ARCHIVES 2017 / THE LAST KING OF KAKFONTEIN

At once a brutal fairy tale and a Shakespearean tragedy that uses dance, video, and live music, Boyzie Cekwana's latest creation focuses on a democratic tyrant. The Last King wanders the petrified halls of his cardboard palace and sings his own praises “like blood oozing from a wounded body.” Imagined during the American Presidential election, inspired by the situation in South Africa and Europe, Kakfontein analyses the behaviour of the demagogues who have risen to power and comments their repeated attacks on the democratic project. Is our time that different from the 1930s? How can we have given up on the hope created by the long marches for civil rights? In a way reminiscent of the songs and dances of protest that set the streets of Johannesburg on fire in the 1980s, the South African choreographer stages the downfall of those new cynical kings who trample the social contract and try to silence dissent. A piece that reminds us that Boyzie Cekwana, a major figure in the world of dance in South Africa, is much more than a maker of shows: he is a look-out who never tires of questioning society and denouncing its changes when they attack rights and freedom.

Boyzie Cekwana
Boyzie Cekwana was born in 1970 in Soweto, South Africa, where he began his career as a dancer. At age 19, he joined Adel Blank's company. Four years later, he was spotted by the artistic director of the Playhouse Dance Company, who hired him as a dancer, but also as choreographer-in-residence. In 1995, he created Brother, Brother, which was awarded a prize at the Third International Ballet and Choreography Competition in Helsinki, Finland. Two years later, he created African Odyssée, produced with help from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. That same year, he founded his own company, Floating Outfit Project, based in Durban. In 1999, he was awarded first prize at the third Biennale des rencontres chorégraphiques africaines et de l'Océan Indien in Antananarivo, in Madagascar. Over the past 20 years, this artist who has always seen art and political engagement as going hand in hand and is regularly invited throughout the world, has become a key actor in the creation of a regional artistic network in Southern Africa, and has created a body of work at once lucid, political, and critical. Many of his works are now part of the repertoire of prestigious companies like the Ballet de Lorraine, the Scottish Dance Theatre, or the Washington Ballet.