Two KZN dance makers to feature in Jomba!

Two KwaZulu-Natal dance makers, Marcia Mzindle and Lorin Sookool will feature in the JOMBA! ON THE EDGE platform of the 25th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience that will be taking place at the end of August.

Marcia Mzindle and Lorin Sookool have both received grants to create and present work in the annual ON THE EDGE - a platform that supports fresh innovative contemporary dance work coming out of, or linked to, the KZN region.

“JOMBA! is delighted to support their dance work as part of stimulating young women artists to push boundaries and find their unique voices,” said Liliane Loots, curator and artistic director of the festival.

“Both these intrepid dance makers have been tracked by the JOMBA! curatorial team for the ongoing challenging and intersectional gender sensitive work they are producing,” she said.

Ms Mzindle has created a screen dance film for the DIGITAL JOMBA! platform, called INTO EMDAKA, and Ms Sookool has created a site responsive work called Woza Wenties! that will be performed on the Howard College Campus (UKZN).

“INTO EMDAKA was conceived while pursuing my master’s degree with a strong interest in the body — particularly black women's bodies, looking at dance and in physical performances,” explained Ms Mzindle who is a dance maker and MA graduate from UKZN.

“I am a young Black South African woman, a performance maker, and am currently on a continuous journey of Ubungoma (sangoma training). This work is a negotiation of all three of these shifting identities. The work focuses on reimagining the black female body as a 'site of possibilities' that unveils its multiple identities, focusing on where the invisibility in relation to systematic oppression and hyper-visibility in my body politics dwells,” she said.

INTO EMDAKA will premiere on the JOMBA! YouTube channel on Thursday, September 7 at 6pm.

Woza Wenties! is the title of Ms Sookool’s work that will be performed at the Howard College Dome at UKZN.

Ms Sookool is a contemporary dance artist with an interdisciplinary practice encompassing performance, text, sound, photography and film. Woza Wenties! is a partly autobiographical solo.

Interpreting the dancing body as a previously colonised state, Ms Sookool sets out to understand her own erasure by deconstructing the colonial projects undertaken in many South African schooling systems post 1994.

Through the title of the work, Ms Sookool calls for the resurrection of lost aspects of her being and expression.

‘Woza’ is the isiZulu word meaning “come” and ‘Wenties’ is the affectionate term for the Wentworth township, located in Durban South. The area, previously reserved for people of colour, was Ms Sookool’s home before the artist moved to a suburban area to attend school.

Ms Sookool's artistic creation explores complex South African socio-political themes, with a focus on situations of racial, gendered, systemic and institutionalised violence.

Woza Wenties! performances take place on Friday, September 8 and Saturday, September 9 at 6pm. Parental guidance is advised for those under 16.

Presented by the Centre for Creative Arts and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the festival offers a myriad of dance performances, workshops, talks and screen dance at venues around Durban from August 29 to September 10.

Tickets are available through Computicket.

For more information go to https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/