JOMBA! ON THE EDGE
20th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience
The annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts showcases a feast of dance from August 28 to September 9 at various venues around the City.
One of the features of the festival, which celebrates it 20th anniversary, is JOMBA! ON THE EDGE, which aims to encourage young dance-makers to create new work and to draw new creative young audiences into the festival.
Three young professional local dance-makers were awarded grants to premier new work on this platform on Tuesday 4 September @ 7.30pm at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre.
A major talent on the local dance landscape and winner of the 2017 ‘JOMBA! Pick of the Fringe’ award, JC Zondi opens this programme with “Classi_filed” - a physical theatre piece that depicts the role clothing plays in our lives. Zondi’s unique style of contact improvising and lyrical choreography is intensified in this work.
The gutsy Kristi-Leigh Gresse, having just received a gold Fringe Ovations Award at the 2018 National Arts Festival for her work “Sullied”, offers her newest creations “Blank”. In this work she follows her interrogations of the role of women in society. Her strong technical prowess as a dancer is situated against stark and dangerous subject matter that is making the dance community in South Africa sit up and notice.
Finally, Tshediso Kabulu who has opted to share this grant with fellow dancer Thami Majela in a joint creation called “IMVELO”. Imvelo is a Zulu word that translates to mean origin and/or tradition. This work is a gentle and often intimate look at human relationships that journeys back to origins and beginnings. It question societal ‘truths’ that often get in the way of love and tenderness.
Of special note is that all three of these choreographers have collaborated with JOMBA!’s visiting Chicago (USA) lighting designer Julie Ballard who has shared her technical skills with these 3 emerging choreographers in bringing their work to the stage.
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