24th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience -ends 11 September
Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre & Online
There are 6 days left of the 24th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts, and time to catch top dance-makers from SA, Mozambique and France live on stage at Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre and online until 11 September.
“This is our first physical event since 2019, and we have enjoyed relatively good support as people have started to venture out from behind their COVID-based online lives,” says JOMBA! artistic director, Dr Lliane Loots. “So we are looking forward to growing our audiences back up again, and it is encouraging to see the warm reception artists have received and the developing re-interest in going out to live performances.”
This 24th edition has offered a range of performances, workshops, panel discussions, virtual screen dance and a delightful JOMBA! youth dance platform.
Still left to catch until Sunday 11 September are:
Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 September at 7pm – Sneddon Theatre
Edna Jaime (Mozambique) & Fana Tshabalala (SA)
The inimitable Mozambican dancer and choreographer Edna Jaime performs her remarkable solo Um Segundo (One Second). Set against the ‘stay home’ of the pandemic, this solo is about a strong sassy woman fighting to rise off the floor and be seen and heard. Edna is here courtesy of the Goethe-Institut South Africa.
Fana Tshabalala the 2019 JOMBA! Mellon Artist in Residence premiers his latest solo work Zann that he began creating as part of the 2019 residency. In what we feel is a full circle for both Fana and JOMBA!, audiences can look out for Zann, a deeply moving solo exploration into unstable states that look at delusions of freedom in a world of change
Thursday 8 September at 7pm: Mamela Nyamza (SA) – Sneddon Theatre
The deeply interrogated and thoughtful Mamela Nyamza offers her newest work GROUNDED performed with her son Amkele Mandla. She offers us a look into her South Africa where democracy superficially seems to be in a working condition, but actually has small cracks not easy to see. Nyamza looks at these cracks and asks where and when they started.
Friday 9 September at 7pm and Saturday 10 September at 2.30pm: Vincent Mantsoe (France /SA) & Flatfoot Dance Company (SA) – – Sneddon Theatre
Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe our 2022 JOMBA! Legacy Artist will perform his new solo work KOMA that looks at layers of the passages of time through a symphony of rhythms and African rites that speak to very contemporary ideas of the need for sacrificial changes if we are to shift both ourselves and humanity
Mantsoe will showcase his on-going two year process (2021 and 2022) of working with Durban’s FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY and the long journey to making CUT (part 2) – that premiers at the fest. In setting out to share his technique with FLATFOOT, Mantsoe took the company of 7 dancers through his training system of GOBA and has made a live performance that sits next to his short film. Also dealing with the shift between an individual and collective sense of self set off by the pandemic, CUT (part 2) is a journey to finding our humanity again.
Sunday 11 September at 2.30pm: Virtual JOMBA! Online Conversation with Simon Senn (Switzerland) and Rohee Oberoi Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts (Bangalore, India) (Free)
By documenting movements through motion capture technology and exploring the data with real time game engine software, dancers and collaborators Senn and Oberoi wander in the abyss of questions and issues raised by those new technology tools. For any interested in New Technologies and its relationship to dance, this will be a fascinating conversation between continents!
There are still free virtual offerings in the JOMBA! Open Horizons and African Digital Voices which can be seen until 11 September on the festival’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Jomba_Dance
JOMBA! Khuluma daily blog gives insights into the work at the fest in the form of reviews and interviews – written in both English and isiZulu. Check the blog out:
JOMBA! Khuluma Blog: https://jombafestival.medium.com
Tickets for Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre performances are R80 full price, R65 – students, scholars and pensioners. Booking is through Computicket.