Joséphine and Bantu – A Double Bill of Memory, Resistance and Becoming Human.

Presented at UJ Arts Centre | 30 and 31 January 2026

Gregory Maqoma Industries (GMI) and UJ Arts Centre proudly present an extraordinary double bill bringing together two seminal voices of African and diasporic contemporary dance: Germaine Acogny’s Joséphine and Gregory Maqoma’s new creation Bantu. Produced by Productions Sarfati with the support of Chanel, this programme stages a powerful encounter between legacy and futurity, memory and resistance, the archive and the living body.

This African premiere follows the world premiere of Joséphine at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on 24 September 2025 and launches Bantu, a major international co-production created in 2026.

This double bill is a rare convergence of African and diasporic brilliance – a ceremony of memory, defiance and return, offered through two towering figures of contemporary dance.

JOSÉPHINE

Choreography: Germaine Acogny, Alexandra Seutin

Performer: Germaine Acogny

Staging & Dramaturgy: Mikaël Serre

Original Music: Fabrice Bouillon-LaForest

Lights & Set Design: Fabiana Piccioli, Enrico Bagnoli

Costumes: Paloma

Technical Director: Oliver Hauser

Stage Manager: Barry Strydom

Communication Manager: Isabelle Deville

Visual Content Creation (Video & Photo): Maxime Dos

Producer: Vony Sarfati

World Premiere: Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris – 24 September 2025

Joséphine is a production of Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

Joséphine summons an electrifying dialogue between two iconic women: Germaine Acogny and Joséphine Baker. Through choreographic friction rather than lineage, the work interrogates the colonial gaze, exoticism, resistance and reinvention.

Joséphine Baker – born in the United States and canonised in France – embodied colonial fantasy while simultaneously subverting it, later becoming a figure of anti-racist struggle. Germaine Acogny, born in what is now Benin, dismantles those same imaginaries through a grounded, lived, politically charged body. Her dance is a terrain of memory, refusal and becoming.

In the words of dramaturg Mikaël Serre, the stage becomes “a critical arena, a ritual of repair” – activating what bell hooks called the oppositional gaze and what Achille Mbembe names a politics of the living. This is not a celebration, but a traversal; not a reproduction, but an act of resistance.

BANTU – Creation 2026

Concept & Choreography: Gregory Maqoma

Music Composition: Yogin Sullaphen

Costume Design: Black Coffee Designs

Lighting Designer: Denis Hutchinson

Movement Analyst: Shanell Winlock-Pailman

Technical Director: Oliver Hauser

Stage Manager: Barry Strydom

Communication Manager: Isabelle Deville

Visual Content Creation (Video & Photo): Maxime Dos

Producer: Vony Sarfati

Dancers:

• Rodolphe Allui, Anique Ayiboe, Profit Lucky, Amy Collé Seck – École des Sables, Senegal

• Nathan Attie Botha, Roseline Olga Wilkens, Noko Moses Moeketsi, Tshepo Neolan Molusi,

Nkosana Mphumeleli Fakude, Monicca Ngwakwane Magoro, Gilbert Goliath,

Thabang Albert Mdlalose – Vuyani Dance Theatre, South Africa

Bantu is a co-production with The Joyce Theater New York, Théâtre de la Ville de Paris, and Théâtres de la Ville du Luxembourg.

The word Bantu – from the root meaning to be human – becomes more than origin. It is inheritance, revolution, bone-memory. In this new creation, Gregory Maqoma offers a choreographic reclamation of humanity itself, danced by a generation who feel the urgency of remembering what was denied yet never destroyed.

Here, the body is archive. Movement becomes testimony. Through rhythm, rupture and ritual, the dancers speak languages stored in the spine, the skin and

the breath – insisting on dignity, on interconnectedness, on ubuntu: I am because we are.

Bantu is not classification but cosmic inheritance – a work that heals, disrupts and restores the human being as a living, breathing force of possibility.

PRODUCTION

Joséphine and Bantu are produced by Productions Sarfati with the support of Chanel.

Performance Dates:

30 and 31 January 2026

Venue: UJ Arts Centre, Johannesburg

Bookings: At Quicket or contact kgopolo@gregmaqoma.com

Bonolo Mabasa
projects@vuyani.co.za
079 591 8771
Gregory Maqoma Industries
http://www.gregmaqoma.com