The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) Centre for Creative Arts (CCA) presents the 26th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience from Tuesday August 27 to Saturday September 8 at various venues.
The theme of this year’s festival is “finding our way home”, said curator Dr Lliane Loots.
“The festival is set against a backdrop of both local and global political renegotiation’s of what it means to be human, to belong, to have a home and to be a citizen of a country,” said Dr Loots.
She said the 26th festival features dancers and dance makers from all over South Africa, France, America, India, Japan, and Germany. This 26th edition offers performances, workshops, panel discussions and digital screen dance.
Veteran South African dance maker Ms Robyn Orlin is honoured as the 2024 JOMBA! Legacy Artist for her innovative, political, and deeply interrogated dance and theatre work spanning four decades.
Now Berlin-based, Ms Orlin’s Moving into Dance is a deeply personal work that emanates from one of her childhood memories of visiting Durban and the Zulu rickshaws. Ms Orlin delves into the rickshaw driver’s mischievous appropriation, sublimation, irony and self-deprecation, as she celebrates the rickshaw driver’s refusal to concede their dignity to colonial and Apartheid forces.
Cape Town’s Jazzart opens the festival with a triple-bill titled Resilience featuring three captivating works: I am African choreographed by Jazzart’s head of training, Sifiso Kweyama, Battlefield choreographed by ex-Jazzart company dancer, Lihle Mfene, and Dark Flock crafted by the award-winning duo, Manacan.
Boyzie Cekwana’s work created in collaboration with American musician Maritri Garret traverses the terrain of love, loss, mental illness, memory, and ageing. It weaves its tale through soulful folk songs, movement, spoken and written words. Cekwana also features in a lecture performance: “I hate you for watching this: A rocking tale of how disco and the dance floor nearly changed the world”.
Bangalore based dancer and choreographer, Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy presents a double bill titled Vasudaiva Kutumbakam with support from the Indian Consulate General (Durban), Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and the Swami Vivekananda Centre (Durban). With distant roots in classical Indian dance forms, Shivaswamy is firmly embedded in contemporary dance making and a search for finding ways to express modern Indian identities.
For the full programme, go to: https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/
Tickets are R85 or R65 for concessions and groups or R390 once-off for the full festival pass through Computicket.
