The recently held 12th edition of the National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA) honoured a slew of talented artists and among the gems was one of Zimbabwe’s finest dance choreographers, Brian Geza who had to wait for 14 years of sweat and toil for this moment.

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Geza walked away with the Outstanding Choreographer title but the journey to getting this accolade was never a walk in the park. Growing up in Mbare, the performing artist had a strong passion for football and never thought he would one day be lighting up stages as a dancer. 

Dancing was just by coincidence for me. I grew up in Mbare with a strong passion for soccer, I played for the Mbare select under- 11 soccer team as a goalkeeper and I was involved with the Caps United Academy. My first encounter with dance was in 1999 when a friend of mine asked me to accompany him to a dance studio where they were holding some auditions for the National Ballet Dance Audition Course (now known as the Dance Foundation Course). I tagged along and I got involved in the audition for the fun of it, little did I know it was the beginning of a great career.

I was selected and received a scholarship to study dance at the National Ballet in 2000. I began studying for the three year course and got the award for the most outstanding student of the year in 2000 and 2001. I then joined Tumbuka Dance Company as an apprentice for five years but I unfortunately injured my back whilst dancing at the Dance Umbrella Festival in South Africa in 2005. This forced me to quit professional dancing in 2006.

That did not stop me from doing what I loved most. So I continued working in the dance industry as a teacher and choreographer at Zvishamiso Arts Centre in Mbare doing mostly community based dance theatre work. I never stopped dreaming and I kept on soldering on.

I managed to further my studies in dance and also continued to rise as a choreographer. I studied for a diploma in dance at the Oslo Academy of the Arts in Norway and graduated in 2011 with a dance piece called Shift. Because of Shift, I was selected as one of the top four choreographers below 35 years old in the world to represent their countries at the Crossings Festival in South Africa.

The journey to getting this NAMA was never an easy one for I had so much negativity all around me. I faced massive “persecution” from family and close colleagues who always said that this dance thing would never get me anywhere.  I told myself I wasn’t going to give up and remained focused on achieving my goals. I am really honoured to have won this award. It came as a shock to me because I thought that the Magesh crew would snatch it as they had scooped all the other awards under the dance category.

 

I am now going back to the drawing board to come up with new great ideas. I am re-choreographing Shift and preparing to go to Namibia, where I was invited to facilitate at a dance workshop at the Windhoek University. Lastly, I want to encourage all artists out there to never to give up and never lose hope but to press on till they achieve their goals.