The Centre for the Less Good Idea wishes you a warm and easy start to 2025. 

Our spaces in Johannesburg opened last week and have been busy with rehearsals, PRACTICE, and TÊTE-À-TÊTE sessions, while The Centre Outside the Centre prepares for exciting tours, residencies and collaborations abroad starting in February 2025. 

Find out what we’ve got lined up for the first few months of the year. 

On Saturday 1 February 2025, The Centre for the Less Good Idea travels to Los Angeles to present 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 will take place at The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.  

The Great Yes, The Great No
Photographer | Stella Olivier

From 5 to 8 February 2025, William Kentridge and The Centre take The Great Yes, The Great No, to The Wallis in Beverly Hills, California.

Kentridge’s experimental new 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.  

(L-R): Lazaro Arvizu Jr. and DAPHNE will present new work at The Broad in February.
Photo | Courtesy of The Broad

On Sunday 2 February regular collaborator of The Centre, DAPHNE, presents a newly commissioned musical, visual, and spoken word performance with Tongva educator and musician Lazaro Arvizu Jr. at The Broad. The performance invites the audience into a creative call-and-response dialogue about reconciliation in Tovaangar (Los Angeles) today.

Following this is a public conversation featuring performer Tony Miyambo and artist Bronwyn Lace, both representing the work of The Centre, and Louise Steinman, author of The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation.

Unsettled Voices is co-presented and co-commissioned by Lunder Institute of American Art and The Broad, and is also part of the Los Angeles residency of The Centre for The Less Good Idea hosted by The Broad, The Nimoy at CAP, UCLA, and The Wallis.

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

Preceding African Exodus on the Lobby Stage is 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. 

An In Conversation between Senegalese philosopher and scholar Souleymane Bachir Diagne, and Impresario for the Less Good Idea, Neo Muyanga, directly follows 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 will discuss, among other things, the shared musical traditions between Africa and the United States of America, and the history of migration between the two.

This year, SO | The Academy for the Less Good Idea continues its open programmes aimed at professional artists, PRACTICE & TÊTE-À-TÊTE. 

Last week saw our first sessions for the year take place at The Centre, with Thami Majela leading PRACTICE | Movement, Pertunia Msani leading PRACTICE | Voice, and Lawrence Lemaoana facilitating TÊTE-À-TÊTE.

In February, PRACTICE | Movement will be led by Shanell Winlock-Pailman while PRACTICE | Voice will be led by Khutjo Green. February’s TÊTE-À-TÊTE facilitator is still being confirmed.

Bookings for next month’s sessions will be announced via our newsletter and social media at the start of February.

The SO Academy is also excited to announce that this year sees the launch of a new series of Thinking In workshops addressing the fundamentals of theatre-making.

The first of these workshops will be Thinking In Writing and will draw on the skills and expertise of theatremakers MoMo Matsunyane, Jefferson Tshabalala, and Neil Coppen.

The Thinking In Writing workshop will take place in early March with a call for applications going out next week. Keep an eye on our social media for more.

From 27 to 29 March, The Centre presents the third iteration of its Collations series, curated by Impresario for the Less Good Idea, Neo Muyanga.

Tentatively titled The Unexpected City, COLLATION 3 will take the Johannesburg inner city as its point of departure, working with a group of artists and interpreters to make and respond to art about, with, and through the city.

More information to follow. Keep an eye on our social media and newsletter for updates.

Dada Masilo at Joburg Ballet, 2024.
Photographer | Lauge Sorensen

The Centre for the Less Good Idea is hugely saddened by the loss of Dada Masilo, who passed away on 29 December 2024 following a brief illness.

A world-renowned dancer and choreographer, Masilo was a regular collaborator of William Kentridge. Her penchant for experimentation, collaboration and her fearless approach to rethinking contemporary dance will continue to inspire the work we do at The Centre.

Read more about the life and work of Masilo here, and watch her 2ndary REVISIONS episode, where she breaks down her creative and choreographic process, here.

All photographs by Zivanai Matangi except where stated otherwise.