associated with Company 605, Compagnie Vision Selective, Kidd Pivot,
Les Productions Figlio, Wen Wei Dance, and Vancouver New Music. He also represents Veda Hille, Crystal Pite and Wen Wei Wang.
In 2007 Jim co-founded and is the current Artistic and Executive Director of DanceHouse, a subscription series of large-scale
dance presentations at the Vancouver Playhouse. Jim is a past President of the Canadian Dance Assembly, a founding member
of Made In BC, and is currently on the board of the Vancouver Recital Society and the Canadian Arts Presenting Association
(CAPACOA), where he is chair of the newly formed International Market Development Committee.
Kari Turunen
Artistic Director, Vancouver Chamber Choir
Kari Turunen has been the Artistic Director of the professional Vancouver Chamber Choir since the beginning of the 2019/20 season.
Before moving to Vancouver, he played a major role in choral music in Finland as a conductor, teacher of conducting, singer, clinician,
administrator, adjudicator, and lecturer. Concert tours and assignments as a teacher, clinician, and adjudicator regularly took him
around Europe and Asia. His choirs and ensembles have won numerous prizes both in Finland and abroad.
Turunen was educated at the University of Helsinki and the Sibelius Academy, where he studied choral conducting (MA).
He also holds a doctorate in early music performance practice from the University of the Arts, Helsinki.
In addition to his artistic activities, Turunen has been active in many festivals, most recently as Artistic Director.
He directed the annual Aurore Renaissance Festival in Helsinki (2015–2020), the Finnish-Swedish Song Celebration in Helsinki (June 2022),
and will serve as Artistic Director of the Tampere Vocal Music Festival in 2023.
Earlier in his career, he served almost 20 years as chair of the Finnish Choral Directors’ Association (FCDA) and six years as Executive Director
of a national choral organization. He now resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
