Acclaimed South African dancer, choreographer and director, Gregory founded Vuyani Dance Theatre in 1999 with the vision to build a platform for artists in South Africa and beyond – where collaboration could be a catalyst forbreaking cultural barriers.
Born in Soweto, October 16 of 1973, Gregory Vuyani Maqoma became interested in dance in the late 1980’s as a means to escape the political tensions growing in his place of birth. He started his formal dance training in 1990 at Moving Into Dance where in 2002 he became the Associate Artistic Director. Maqoma has established himself as an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and scriptwriter. He founded Vuyani Dance Theatre (VDT) in 1999 when he was undertaking a scholarship at the Performing Arts Research and Training School (PARTS) in Belgium under the direction of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.
Maqoma is respected for his collaborations with artists of his generation and is perhaps best known for producing trilogies. He first created the award winning Rhythm Trilogy (comprising Rhythm 1 2 3, Rhythm Blues and Rhythm Colour) followed by, respectively, the Beauty Trilogy – Beautiful, Beautiful Me and Beautiful Us. Beautiful (a duet with Shanell Winlock) premiered in South African in a VDT/ Moving into Dance Joint Season that took place at the Dance Factory from June 22 to 25 in 2005. After finalizing his extensive research on Beautiful Me, Maqoma took up residency at the Centre Nationale de la Danse, Pantin, outside Paris to prepare the South African premiere at the 2007 FNB Dance Umbrella. In 2006 and 2007 Maqoma won the Gauteng MEC Award for the group work Beautiful Us and solo Beautiful Me, respectively.