The black body is not suited to ballet, dancer Thoriso Magongwa was told by choreographer Martin Schönberg at the Ballet Theatre Afrikan (BTA) academy when he was 12, when he was about to embark on his career.
“I was told my body was wrong; my feet were wrong; that I was stiff and chubby,” he said, theatrically lifting his leg to show me a right flat foot, at a restaurant in Sandton, Johannesburg.
That day, in the late 1990s, the Soweto-born dancer went home depressed — offended even; but he was oddly driven by a raging desire to succeed. It was a shock for a person who thought of himself as “a born leader”, the ‘child everyone wanted to follow”.
At the BTA, a huge uproar followed this statement. In fact, some of the young black dancers turned their back on their new found passion. “But he was stating a fact. The white anatomy and the black anatomy are different. Schönberg’s real message was lost in translation,” says Magongwa, defending his teacher and mentor.
“I had to go against everyone and prove that I could. I dieted; I worked on my flat feet until they could arch.”
He found support at home. His mother was blindly supportive in the way parents are — even though then she wouldn’t tell a ballerino from a ballerina.
Magongwa’s mother told him: “Do whatever you want to do and I will support you.”
Years later — after thousands of hours working on his technique and movement, performing classical and contemporary dance, and working with diverse choreographers, respected dance critic Adrienne Sichel would describe him as the best dancer of his generation. Now, Magongwa even has the luxury to speculate on whether he’s actually the best.
“Do I think I am the best dancer dancer of my generation? I don’t think so.”
The 25-year-old Magongwa went through the multiracial schooling system and is from that generation that was relatively sheltered from the worst manifestations that sprang from apartheid.
“I grew up not seeing colour; I benefited from multiracial schooling,” he says.
But after Schönberg’s words he, for the first time, thought of himself as black. Since his triumph over his race, colour seems to have taken leave, he says. “The world of ballet doesn’t really identify colour, it identifies talent”.
When Magongwa, BTA’s principal dancer, tours overseas, ‘people don’t look at me as that black child. They look at me as that dancer. I have never really been at a place where they looked at me as a black person. It’s always been: ‘Is he talented’?”
If people are amazed, the surprise derives from the fact ‘that he’s from South Africa, not that he’s black”. People, both here and abroad, have always reached out. They acknowledge his role in bridging gaps and what Magongwa calls “breaking barriers”.
But recognition wasn’t always forthright. The compliments were always trailed by a qualifier: “He’s good for a black dancer,” some would say. ‘Now I am recognised as a good dancer, not a good black dancer.” He feels he has earned the accolades that include the 1997 Mabel Ryan Award and reaching the semifinals of the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland in 2000. At this prestigious competition, he was selected as 16th from a pool of 150 of the world’s best. His hours of endless work and his dogged refusal at being pigeonholed as “African this” and “African that” had paid off.
From the age of 12, he has toured extensively throughout South Africa as a principal dancer in BTA’s productions that include Debut, Cinderella, En Route, Voila, The Adventures of Alice and The Stars of Tomorrow.
“I had never heard classical music until the day I stepped into the studio at the age of 12,” he says. Considering this background, his is a victory you can’t begrudge. He had, like many others of his age, lived off a diet of pop music that included Michael Jackson, Prince and Brenda Fassie. When he made his first moves into ballet, the people of his township saw the glamourous side of ballet. Magongwa was luckily saved the fate of some dancers who “have been chased down the streets or had things thrown at them”.
His childhood friends were “curious. They thought it was a high class thing”. Some of his friends even wanted to learn the dance routines.
In our interview he dubs himself a “chameleon”, adding, “I am adaptable”. It’s a necessary trait, for a black boy excelling in a [so-called] European art form and in a country in which race still matters.
He’s conscious of himself as an inhabitant of two different worlds: one by birth and race and the other by socialisation and training. At times, he views his role in accents best described as messianic: he says he wants to “normalise” ballet in the black community.
Being a messiah has pitfalls, everyone hasn’t exactly fallen at his feet. Some have hurled epithets at him; he has been described as the “white person’s black person”. Perhaps not without good reason, for he declares “I did ballet, all my friends were white, I didn’t have dreadlocks, I didn’t listen to Miriam Makeba or wear sarongs. The way I lived my life was very Eurocentric.”
He points out that this, in no way, chips away at his identity: “I am African, despite how I look — an African born in South Africa”.
This African identity is in vogue and comes with benefits, but he’s not about to capitalise on it.
Once, when idly mulling a move into TV, someone remarked that “it was a good time for black people now to go into anything”. Magongwa “felt offended and his retort was uttered in unequivocal tones: “Do you really think that I am not good enough? Who on earth wants a handout because they are black? We have to look beyond colour. This black thing is tiring”.
With straight hair, tights pants and feminine features, Magongwa is very close to his feminine side and, more than once, has been given the “second look”. This doesn’t shock him, he says. Perhaps it’s one reason why the thought of living and working in Europe has registered on his mind.
He tells me that he’s considered living in Europe as salaries there are “great”. But he’s torn between the two, he wants to live here and “make a difference” as he’s aware how he’s ‘seen as a role model”. Europe has its allure and there’s a personal interest, “I have to do what’s best for me”.
A Sowetan living and working in Europe, now that would be a victory: for it would be a black boy triumphing over his black body right in the citadel of ballet.