Tracing Ancestry Through Movement: Dance as a Spiritual Archive by Amahle Radebe for JOMBA! Khuluma. Edited by Clare Craighead
Anele Makanya’s performance in The Silent Voice, choreographed by Thandeka Maqebula, carries the audience through an aching meditation on pain and loss. She appears centre stage, perched on a raised platform and wrapped in long coloured cloths — one binding her upper body, restricting her hands. To a haunting Shembe hymn, Ngingumhambi emhlabeni, Makanya struggles against her bindings, her movements closer to gestures than expansive phrases.
Each spotlight she crosses leaves behind another strip of cloth, until only one remains knotted at her waist. In her repeated attempt to reach for the discarded cloths — reaching back towards grief — she violently pulls her arm away, resisting the lure of sorrow. This cyclical struggle captures the difficulty of releasing pain: the way grief draws us back, feeding depression, yet ultimately urging us to break free.
In Burst my Bubble, choreographer and performer Tegan Peacock explores the invisible dialogue between fear and aspiration. Entering with an oversized bag of inflated balloons, Peacock reveals each balloon as a vessel of fear, holding her back from her dreams. She listens, quarrels, and then bursts them one by one — an act both playful and cathartic.
In a striking image, she dances with the bag covering her head, bursting balloons blindly until only an uninflated one remains. Slowly, deliberately, she breathes life into it. The image is simple but potent: nurturing hope rather than feeding fear. As Peacock reminds us, “most of the old moles I know wish they had listened less to their fears and more to their dreams.”
Gabriel Youngstar’s Echoes of Greatness, performed by ISPA
students, is an electrifying testament to struggle, initiation, and triumph.
The stage is transformed into a ritual space: a bathtub becomes a centre of
action while two women place calabashes downstage, anchoring the work in
cultural symbolism. Movement, song, and ritual converge as dancers mark each
other’s bodies — white paint on foreheads, scars across chests — before
discarding their shirts into the bathtub.
At the climax, the final male dancer tears off his shirt in an act of surrender and transformation. The work demands extraordinary energy and trust; its leaps, throws, and physical risks are charged with the urgency of becoming.
Closing the evening,
Mfundiseni Ndwalane’s Sisukaphi —
winner of the JOMBA! 2025 Open Horizons — is a deeply spiritual inquiry into
ancestry and belonging. Fusing live African music, ritual, dance, and projected
film, Ndwalane crafts a visceral archive of memory and pride. The work does not
only ask Where do we come from? but insists on an embrace of origins as a
source of strength. Sisukaphi is less
a performance than a journey — one that affirms heritage as a vital step toward
self-acceptance. - Amahle Radebe
JOMBA! Khuluma
The JOMBA! Khuluma
is a Dance Writing Residency that runs as part of the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance
Experience. The residency has taken on
many shapes and forms since its inaugural edition under the mentorship of
Adrienne Sichel in 2010, including international and local participation and
inter-university engagement including institutions such as UKZN, DUT and Wits
University as well as The University of East London in the UK. The aim of the Khuluma is to nurture the next
generation of dance writers in South Africa.
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