The African Dance Disability Network partners with the Centre for Creative Arts and JOMBA! 2024 to present the ADDN JOMBA! ABILITY DANCE FESTIVAL 2024 at the Stable Theatre in Durban from 22 to 25 August.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience has a long history of including diverse and integrated dance work in its programming. In 2023, JOMBA’s curator Dr Lliane Loots teamed up with Prof Yvette Hutchison from the University of Warwick in the UK to work on the UKRI-funded project Encountering disability through contemporary dance in Africa, which explores widening citizenship through dance. Part of the outcome of this partnership is an uplifting four-day pre-JOMBA! festival and colloquium – the ADDN JOMBA! ABILITY DANCE FESTIVAL 2024 – that sees some of the world’s most inventive and beautiful dance-makers engage with disability and integrated dance practices.
This four-day festival, which takes place before the main JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience (27 August to 8 September), sees dancers and guest participants from South Africa, Kenya, USA, UK, Finland and China. The daily programme offers workshops, panel discussions, and open public evening performances.
The performance programme includes works from FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY and their FLATFOOT Wheelchair programme, as well work from their now 8-year-old FLATFOOT Downie Dance Company.
Cape Town’s ground-breaking Unmute Dance Theatre presents Andile Vellem’s signature work Listen to your hands – which use South African sign language as the core choreographic impulse to dance, move and speak. Johannesburg’s Thapelo Kotlolo connects queer culture to disability struggles in his beautiful and provocative Bells and Sirens 2. East African Kenyan, Ondiege Matthew and his company DANCE INTO SPACE, defiantly dive into cultural myths, disability and gender politics in his work Nyanam, while South Durban’s Jarryd Watson and DANCE MOVEMENT, celebrate three women coming together in solidarity celebrating the beauty, strength, and resilience of each other – despite, and in spite of, differences.
Further afield, Chicago (USA) based Sydney Erlikh and Unfolding Disability Futures (UDF) present (amongst other works) And Yet We Are Here, a powerful zeitgeist response to the destruction of war in acknowledgement of war’s physical and emotional impact. War not only leaves death and disability in its wake, but people with disabilities are more often unable to flee violence. Erlikh, talking about this work says, “This dance considers and expands on the themes of war and rebuilding while embodying the disability community’s collective care and access, even in the face of bullets, bombs, and brutality”.
With a number of artists’ panels that engage ideas of disability as gain, of particular interest is a session by Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Lee Fischer and Tom Rogers, as they talk about and share the work of Free Fall Dance Company – a company of dancers living with intellectual disabilities. Freefall Dance Company is part of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s LEAP (Learning Education and Participation) programme and inclusivity work. It was established to challenge stereotypical views of people with disabilities and dance – through the creation of a high-quality training that showcases the creative talents of people with learning disabilities. The company is particularly proud of its award-winning screen dance films and most recently, its ground-breaking work using virtual reality – both of which Durban will have a chance to watch and engage.
The festival will host one digital online workshop by disability culture activist, wheelchair dancer, and community performance artist, Petra Kuppers. Kuppers, the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan (USA), offers free of charge, her Starship Somatic Workshop on Sunday 25 August from 4.15-5pm. To sign up contact, marcia.mzindle13@gmail.com
