Durban’s inimitable Flatfoot Dance Company is off to Chicago
in the USA for a three-week trip to continue its collaboration and partnership
with Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre (DRDT). In 2013, DRDT was the first American
dance company to serve as cultural ambassadors for the US at the UKZN Centre
for Creative Art’s 15th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience.
The invite to JOMBA!, sponsored in part by the U.S.
Consulate General in Durban and their Arts Envoy Programme, and the
Chicago/Durban Twin City desk of Durban’s Metro, saw DRDT set up a two week
collaboration in August 2013 with Flatfoot. This had them firstly, teaching in
Flatfoot’s various dance development programmes and secondly had Flatfoot learn
part of the DRDT repertoire so that the two companies performed the dance we dance at the JOMBA!
festival.
In February 2014, Iega Jeff (the artistic director of DRDT)
returned to Durban for a month-long residency and as an invited Artist-In-Residence
with Flatfoot where he taught company classes and participated in the dance
life of the company by sharing his skills with the Flatfoot Training Company
and the ADD Flatfoot programme.
Overwhelmingly in this ongoing cross-hemisphere and
cross-cultural partnership, is the meeting of hearts and minds of both Flatfoot’s
Artistic Director, Lliane Loots, and DRDT’s Artistic Director’s Iega Jeff. As
Loots says; “Iega is a generous and loving human being who has dedicated his
life to his craft as a dancer and choreographer, and beyond this, is his
ability to feed into Flatfoot’s own vision of understanding that while dance is
our medium, all of us are cultural activists working to use our art for a
deeper social change. Iega feels like part of our dancing family and so when we
work together we are both learning from each other. I am humbled that DRDT
share our belief in using dance to shift lives”.
As the third leg of this ongoing partnership Loots and three
of the Flatfoot dancers (Sifiso Majola, Jabu Siphika and Sifiso Khumalo) left
for Chicago on July 3 where they will spend three weeks in an intensive
residency with DRDT. The residency involves ongoing dance training and classes
with DRDT and Flatfoot in a skills sharing programme. And Loots will begin
working, alongside Iega Jeff and Gary Abbott of DRDT, with a joint
choreographic work while in Chicago with the two companies.
Flatfoot are obviously excited to be touring, once again,
beyond South Africa’s borders, but are even more excited to be continuing what
is hoped to be a long-term partnership with DRDT and the city of Chicago. The
final leg of this collaboration is hoped to be the return of DRDT to JOMBA!
2015 and the joint celebratory performance of the new dance work with both DRDT
and Flatfoot
Funding the trip has been a long and arduous journey. With
so much political transition and an election year in South Africa, the exchange
has had to rely to the DRDT partners to raise fund. Support funding includes
grants from The Joyce Foundation and The Boeing Company, and a partnership with
the South African Consulate of Chicago, The University of Chicago’s Arts
Incubator and Old Town School of Folk Music. As Loots says, “we have been
humbled by the incredible advocacy and work of our DRDT family in Chicago and
their commitment to finding funds to get us to the US and to support the
longevity of our collaboration. My only wish is that I could have taken the
whole Flatfoot company this time around. However, we go representing Flatfoot
and its beautiful unique vision, and indeed, our city of Durban”.
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