05 September 2014

Watch with me. Listen with me. Feel with me. Give me a taste.


By Chris Tobo 


Stories and crates are stacked and unstacked in a powerful dance work from choreographers Sonia Radebe and Jennifer Dallas.
 

03 September 2014

JOMBA!’s open platforms confirm that dance is flourishing in KZN

By Lliane Loots

SIYAKHULA Dance Project
Every year JOMBA! offers two distinct open platforms for the promotion of developing dance and dancers. The first of which, the JOMBA! Youth Fringe, was held on Sunday the 31st August in UKZN’s Open Air Theatre. As I sat in this rather sublime outdoor venue, a type of ancient Greek amphitheatre surrounded by the lush green of Durban’s tropical vegetation, I was hit with how right this space was for such an event. Surrounded by over 800 KZN based young dancers, their teachers/choreographers and their families, I felt like I was part of something really significant.

01 September 2014

Bearing Witness to Love and HOPE

By Samantha Daly

In the interest of full disclosure I have to confess I am a Lliane Loots fan, and have been since I (very naively) walked into my first contemporary dance lecture a few years ago. I have always been drawn to dance, but had never been exposed to contemporary dance before. It wasn’t until I placed my play-dough mind in Loots’ gentle and capable hands while studying contemporary dance during my UKZN days, that my passion and love for contemporary dance was ignited. I was hooked immediately. Since then, I have made it my mission to absorb as much as I can about this performance style which I adore. Fandom aside though, as I don my professional cap, I have to admit there is very little (if anything) to critique about Flatfoot Dance Company’s delicious offering at this year’s JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival, HOPE.


HOPE - Loot's Love Song To Her Dancers

By Tammy Ballantyne

A grand piano slouches quietly downstage, lit by a solitary spotlight, as we enter the auditorium of the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre. Heavy rain spatters down onto cobblestones and pebbles in a video projection on the back wall. The atmosphere is calm and tranquil.


28 August 2014

JOMBA! Opening Takes the Power Back

By Tammy Ballantyne

The message at last night’s opening of the 16th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience was loud and clear: if artists in SA are to continue telling stories and to do so without censure, they have to take back the power and liberate themselves.


Lliane Loots, Artistic Director of the festival, cut a lonely but statuesque figure on the Elizabeth Sneddon stage as her war-cry rang out for artists to refuse to be silenced; for companies to work together to realise powerful dance works that carry messages of hope; to keep on finding the dialogue with society in the face of interminable funding cuts, hopeless civil servants and a general disrespect for artists.

25 August 2014

Luyanda Sidiya - Fulfilling an Adventurous Spirit

By Adrienne Sichel (The Ar(t)chive)


Body's whiplash into motion sjamboked by internal rhythms. Then the same limbs and torsos shake the ground with one legged toyi toyi's.

Sitting serenely in the Vuyani Dance Theatre studio, scrutinising each movement at Dance Space in Newtown, is Luyanda Sidiya (31) the perpetrator of this surreptitious action. Political tyranny isn't exactly easy choreographic fodder but that hasn't stopped this dance maker from plunging into this murky territory.

VDT_Dominion 2013_Choreographer Luyanda

18 August 2014

16th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience - Press Release


The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts, is proud to present its 16th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience from August 27 to September 7 at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre with one performance at artSpace (Durban) on 4 September. This year’s JOMBA! is an especially focused MSANZI edition of the festival with attention being given to supporting some of South Africa’s top dance companies and dance makers. In an unprecedented move by one of Africa’s biggest and most prestigious contemporary dance platforms, JOMBA! 2014 has decided to give support and offer recognition to 5 of South Africa’s most awarded and cutting edge dance companies with a special invites to Vuyani Dance Theatre (JHB), Moving Into Dance Mophatong (JHB), Flatfoot Dance Company (DBN), First Physical Theatre Company (Grahamstown) and the Floating Outfit Project (DBN).

Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience


CC JOMBA! CONTEMPORARY DANCE EXPERIENCE with photos by Val Adamson