FLATFOOT OPENS DANCE UMBRELLA

Dance Umbrella 2011, South Africa's longest running international contemporary dance festival, begins on February 24 at The Dance Factory in Johannesburg, Gauteng.

It opens with Durban's inimitable Flatfoot Dance Company performing two of their key dance theatre works. Artistic Director of Flatfoot, Lliane Loots says, "All of us in Flatfoot are humbled by this invitation and are very excited to share our work on this national platform. Ironically, we have spent a lot of time travelling internationally and on the African continent with our dance work, but seldom get the opportunity to travel our own country so we are deeply grateful to the artistic director Georgina Thomson and Dance Umbrella for inviting us this year."

Flatfoot's Dance Umbrella performance will begin with guest choreographer to the company, Sifiso E. Kweyama's, circle. First created in 2010, circle is a haunting ritual dance theatre work. This work began as an exploration of traditional values around story-telling and its place in both ancient and contemporary African society. It involved each of the dancers using this platform to also negotiate their 'stories' and so the work has a very private and intimate sensibility. It is a combination of heart-stopping African contemporary dance technique, in a style that has made Kweyama a much sought after teacher and choreographer, with a tender social conscience that is deeply moving! circle has travelled with Flatfoot, over the course of 2010, to Cameroon and Holland and on both trips received standing ovations.

The second work is Loots's own controversial and critically-acclaimed dance theatre work Bloodlines. First performed in 2009, it is a work that delves head-first and uncompromisingly into a political dreamscape that looks into questions of home, belonging and what it means to be a contemporary African. Images of bloodlines that encompass African refugees in South Africa, itinerant African people searching for a home, xenophobia, and Loots's own ironic look at whiteness and her own Afrikaner roots, is presented in a dance work that offers very little narrative but rather the dreams and nightmares of the present.

Collaborating in Bloodlines, with long-time friend and internationally-acclaimed spoken word poet ewok (Iain Robinson), Loots finds a way to thread the spoken word and ewok's unique performance style into a dance theatre work that begins to redefine a genre. Also collaborating once again with Loots, is Durban filmmaker Karen Logan whose poetic images further layer this dance theatre vision.

Loots says, "I make theatre and dance that brings the people I work with along with me, be this the dancers who actively are part of the creative process, or the poet or the filmmaker. In a strange way we have all been feeling quite profoundly about these kinds of bloodlines that make us African - we might not all agree and we have often had heated discussions; and this is what art should do after all?"

An exciting development for Bloodlines for the 2011 Dance Umbrella is the inclusion of guest Dutch dancer Patricia van Deutekom who travels to South Africa to re-stage this piece with Flatfoot. Ms. Van Deutekom comes to Flatfoot, because of the partnership the dance company has had with Dutch dance company, Introdans. After a deeply productive dance education and performance exchange programme between Introdans Interactive and Flatfoot in Durban and in Arnhem (where Introdans is based) that spanned three years of sharing of dance education philosophies, Flatfoot was delighted to be able to invite Van Deutekom to continue this partnership and be part of the Dance Umbrella.

Flatfoot thanks the South African Netherlands Embassy's support in making this exchange possible. Whilst in Durban, Van Deutekom will visit and guest teach with some of the eight dance development programmes that Flatfoot runs in KwaMashu, Umlazi and at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Howard College Campus) with the Flatfoot Training Company.

Flatfoot Dance Company's dance work is supported by the South African National Arts Council and the Dutch development agency, HIVOS.