Durban, South Africa
24 – 30 August 2025
Housed within the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s award-winning Centre for Creative Arts, the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience is South Africa’s longest running and most celebrated contemporary dance festival. It is amongst the leading cultural events on the African continent that attracts choreographers, dancers, artists, and audiences passionate about dance and live performance to the shores of Durban, South Africa. The JOMBA! festival’s vision is to nurture, support and grow contemporary dance and the engagement with dance as a critical and important art form for dancers, choreographers, students, scholars, and researchers in South Africa and beyond.
To this end we are excited to launch the Female Forward Residency in 2025 that focuses on the development of young women in dance. Having noticed locally that there are less and less female dancers working professionally, we identified a strong need for more female focused dance development in Durban specifically.
The residency offers space for 6 female dancers aged between 18 and 30 years who have some dance training and now seek to push their skills and make their mark in the dance world as professionals.
The JOMBA! residency, led by Gaby Saranouffi (Madagascar/South Africa), will focus on further developing the dancers’ technical abilities, as well as include workshops around forging a professional image and work ethic that will aid in preparing these young dance professionals for future work opportunities. The dancers-in-residence will have access to the full festival programme and have the opportunity to meet and engage with professional companies and choreographers that are visiting the festival.
The selection process will be done through auditions and dancers-in-residence will be expected to be available for the full 7-day duration with the outcomes of the residency presented at the JOMBA! Forging Futures platform on Saturday 30 August 2025.
Participation Conditions:
Residency Offers:
Selection Process:
The selection process includes:
Each CV should include:
Each short bio/motivation should include information on:
Please email the above to Thobile Maphanga on thobimaphanga@gmail.com by: 30 May 2025 (5pm)
Auditions will be held at the Flatfoot Dance Studio at UKZN Howard College on: Saturday 7 June 2025 (10am – 1pm)
Successful Candidates will be informed via WhatsApp.
Outcomes to be viewed at the Stable Theatre
JOMBA! Forging Futures platform on Saturday 30 August 2025.
Founder and Artistic Director of I’TRÔTRA International Dance Festival (Madagascar) & ITROTRA-MAP Dance Festival (South Africa) Gaby Saranouffi is a dancer, choreographer, teacher and artistic director of the International Contemporary Dance Festival “I’TRÔTRA” in Madagascar. She lives and works in Madagascar and South Africa. Currently engaged since 2021 until today by the National Arts Festival (NAF) as part of the Artistic Committee (under the dance category) charged with the assessment and evaluation of artists application as well as curating the dance programme together with the Artistic Director of the NAF. In July 2020, she got the “Standard Bank Standing Ovation” Award Winning with the creation CORPS/BODY, co-created with Moeketsi Koena. In 2011, she worked for the Malagasy Ministry of Culture and Heritage as a Cultural Attaché. Selected by the Malagasy media as “Artist of the year 2007” in the “Dance” category, which makes her among the 10 personalities who have contributed the most for the development of Madagascar, she was decorated and obtained a medal of “Knights of the Order of Art and Letters and Culture” by the Minister of Culture and Heritage in March 2012. Gaby Saranouffi is an important artist who marked the history of dance in Madagascar. She set up in her country a new strategic concept of a cultural policy which benefited the Malagasy population and opened doors to several Malagasy artists.