Duet: The Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience will be presented in Durban and Johannesburg.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Art’s Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, and as part of the milestone will also have a short season in association with The Market Theatre, in Johannesburg, from 13 to 16 September.
The 25th year firmly sets Jomba! as the longest running contemporary dance festival in South Africa.
The 13-day festival began in Durban on 29 August with Jomba! legacy artist Mamela Nyamza’s work Hatched Ensemble.
For the Market Theatre season, works by Nyamza (South Africa) will feature along with Hannah Ma’s hannahmadance (Germany-Luxembourg), Virva Talonen (Finland) with the Flatfoot Dance Company (South Africa), Ace Dance and Music (UK) with Serge Aimé Coulibaly (Burkina Faso) and Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe (South Africa).
The artistic director of The Market Theatre Foundation Greg Homann says, “I see Jomba! @ The Market in partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Art, as an invaluable opportunity to showcase in Johannesburg some of the very best from the South African and global dance community.
“The brilliant programme that Dr Lliane Loots has curated for this Joburg leg of Jomba! is going to be a celebration to the enduring power of movement to inspire, challenge and excite us all.”
Hatched Ensemble builds on a 2007 solo autobiographical work which reflected on Nyamza’s life as a mother and artist. It is now performed by seven ballet-trained dancers from different racial and gender backgrounds.
Challenging issues of tradition, gender norms within the dance classics and various issues around identity and belonging, Hatched Ensemble combines classical Western music and dance with traditional African vocal scores.
Ma’s hannahmadance performs a work that links with South African performers Thobi Maphanga and Jabu Siphika. Invasion(s) analyses the act of invasion as violently entering a (political, physical, biological) territory from a feminist and post-migrant perspective.
Talonen presents a work in collaboration with Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company. Her Portable Home Project is a contemporary dance performance series that delves into the concept of home and its definitions.
It is co-created by Finnish lighting designer Nanni Vapaavuori.
Talonen will also perform Nothing Personal, a solo work she made in 2018 with Vapaavuori. It looks at the relationship between the repetitive, minimalistic improvisational movement, written text and the audience.
Ace Dance and Music, from Birmingham in the UK, features in the double bill Unknown Realms, with choreography by Burkina Faso’s Coulibaly and South Africa’s Mantsoe.
In celebration of the 25th anniversary, Jomba! will launch a book in partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, supported by the French Institute of South Africa and Business and Arts South Africa. Archiving History and Memory: 25 Years of the Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience,will be launched at Alliance Francaise Parkview on Saturday, 16 September at 2pm.
Jomba! and The Market Theatre will host four free dance workshops at the Sophiatown Studio in Newtown and Vapaavuori will host a lighting workshop in the Mannie Manim Theatre at The Market. All workshops are open to dancers 16 years and older.
Booking is essential with [email protected].
• For more information about Jomba! go to https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za.
• To book for The Market Theatre Season: https://bit.ly/JOMBATheMarketTickets.