…… BY BILLY SUTER……
THIRTEEN days of world-class contemporary dance will take the focus when the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts presents the 26th Jomba Contemporary Dance Experience from August 27 to September 8.
This dance celebration will see both local and international dance-makers converging on Durban for a festival which, this year, carries the theme, “finding our way home”.
Curator Dr Lliane Loots says the event is “set against a backdrop of both local and global political renegotiations of what it means to be human, to belong, to have a home… and to be a citizen of a country (and of a planet); against an occupied Gaza, a ravaged Ukraine, anti-foreigner right-wing political movements in Europe, a South African Government of National Unity that is busy maneuvering for power … Jomba begins to ask what is means to find our way home”.
Veteran South African dance-maker Robyn Orlin is honoured as the 2024 Jomba Legacy Artist for her innovative, political and deeply interrogated dance and theatre work spanning four decades.
Berlin-based Orlin’s work, titled we wear our wheels with pride and slap your streets with color … we said ‘bonjour’ to satan in 1820, has been created with Moving Into Dance and is said to be adeeply personal work that emanates from one of Orlin’s childhood memories, visiting Durban, of the Zulu rickshaws.
Orlin delves into the rickshaw driver’s mischievous appropriation, sublimation, irony and self-deprecation, as she celebrates the rickshaw driver’s refusal to concede their dignity to colonial and apartheid forces.
Cape Town’s Jazzart opens the festival with a triple-bill titled Resilience, featuring three works: I am African; choreographed by Jazzart’s Head of Training, Sifiso Kweyama; Battlefield, choreographed by ex-Jazzart Company Dancer, Lihle Mfene; and Dark Flock, crafted by the award-winning duo, Manacan.
Bangalore-based dancer and choreographer Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy presents a double bill titled Vasudaiva Kutumbakam, with support from the Indian Consulate General (Durban), ICCR and the Swami Vivekananda Centre (Durban). With distant roots in classical Indian dance forms, Shivaswamy is firmly embedded in contemporary dance making and a search for finding ways to express modern Indian identities.
South Africa’s award-winning Boyzie Cekwana’s…on behalf of a collective sig, a work created in collaboration with American musician Maritri Garret (who has worked and shared stages with music giants Barbra Streisand, Gladys Knight, the Indigo Girls and others), is said to traverse the terrain of love, loss, mental illness, memory, and ageing. It weaves its tale through soulful folk songs, movement, spoken and written words.
Cekwana also features in a lecture performance: I hate you for watching this: A rocking tale of how disco and the dancefloor (nearly) changed the world.
As part of the Jomba mandate to promote, commission and support local work, Jomba on the Edge features works by Steven Chauke and Kristi-Leigh Gresse.
This year, the CCA Jomba launches the joint annual Phakamusa Dance Commission with the Market Theatre to support innovative and provocative South African dance-makers.
Cape Town-based Yaseen Manuel – whose unique access of his own Muslim South African history with the intersection of both personal and political dance storytelling, makes him an exceptional voice in dance – has been awarded this commission.
He presents Madha Kan, described asa personal journey that interrogates the current events unfolding in Palestine, capturing not only the harsh realities but also the deep compassion and kindness of its citizens.
Marseille (France)-based Compagnie Ex Nihilo and Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company collaborate to present Close by … / La rue d’à-côté…. This seesAnne Le Batard and Jean-Antoine Bigot work with Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika, Zinhle Nzama, Siseko Duba, Ndumiso ‘Digga’ Dube, Mthoko Mkhwanazi and Sbonga Ndlovu.
In a choice made to perform ‘close by’ to more formal theatre and performance art spaces, the work will explore and encounter the exterior pathways and ways of being that emerge from immersive research that looks at how space is explored by the body.
Jomba also partners with Rerouting Arts (Hilton) to share this work at St. Anne’s College Theatre and The Platform Gallery in Lions River.
A special digital screen dance focus will be on the Japanese Butoh Dancer and choreographer, Dai Matsuoka. Matsuoka is the founder and director of Land Fes, a non-profit organisation promoting diversity and inclusion through performing arts. He shares three of his most recent short digital dance films, all of which navigate his work in integrated dance practices.
The annual screen dance competition platform Jomba Digital Open Horizons will be showcased online. This provides an opportunity for choreographers to present their work in a professional environment with the support of a full technical team.
The Jomba Youth Open Horizons, in partnership with Durban’s Stable Theatre, will feature 12 new works from youth groups.
The festival includes Jomba Talks Dance, involving choreographers and dancers, chatting after some of the live performances at Durban’s Sneddon Theatre, and the annual Forging Futures discussion, which centres on the current silencing of artists in times of conflict, that is witnessed mainly in the global North.
Jo,ba also hosts a series for free workshops and masterclasses. Booking is essential as places are limited. The workshops are only open to dancers aged 16 years and older. E-mail thobimaphanga@gmail.com to book a place at least two days in advance of the workshop.
The second Jomba @ The Market Theatre, a smaller curated extension of the Durban festival, takes place in Gauteng from September 11 to 14. It will feature Yaseen Manuel, Jazzart, Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy and Robyn Orlin, as well as a series of workshops.
For more info and the full programme visit https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/
Tickets cost R65 and R85 and R65 (concessions and group discounts available at outlets only) or R390 for a once-off, full festival pass to see everything. Booking is via Computicet.
.....SoSuterBill..... 