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 31^st 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.

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.

Lliane Loots' Opening Night Speech

It is always my great joy and delight to stand before you at the opening of UKZN’s  Centre for Creative Arts’s JOMBA! festival. It is always a personal opportunity for me to be reminded of what my theatre guru Jerzy Grotowski called the ‘great service of theatre’ - of being reminded that as  (what Grotowski called) ‘holy’ theatre makers and theatre practitioners our greatest ‘gift’ is to make our work as if it were a service to our community.