SIX

Flatfoot Dance Company presents six new dance works by six choreographers.

SIX is a very special new season of dance work presented by the award winning Flatfoot Dance Company. It is the culmination of the six talented and acclaimed Flatfoot dancers creating new groundbreaking choreography of their own to celebrate the diversity of skills and talents that they have. Presenting six new short works, SIX is like eating a gourmet dance meal with different flavours upon flavours hitting the palette.

SIX opens with Magesh Ngcobo's personal and insightful work into the politics of lobolo and, entitled Abakhongi (The Negotiators), a sometimes witty sometimes very dark account of shifting cultural traditions.

Two solos follow, created and performed by Nobuhle Khawula (In my own words) and Jabu Siphika (Kanti Kuyoze Kubenini Na? - When will it stop?). Both solos are delicate and lyrical personal accounts of growing up female and South African with both the joys and the triumphs of being contemporary women searching for a link between the past and the present. The first half ends with Shayna de Kock's astutely humorous Pushing Buttons. In a style that can only but be celebrated as physical theatre, this work uses the politics of a group of people fighting for control of the remote of the television as a parallel for personal power dynamics in our everyday relationships.

The second half opens with Vusi Makanya's Hands Wash Each Other and is a delicate and desperate account of the desire for ubuntu. This duet offers a lone man and women in a rural setting learning the heart wrenching lesson of finding a way to see each other. The final work of the evening is Sifiso Kitsona Khumalo's Zakubuyiswa Ngubani Na? (Who will bring them back?). Featuring the whole company, this is a socially astute work that gets to the heart of asking how we will get back the sense of trust in our communities again. Featuring young up and coming dub poet Phumzile Masina, this work is a desperate cry into our contemporary world for change.

SIX runs at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre from September 24 to 27 nightly at 19h30 with an earlier performance on September 28 at 18h00. Booking is at Computicket.

Flatfoot Dance company acknowledges the financial support of the National Arts Council of South African and Hivos in allowing its dance theatre, dance education and dance development work to happen.