On Saturday 1 February 2025, The Centre for the Less Good Idea presented A Defence of the Less Good Idea, a series of short-form works – Mnquma, Commission Continua and Umthandazo – preceded by a performance-based lecture by William Kentridge.

The performances took place at The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA to a full house and were well-received by audiences and critics alike.

From 5 to 8 February 2025,William Kentridge and The Centre for the Less Good Idea took The Great Yes, The Great No, to The Wallis in Beverly Hills, California.

Kentridge’s experimental production is an intensively collaborative work. Born from a process of creative exchange with The Centre for the Less Good Idea, The Great Yes, the Great No sees Kentridge collaborating with theatre-maker Phala Ookeditse Phala, dramaturg Mwenya Kabwe, choral conductor and dancer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, costume designer Greta Goiris, set designer Sabine Theunissen, and the production’s chorus of seven women who, along with Mahlangu, contribute to the deep musical structure of the work.

The Great Yes, The Great No is part play, part Greek chorus, part chamber opera – all interwoven with Kentridge’s signature surrealist visuals.

Photographer | Stella Olivier 

From 27 February to 2 March 2025, The Centre presented the renowned musical odyssey, African Exodus, at the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) in New York City.

This was the North American debut of African Exodus and was incredibly well-received by audiences and critics alike.

Preceding African Exodus on the Lobby Stage each evening was Sounds of Limpopo, a free-to-the-public, two-man musical performance exploring the rhythmic patterns and sounds of the natural world using an array of instruments and bodily percussion. 

Also part of the programme at PAC was an In Conversation between Senegalese philosopher and scholar Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Impresario for the Less Good Idea, Neo Muyanga, which followed the February 28th performance. Leveraging off the themes of identity, culture, and migration implicit in African Exodus, and its performance debut in North America, Muyanga and Diagne discussed, among other things, the shared musical traditions between Africa and the United States of America, and the history of migration between the two.

Photographer | Stephanie Berger