JOMBA! CITY 2012 – General Press Release

VIEW JOMBA! CITY PROGRAMME ONLINE

JOMBA! City
31 August: 6pm
Beachfront Skate Park

Following on from the 2011 success of taking dance and art to the city centre, the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience hosts its second collaboration with eThekwini Municipality with a soulful seaside street party on the 31 August at the Beach front Skate Park (next to Minitown). Commencing at 6pm this mix of dance, live bands, markets, food and art in the park, is family friendly and a beautiful way of taking back Durban’s beach front for the arts! One of the few events taking place outside of the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, the JOMBA! Citysite-specific programme is one of the many highlights in this year’s JOMBA! festival, which is supported with principal funding by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund.

Surf, sea, skateboarders whizzing by, and the night of a full moon; the sound of a cello against the rip of the wave, a hip-hop beat as dancers move to the ancient rhythms of the tides. Breakdancers shift between light and video while a kathak storyteller spins into madness. JOMBA! City promises performances that shake our foundations; beautiful, edgy and very, very eThekwini!

14th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience

29 August - 9 September 2012

PROGRAMME DAILY SCHEDULE 

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

14th JOMBA! CONTEMPORARY DANCE EXPERIENCE 2012 – GENERAL PRESS RELEASE 

With principal support from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund the Centre for Creative Arts (University of KwaZulu-Natal) presents the 14th edition of its celebrated annual contemporary dance platform, the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience between 29th August and 9th September. This year’s festival invites dance lovers and the public to explore the packed 12 days of exceptional performances, workshops led by leading choreographers, and opportunities to engage some of the world’s top dance makers as they “Talk Dance” after various performances. JOMBA! fiercely holds onto its status as one of the few remaining dedicated spaces in South Africa where dance and choreography remain nurtured and supported, and continues to offer world class dance theatre that challenges audiences; asking that they come to the myriad festival offerings (performances, workshops and classes) with the intention to be shocked, surprised, entertained and above all, to celebrate a beautiful and critical art form.

"more..more..more..future" reviews

more ...more …more …future has its final Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience performance tonight (September 7 at 7.30pm), in the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, then moves to New Dance 2011, in Johannesburg, at the Dance Factory (September 9 and 10 at 8pm).

JOMBA! Fringe reviews

The Politics of Relationships

Julia Wilson

A common thread between the first three works of Jomba! Fringe 2011 was that the structure of the works was overly complicated.

Woman's Solo Project Pictures

Thobeka "TeeKay" Quvane in "Skin"

Beautiful ME???

Kirsten Holder

The dance film WHO IS THIS?... Beneath My Skin – Layer 2, by Desiré Davids, is a sequel to her Jomba! 2010 performance Who Is This Beneath My Skin?

Twisting Tragedy

Julia Wilson
Dada Masilo’s The Bitter End of Rosemary and Helene Cathala’s La jeune fille que la riviere n’a pas gardee (The Young Girl the River Didn’t Keep), are similar in their subject matter and yet vastly different.

Stripped Down to the Truth

Kirsten Holder
The concept of using nudity to make a statement is extremely powerful and opens up a rare sense of vulnerability.
Skin, choreographedbyLliane Loots, danced byThobeka Quvane (aka) TeeKay, is an intently powerful and personal work which deals with the idea of skin on many different levels.

Our Art is NOT a Crime!

Vedarsha Singh
Candy sticks, boerewors, steel drums and b-boys …
Live “legal” graffiti, marimbas, Castle Lager and projection are a few of the elements which amalgamated into one artistic voice that screamed “Halala eThekwini!” at this year’s Jomba! City Street Party, curated by David Gouldie.

Decolonising The Stage

Kivithra Naicker

"Our art is not worth nothing", stated JOMBA! Artistic Director Lliane Loots in her poetically powerful and profound opening address which set the tone for the evening and the next two weeks.

Entre-Deux (In Between) choreographed by Clarisse Veaux and Abdou N'Gom aka Stylistik, hip-hop dancers and founders of French company Compagnie Stylistik, was the opening performance of the 13th annual JOMBA!Contemporary Dance Experience. This solo performed with extreme fluidity and focus by N'Gom, begins in almost darkness which heightens the aesthetics of the animalistic and ritualistic way in which he moves on the ground.

Spreading The Love

Kirsten Holder

The opening performance of the Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience 2011 exploded into action with two striking performances that could potentially be life-changing.

The work by Abdou N'Gom (aka) Stylistik's Entre-Deux (In Between) speaks largely to the crisis of identity in Africa in general, where people are being forced to take sides, in a war against themselves. Watching this performance felt like seeing a man whose blood was boiling inside his body, with nowhere to go but inside. The intriguing juxtaposition of hip-hop, traditional music and jazz, impacted on a very different level as far as use of the technique goes.

Photos from JOMBA! opening night

All Photos by Val Adamson

Unmasking Memory

Vedarsha Singh
“Our Art is not worth nothing; it is a political weapon to remember and recall the bones on which we stand”, were the wise voice of Lliane Loots (Artistic Director of the Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience) as she addressed the opening night audience. The echo of her voice will embody the rest of the 13th edition of this festival.

‘Home? Where is home?'

Julia Wilson
Abdou N'Gom sits before a mirror in a tiny pool of light. He begins to cover his face with a thick white paste and strips of gauze that look as if it will choke him, and there is both violence and tenderness in the gesture.

Remembrances of Savaged Bones We Dance On

JOMBA! 31 August 2011

Opening Night Speech of the 13th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience by founding artistic director Lliane Loots.

I want to take this opportunity tonight to invoke some of the words and thinking of an African philosopher who has been intimately involved in shaping my own personal and on-going consciousness around being an African and a South African; about being an artist, choreographer and at all times an advocate for Earth justice.