(Jürg
Koch)
Flatfoot Dance Company hosts Swiss
choreographer in a groundbreaking exchange that opens up challenges within
dance, diversity and disability!
In an exchange that has taken almost two
years to set up, Swiss choreographer Jürg Koch, has arrived in Durban to work
with Flatfoot Dance Company and various local guest dancers in an unprecedented
exchange. With support funding by Pro Helvetia, Jürg is spending three weeks in
Durban to explore dance teaching and choreographic practices that are based on
ideas of diversity especially as they relate to the inclusion of differently
abled dancers into mainstream theatre dance.
Koch’s own dance history has seen him work
extensively with UK based CandoCo – Europe’s first professional integrated
dance company working with dancers with disability. He taught, for ten years,
at the University of Washington (Seattle) before heading back home to
Switzerland and the city of Bern, where he now works as a freelance teacher and
choreographer.
His connection with Flatfoot is a natural
fit as Flatfoot’s own integrated youth dance work, spanning over 10 years, has
been seminal in shifting national perceptions around who can dance. Flatfoot’s
mandate to open up access to dance and the arts, has seen them work in
conjunction with the Open Air School in a youth dance programme called
LeftFeetFIRST!, and more recently they have started South Africa’s first Down
syndrome youth dance company.
In a three-way collaboration, Koch and
Flatfoot are also joined by the Wentworth Arts and Culture Organisation’s
(WACO) Dance Movement headed by Jarryd Watson. The final outcome of this
exploratory dance residency will be on show at the Loft Theatre on February 1 at
17h00. Tickets are limited and so booking is essential. Tickets can be booked
by calling 082 875 6065.
This final performance is also the
culmination of a two day colloquium that Flatfoot’s artistic director, Lliane
Loots, has set-up to coincide with Koch’s visit. Loots, working in association
with The Playhouse Company, has created a two-day feast for dance teachers and
performers to allow further exploration of the politics and practice of
integrated dance practice. This colloquium features special guests, Unmute
Dance Company (Cape Town), Dr Gerard Samuel (UCT), Moving Into Dance
(Johannesburg), Gladys Agulhas (Johannesburg) and disability activist and
filmmaker Liza Aziz (amongst others).
Loots says that the intention of the
colloquium is to “push the shared knowledge and practice-based learning around
integrated and disability dance in South Africa - with a focus on revising the
idea of dance as a tool for ‘living democracy’ - a term that Flatfoot Dance
Company uses to describe its impulses in dance education and community dance
engagements”. She goes on to say that integrated dance “is also a growing impulse
towards diversity in terms of performance
practice and the hope is that we are all challenged to think bigger and
more inclusively”.
The colloquium takes place at The Playhouse
Complex on January 31 and February 1 and costs R300 (lunch and tea included).
Limited places available and booking essential: 082 875 6065.
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