In a cone of light, and enveloped by mists, Gregory Maqoma stands as if waiting to be born. His body twitches and flicks faintly, tapping against an invisible eggshell of air. He steps out, a shy little creature who smiles ingratiatingly and peeps like a chicklet, nervous even of the steady lull of Bach's Air on the G String.
If his gangling limbs suggest an awkward stork, his choreography is a magpie assortment of styles, both physical and musical: African, European, classical, contemporary, pop. Ketima ("Run") is marked by Maqoma's personal experiences as a black man raised in Soweto, who studied dance in both South Africa and Brussels. Its most salient characteristic is not fusion, but struggle. Maqoma's body jitters with conflicting impulses. He's joined by three men - Daniel Mashita, Tebogo Thlale and Melusi Mkhanjane - who seem to embody different aspects of his self. Like Maqoma, they're all bandaged up in terrycloth corsets. Mashita kicks and tumbles as if fighting an imaginary enemy, Mkhanjane waddles upstage like a duck, cheekily wiggling his buttocks. Between solos, the men are pulled back into rank, striding and chasing about the stage.
The music is an eclectic collage: Bach is interrupted by live percussion from Given Mphago; there's a snippet of kitsch disco; Maqomo picks out notes on a piano. Though disparate, the music provides the thread running through the piece - the dancers spar with it, submitting to its sound or railing against it.
Ketima can seem over-full of ideas that you suspect mean more to Maqoma than to the audience. But it has a relentless energy and some striking images, none more so than the final scene: Thlale, driven by the bright orchestral sounds of Chabrier's España, skitters into the cone of light, flailing his arms like a manic Pavlova swan who can't get airborne but refuses to die.
