Welcome to our 25^th anniversary year and 13 days of incredible dance!

JOMBA! reaching this quarter century milestone of 25 years is a testament not just to the Centre for Creative Arts, but to a generation of African dance makers who, alongside our dance partners in Europe, America, India and Brazil, have dug in – and despite pandemics, rising global disregard for critical arts and losing space for live performance, we are still here – and flourishing!

This festival is dedicated to all those who have made time and space to dance at JOMBA! – to dance makers who have brought beauty, humour, pathos and politics to our stages and hearts, to audiences who come back again and again, and to our partners and funders who ‘show up’ for us and make it all possible.  This 25^th anniversary JOMBA! honours all of you – past and present.

JOMBA! 2023 offers dance fans a treat of 13 days of world class contemporary dance that will see both local and international dance makers converging on Durban. We are hosting artists from Mozambique, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Madagascar, Uganda, Romania, Germany, UK, Brazil, and of course the very best that South Africa has to offer. This 25^th edition offers a powerhouse of performances, workshops, panel discussions and virtual screen dance.

The curatorial provocation of this 25^th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience is “(in)tangible heritages” where we have set out, through both live and digital performances, workshops and artistic encounters, to interrogate a series of dance offerings that negotiate – amongst many other things – the intersectional trajectories (both personal and political) that have allowed us to arrive at this place as critical dance makers. In thinking about the present, we are obliged to remember the past and continue to imagine other futures. In curating this year’s festival, we have invited dance makers to reimagine their – and our – relationship with ideas of belonging (and arriving) and our varying (in)tangible heritages. The 25^th JOMBA! is honouring artists who, through their work, generate a new sense of belonging that questions who we are at this moment in history.

I hope you will join me and the CCA/JOMBA!  team as we celebrate this incredible 25^th year with a festival packed full of beauty and provocation – but mostly incredible dance!