As I told a friend, concerning this storytelling dance with live music, it filled up my whole mind. More than a week has passed since I saw the performance of Exit/Exist by South African artists Gregory Maqoma/Vuyani Dance Theatre, but it keeps shouldering more recent offerings at the American Dance Festival from the forefront of my consciousness. This is one that leapt into my upper echelon of dance experiences, onto the mental shelf of honor along with my first Eiko and Koma dance and a few select others. Great imagination, incredible aesthetics, and complete authenticity.

“Just a few minutes into Exit/Exist, the American Dance Festival’s second offering of the season, I felt myself slipping out of the critical zone. The commenting mind put down its note-taking pencil and disconnected the flow of verbiage. For an hour, there was only a man dancing, and four men singing, and a guitar ringing and chiming. Within, a play of emotions – awe, pity, rage, mystification, comprehension–and a kind of lust, a joyous greedy desire of the eye and ear.”

Read my review on cvnc.org here.

Gregory Maqoma/Vuyani Dance Theatre.  Photo:©John Hogg