When the Floor Remembers You

The beat dropped in silence first. Not a drum. Not a shoe. Just the gravity of a stage that had known too much. You could feel it in the floorboards—South Africa’s history vibrating under every bare foot, every pointed toe. So when Gregory Maqoma turned, slow and deliberate, it wasn’t choreography. It was a reckoning.

International Dance Day is supposed to be a celebration, but in South Africa, it reads like something closer to an exhale—the kind that follows generations of bodies made political, expressive, and endangered. This year’s tributes to icons like Maqoma, Mamela Nyamza, and the late Sylvia Glasser didn’t feel like a nostalgic nod to legacy. They felt like warnings. What happens to a country when its movement stops?

Choreography is Not a Memory

There’s something defiant about South African dance—it never learned how to whisper. It speaks in stomps and arcs, in backbends that question gravity, in group pieces that feel like revolts dressed in rhythm. Watching Nyamza perform is like watching someone relive something they can’t explain to you. You either feel it, or you don’t deserve it.

“Dance isn’t a performance,” Maqoma once said. “It’s a body remembering what the world tried to make it forget.” That line—so casually said—lingers like a bruised note at the edge of jazz. Because South African dance has always been more than beautiful; it’s been dangerous. It moved when speech was censored. It told truths no one wanted archived.

And yet, the danger now is different: it’s not bullets or censorship. It’s apathy. Will the next generation recognize the brilliance they’re inheriting, or will they scroll past it?

Not Everything Can Be Saved in a Frame

We love our legends when they’ve been polished, don’t we? Draped in titles. Turned into Googleable history. But the truth is: these artists bled for more than applause. Their movement cracked open spaces where none were allowed. Their bodies were radical before the world thought it fashionable.

Now, dance institutions are giving them flowers. Galas are held. Speeches are made. But you have to ask—do we really want to preserve the art, or just contain it? To call someone a “living legend” is often just a way of beginning their obituary too early.

As I watched the tribute footage loop online, one question stayed: can a body that once resisted being caged now survive being curated?

And what if the floor forgets how to listen?