“In fashion, the body supports the garment. In dance, the garment supports the body,” says designer Jacques van der Watt of Black Coffee on the different processes that must inform designing for the runway and for performance.
He has created a lasting and captivating creative partnership with dance intellectual and choreographer Gregory Maqoma, with costumes that accentuate moving stories and reflect conceptual beauty and a respect for form.
Known for an architectural and geometric design signature that supports the abstraction of his work, Jacques is well suited to Gregory’s dance, which is created from deep thinking and the body’s amplitude to carry and disseminate knowledge, identity, history, and politics. Both understand that a costume must extend the body’s architecture and serve the choreography.
Their shared philosophies on design and movement have sustained a partnership that has grown from mutual respect and curiosity about each other’s work since 2002.
“Dance and fashion are disciplines in constant conversation with movement, form and space,” Jacques says. “We share an understanding of the body as both canvas and storytelling instrument. Over the years, that mutual respect has deepened into trust. With trust comes the freedom to take risks together.”
Gregory adds, “What appeals to me most is restraint and precision. Jacques’ garments have clarity. For a choreographer, that is everything. Dance demands freedom and integrity of line. Jacques’ tailoring respects the spine, the shoulder, the curve of the hip. Even when the design is sculptural, it remains in conversation with movement. There is also something deeply African in his powerful minimalism.”
The two have worked on many Vuyani Dance Theatre (Gregory’s dance company) productions, including Full Moon (2014), which merged Jacques’ aesthetic style with layered meaning on a grand scale, and CION: Requiem of Ravel’s Bolero, which finished its European tour last month.
The work — inspired by Zakes Mda’s protagonist in the novel Ways of Dying — explores death and mourning, ancestry, and resilience, with costumes that add emotional depth to the dance’s ritualistic hue.
Currently on their minds is the dance opera Genesis: The Beginning and End of Time, fresh from its resounding Cape Town premiere and due for its Johannesburg run from 19 to 22 March.
“Genesis explores rupture, time, destruction, and rebirth. The costumes had to embody both fragility and monumentality,” Gregory says.
“We leaned into sculptural silhouettes — garments that felt almost biblical yet contemporary. The palette moved between earth and shadow, suggesting origin and void. Here, costume becomes a second skin of memory, communicating that the body carries epochs within it; that we are walking archives.”
Jacques adds, “Genesis also speaks to reclaiming agency in the face of oppression. The design language is not rooted in a single tradition but informed by many.
“There is a sense of collective ritual in the organic textures and layered fabrication — something grounded yet elevated.”
Where Costume Leads the Movement
While choreography and context inform the costumes in Gregory Maqoma and Black Coffee’s partnership, in the work of dancer-choreographer and performance artist Nelisiwe Xaba, it is often the costume that informs the movement.
Nelisiwe is a pioneer of avant-garde contemporary dance, innovating with art, technology, and fashion to create works that live in galleries or museums as hybrids of dance, visual or performance art, and physical theatre.
In her earliest and seminal works — now considered classics — Nelisiwe uses the story of Sarah Baartman as an allegory for her own artistic journey and the exotic voyeurism she experienced during her dance training in the West. She collaborated with design duo Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater of Strangelove to interrogate the politics of history, race, and gender in relation to the Black female body.
“I went to school at a time when you could learn to sew, crochet and knit. Street fashion was always around me from an early age, and I was more attracted to beauty that wasn’t mainstream.
“I grew up in Dube, Soweto, where I was surrounded by theatre, music and dance, and I always knew that there was more in the world than what I was exposed to,” Nelisiwe says.
“I was introduced to Strangelove by the late gallerist Henri Vergon. In a way, it was like being introduced to playmates. They were anti-ramp and preferred to create work that told fashion stories.
“When I met them, I was also very much into using fashion and objects to create a new choreographic language for myself.”
In Plasticization (2004), developed with Carlo, they stylised the tri-colour plastic weave carrier bag — a muse for many artists and designers — to speak to issues of migration, consumerism, political baggage, and Nelisiwe’s identity as a dancer.
In They Look at Me and That’s All They Think, with Carlo also directing, Sarah Baartman’s story becomes more vivid through costumes that capture her form and spirit — garments that morph into different shapes and volumes to convey shifting meanings and subtleties. This piece was recently shown at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., in February.
“At the time, the repatriation of Sarah Baartman was current news. The story resonated deeply with me and my stage journey.
“Strangelove had already done a Sarah Baartman-inspired collection, which I didn’t know about until I was working with them. My approach was simple: I asked them to design a skirt that could function as a projection screen.
“When they brought the skirt to the studio where I was working, it was an encounter with what I called a monster — because of the choreographic and dramatic possibilities it offered,” Nelisiwe recalls.
She and the now-defunct Strangelove went on to collaborate on other productions, including Sakhozi Says ‘Non’ to the Venus. Carlo later created a new label, Klipa, in 2014 and now lives in the United States.
Nelisiwe will perform her latest work, vRot — created in collaboration with slow knitwear design label Wrapt Knitwear — as part of Decay Without Mourning: Future Thinking Heritage Practices, an international conference taking place at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS) from 15 to 17 April 2026.
This conference brings together performers, musicians, artists, academics and Indigenous knowledge activists from around the world to consider what happens to archives, histories, and cultural materials when they begin to fade, fracture, or fall apart — and how processes of decay might open up new, creative ways of understanding heritage.
Her performance will take place on 16 and 17 April at the Adam Small Theatre and is free and open to the public.
