(Pic by Shelley
Kjonstad)
Where Protest Lives:
FLATFOOT Makes Memory Move. Review by DUT graduate Akhona
Jr Mhlungu.
On a Friday when Durban’s streets were alive with protest and artists gathered for the Film Mart and Poetry Africa, I found myself returning to the Courtyard Theatre. There, resistance was not simply spoken about. It moved.
Presented on October 9 as part of Backstage in Action 2026, FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY’s History is a Home Address arrived after a tour of more than 40 schools. Choreographed by Lliane Loots and the company, and drawing on the protest-poetry legacy of Dr Mongane Wally Serote, this choreopoem asks a question that refuses an easy answer: What do you stand for in your historical home address?
Backstage in Action, convened and curated by Dr Clare Craighead, brings industry into the classroom through DUT’s Higher Certificate in Performing Arts Technology. Its “Learning the Practice” ethos puts students inside the work of live production, not merely in the audience. The King of Broken Things opened the festival on October 8; FLATFOOT followed with a compelling argument for art as an act of witness.
Front-of-house Sinothando Msomi and Lulama Ngcobo’s warm welcome set a communal tone. Beyond the auditorium doors, a bare stage lay under cool blue light. Its apparent emptiness would prove deceptive.
Siseko Duba, Nozipho Chiliza, Sibongakonke Ndlovu, Ndumiso Dube, Mthokozisi Mkhwanazi and Sfiso Khumalo entered like a gathering protest. They turned that open space into a restless map of memory: soaring leaps met grounded, insistent movement; abrupt shifts in direction unsettled any sense of stillness. History here was no sealed archive. It occupied the body.
The sequence Sinamamama carried a particularly forceful charge. Its declaration, “It is us, only freedom can quench our thirst,” did not sit on top of the choreography as a slogan. The words gained force through the dancers’ bodies, and the movement acquired sharper political purpose.
Khumalo stood out for the ease with which he moved between dance, poetry and music. He held the work’s shifts between confrontation, reflection and celebration together without making the labour visible. Duba was equally arresting. His speed never came at the expense of finish: each gesture landed with precision, conviction and feeling.
Perhaps the most eloquent presence was a brown suitcase, travelling through the piece like a seventh performer. With each return, it accumulated meaning: migration, displacement, inheritance, the things carried from one place and generation to another. Loots trusted the image to speak without explaining it away.
As Thusanang Kalerato sounded ahead of the final number, the work’s emotional weight deepened. If there is a challenge in a piece so openly committed to protest, it is to make its politics felt rather than merely declared. At its strongest, History is a Home Address achieves precisely that: an argument formed in movement, disciplined yet alive with urgency.
With technical support from Lisa Goldstone and Higher Certificate students contributing behind the scenes, the performance also embodied the festival’s exchange between professional practice and learning. I left the Courtyard with the production’s central question still pressing: in the history we have inherited, where do we stand?
Backstage in Action continues with a Wellness Activation for the DUT community on October 13. Dubious Gurus, featuring Durban wordsmith Iain “Ewok” Robinson and guests in spoken word and jazz, closes the festival at 15h30 on Friday October 16 at the Courtyard Theatre, DUT Ritson Campus. - Akhona Jr Mhlungu
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