26TH JOMBA! CONTEMPORARY DANCE EXPERIENCE

 

(Above: “weight of time “ Photo Krithi Kumar Barik 2)

The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts presents the 26th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience offering a 13-day treat of world class contemporary dance that will see both local and international dance makers converging on Durban between August 27 and September 8, 2024.

The theme of this year’s festival is “finding our way home” and curator Dr Lliane Loots says, “and 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 manoeuvring for power … JOMBA! begins to ask what is means to find our way home”.

(Right: Robyn Orlin's WWOW 2 © Jérôme Séron)

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 we wear our wheels with pride and slap your streets with color … we said ‘bonjour’ to satan in 1820 … - a work made with MOVING INTO DANCE is a deeply personal work that emanates from one of her 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 captivating 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.

 

(Left: Boyzie Cekwana (JOMBA! 2019) in “Bootlegged” - photo by Val Adamson)

South Africa’s award-winning Boyzie Cekwana’s…on behalf of a collective sigh created in collaboration with American musician Maritri Garret (who has worked and shared stages with music giants Barbara Streisand, Gladys Knight, the Pharcyde, the Indigo Girls and others), traverses 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 dance floor (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. 

(Right: “Madha Kan” - Yaseen Manuel. Pic supplied)

This year, the CCA JOMBA! launches the joint annual PHAKAMISA 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 which is a 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 …. Ex Nihilo’s Anne Le Batard and Jean-Antoine Bigot work with FLATFOOT’s 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! 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 is on the Japanese Butoh Dancer, choreographer, and LAND FES Director, Dai Matsuoka. Matsuoka is the founder and director of LAND FES, a non-profit organisation, that has the purpose of 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.

The JOMBA! LIVE OPEN HORIZONS 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 The Stable Theatre, features 12 new works from youth groups.

The festival includes JOMBA! Talks Dance with choreographers and dancers after some of the live performances at the Sneddon Theatre, and the annual Forging Futures discussion, centres around the current silencing of artists in times of conflicts that is witnessed mainly in the global North.

JOMBA! also hosts a series for free workshops and masterclasses. Booking is essential as places are limited. The workshops are only open to dancers 16yrs 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 from September 11 to 14 featuring Yaseen Manuel, JAZZART, Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy and Robyn Orlin and a series of workshops.

 

The JOMBA! KHULUMA and the JOMBA! BLOG Writing Residency facilitated by DUT Drama lecture Clare Craighead, will feature reviewing and writing by graduate students studying dance.

For more information and to see the full programme, go to: https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/

Tickets are R85 and R65 (concessions and groups - available at outlets only) or R390 – once-off FULL festival pass to see everything. Booking via Computicket.

NB To find out more about the Centre for Creative Arts, click on the logo advert to the right of this article.