Thu 2/25 @ 7PM
DANCECleveland has been collaborating with the 87-year-old American Dance Festival (ADF) for several years, a collaboration that continued after the pandemic shut down live dance opportunities.
Instead the two organizations commissioned a new dance film called Untold Secrets of the Heart Chamber, a collaboration of American poet/director/dancer/spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph and South African dancer/choreographer/director Gregory Vuyani Maqoma. It premieres on DANCECleveland’s You Tube channel on Thursday February 25, followed by a conversation with the artists, and will be available for 30 days after that.
In fact, prior to the pandemic, Joseph and Maqoma knew of each other, but didn’t know each other. They started to discuss the project last fall as they talked about the emergence of South African democracy over the last 25 years and the surge of racial justice demonstrations and conversations in the U.S. last summer. The 18-minute film was shot on two continents and performed by Joseph and Maqoma. We’re told the piece “ponders democracy, what grandmothers leave behind, and the safety extended from Black fathers to their sons.”
“The idea to work with Marc Bamuthi Joseph has been in my mind for a while and I was just waiting for an opportunity,” says Maqoma in the press release. “I don’t think there could have been a better time than the one we are experiencing with COVID-19 and its ripple effect across the globe. The irony is that this devastation has brought many of us together but also separated the bad apples from the good ones and forced many to look deep inside their skin to validate their existence and accelerate personal introspection.”
“I’ve been fascinated by Gregory Maqoma’s work for over a decade and was elated to learn that he too felt an aesthetic kinship and collaborative curiosity,” says Joseph. “This work plays to our respective strengths while at the same time exposing the inherent vulnerabilities of making work in the time of the pandemic. We both bring a sense of heartbreak to our political analysis and an ethic of viscerality to our approach of the ethereal.”
It’s free to watch although there’s a suggested donation of $10. Learn more about the artists here.
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