JOMBA! MASIHAMBISANE DIALOGUES

 

(Committee JOMBA! Masihambisane Dialogues: (L-R) Top: Thobile Maphanga, Dr Lliane Loots, Dr Mbongeni Mtshali and Hannah Ma. Bottom: Clare Craighead,, the late David Thatanelo April,  Prof Yvette Hutchison and Prof Sarahleigh Castelyn. Pic supplied)

From SA to the World: Contemporary Dance Conference Breaks Borders

The annual online South African contemporary dance colloquium JOMBA! Masihambisane Dialogues, hosted by the UKZN’s Centre for Creative Arts’ JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, taking place from May 21 to 23, 2025, offers an impactful global dialogue around contemporary dance in a shifting world.

The conference, now in its fifth edition, features dance-makers, academics, dancers, educators, and researchers from 14 countries, including Brazil, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Madagascar, Syria, Switzerland, South Africa, Ireland, India, Germany, Ukraine, Jordan, China, and the UK. The theme or “provocation” this year is Moving border/lands: dance as a practice of worlding, and looks at how dance and dance-making respond to, battles with, and navigate the current unfolding socio- and geo-politics of border/lands.

The colloquium, which is free and open to all features keynote addresses, panel discussions, as well as “abstracts or papers” presented by participants.  The keynote address will be made by renowned South African artist-scholar Jay Pather, Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town, where he directs the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA). His award-winning artistic work deploys site-specific, interdisciplinary, and intercultural strategies to frame postcolonial imaginaries, decolonisation, and matters of social justice.

Pather’s key note, titled “compass reset: ‘worlding’ closer home, some south-south reflections” will also be in dialogue with the rest of the steering committee that includes dance-focused academics, researchers and practitioners: Dr Mbongeni Mtshali (lecturer at University of Cape Town), Clare Craighead (lecturer at Durban University of Technology), Dr Lliane Loots (lecturer at University of KwaZulu-Natal), Prof Sarahleigh Castelyn (Associate Professor/Reader University of East London UK), Thobile Maphanga (dance practitioner, scholar, creative collaborator), Hannah Ma (director of The People United in Luxembourg) and Prof Yvette Hutchison (South African Reader/Associate Professor at the University of Warwick UK).

Further keynote dialogues will be held with Robert Siimpijja, a Ugandan dance artist who works in the arena of post-colonialism and decolonisation. His dance film ALIENATION (which will be screened at the colloquium), takes the viewer on a journey of self-discovery around the questions of home and where we belong.

Pêdra Costa, a Brazilian performer and interdisciplinary artist based in Vienna, utilises intimacy to foster a sense of collectivity. Pêdra’s diverse body of work continually provokes thought and inspires dialogues on conventional notions of art, identity, collectivity, invisible knowledge, and resistance/insistence.

Gaby Saranouffi, a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director at ITROTRA Art X Connection, will talk about her border crossings between Madagascar and South Africa.

And Yaseen Manuel, a Cape Town based dancer, interrogates his Muslim spirituality and legacy that features prominently in his work. His recent dance works Aslama (which linked the Syrian massacre to a more internal battle for self and identity) and his 2024 work Madha Kan (an unrelenting and ghostly journey into the genocide in Gaza), have been called ‘both terrifying and beautiful’.

Thobile Maphanga chairs a fascinating panel with Abd Al Hadi Abunahleh (Artistic director of Studio 8 & IDEA festival, Jordan), Orwa Nyrabia (Independent filmmaker and Artistic Director of IDFA, Syria/Berlin), Dr Princess Sibanda (Scholar Activist, Zimbabwe/South Africa), and Kateryna Botanova (Cultural Critic & Curatorial Advisor of Culturescapes, Ukraine/Switzerland).

The panel is titled “Festivals/Festival Making as choreographies of Border-Crossing and Worlding” and unpacks the idea of choreographies and politics of movement of cultural workers and looks at outputs such as dance across territorial borders.

Papers, digital engagements and further dialogues open up important discussion around contemporary identities and how they relate to an embodied performance form like dance (and its cognate practices) as we respond and revise ideas of border/lands; real or imagined - manifest between nation-states, between North and South, between fluid ideas of genders, between performances of tradition and modernity, between colonial and the post-/ decolonial narratives.      

Some of these papers and engagements will be presented by:

Anika Babel and Subhashini Goda (University College Dublin, Ireland) presenting, “Remediating kolam: Collaborative and intercultural explorations in dance and music”

Marcia Mzindle (DUT, South Africa) presenting “Temporal Immortality”

Sandra Chatterjee (India/Germany), with Hannah Ma (China/Germany) presenting, “Dance with the Stars #1 — Dancing Across Borders in Time and Space – a critical reflection”

Kwanele Finch Thusi (South Africa) presenting “Moving Through Borders, Breaking Through Bodies”

Ochan Zechariah (Uganda) presenting “Engaging with environmental borders through movement”

Alan Parker (South Africa) presenting “The When of Worlding: Durational Performance and the Subversion of Time-Discipline in Decolonial Dance Pedagogy”

Zhiling Guo (China/UK) presenting “From Borderland to Third Space – Signdance as an Aesthetic and Theatre Practice”

 

The colloquium will be streamed live on YouTube on the following link https://www.youtube.com/jomba_dance

Participants will be on Zoom, and for those who wish to apply to join in the “Zoom Room” to be present, can contact Thobile Maphanga at thobimaphanga@gmail.com

For more information and news as well as the schedule – go to:

https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/masihambisane-dialogues/