A virtual dance feast not to be missed at JOMBA 2021
EVERY year the dance fraternity puts its best foot forward to create a dance spectacle for the country to watch. And this year is no different.
Here’s our top picks from JOMBA!
Legacy artist, Jay Pather presents “Undertow” – August 24 at 7pm
Pather opens the festival with “Undertow” - a composite film comprising of skilful excerpts from Qaphela Caesar, rite, Body of Evidence and Hotel featuring Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre.
“Borders for me have not been ones that you can gracefully jeté over, or jump, or even assail. Border crossing has meant digging below, just before the fence, rummaging through mud, crafting in trenches, tunnelling through underneath. Getting to the other side clear, clean, triumphant and unmarked is impossible – things tug, hurt and tear. And you gather parts, reassemble something resembling a new way, and move on to the next dig.”
ACE dance and music presents “TEN” – August 25 at 7pm
Full of intense physical power and human fragility, “TEN” explores the concepts of moving away and leaving, looking at how and why people choose imagined destinies over the lives they always thought they’d live.
Inspired by global migration, “TEN” is an exhilarating dance production combining contemporary dance with an essence of Flamenco, Kathak, Martial Arts and ACE’s inimitable Afro-fusion style.
Garage Dance Ensemble presents “Gat innie Grond, Wond in My Siel” (Hole in the Ground, Wound in my Soul) – August 28 at 7pm
This story focuses on Namakwaland while highlighting complex topics and issues relevant to the mixed race/ Coloured people of the Northern Cape and broader Southern African region. It’s main focus is to facilitate a process of exploring and translating the memories, trauma and current lived experiences of the Khoekhoegowab (South Africa’s first people).
The fusion of various dance styles and different types of music, supplemented with an actress narrating, and background audio-visual features, ensures a rich creation process and an exciting production.
Vikram Iyengar and Kunal Chakraborty present “I m / Material” - September 4 at 7pm
“I m / Material” is a series of dialogues between the mediums of dance and cinema created by artists from India. Each film plays between the materiality of the physical body and the materiality of the spaces the bodies inhabit and encounter. The relationships between the dancing body, the camera and the surrounding contexts are diverse, fluid, and complex – reflective of a country where socio-cultural borders are never static, and traditional and contemporary sensibilities often occupy the same time/space.
Aïda Colmenero Dïaz presents “She Poems” – a series of screen dance films - September 5 at 7pm
“She Poems” is a screen dance project inspired by poems written by women, created and produced on the African continent by a new generation of female performing arts creators. “She Poems” has produced 20 dance short films, six contemporary dance pieces and a photographic series of visual beauty and power.
The creators of “She Poems” are unique and pioneering artists who, from their particular and varied African geographical, cultural and personal context, engage in intimate creative processes to transform a poetic score into body and audio-visual language, using performative codes that originate from their immediate daily environment, their heritage and their own creative impulse.