Vincent Sekwati Koko Mantsoe was born in Johannesburg in 1971, into a family of sangomas (or diviner-priests), who instilled in him an appreciation for his culture and a love of ritual singing and dancing. As a teenager in Soweto, he learned street dancing and began formal training in Afrofusion and contemporary dance at the age of 19. Within a few years, he became the artistic director of Moving Into Dance, the Johannesburg company where he first studied, and performed throughout Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the U.S. While still in his twenties, he created a full-evening work for the Dance Theatre of Harlem and received many international awards. A program note for Barena asks, “Is power drawn from symbols or is it inherent in the ruler? When one examines oneself, is humanity not the most important thing?”
Read More
