JOMBA! @ The Market Theatre
As part of celebrating a 3rd year of partnership, the Centre for Creative Arts’s JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival is delighted to continue to work with The Market Theatre to collaborate in sharing a smaller and carefully curated JOMBA! @ The Market. The dance festival will run from 10 – 13 September 2025 in the John Kani and Barney Simon Theatres. Four selected dance companies will travel to Johannesburg to present their works. For one night only, there will also be a special guest performance from ‘Reunion’ dance maker, Didier Boutiana.
Now in its 27th iteration, the curatorial provocation of this year’s JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival is “moving border/lands”. This as JOMBA! sets out to engage, through curated dance encounters, with artists and dance makers who battle with, and navigate the currently unfolding socio- and geo-politics of border/lands. JOMBA! has curated a series of artistic encounters that question ideas of border crossings, and have invited dance works that ask us to relook at borders (real and imagined) as metaphoric and poetic spaces which we are either seeking to cross, or to renegotiate.
For 2025, JOMBA! @ The Market Theatre is focusing on supporting and presenting primarily iconic South African dance makers and companies. Greg Homann, Artistic Director of The Market Theatre Foundation, says, “This is also our way of supporting excellence in South African dance at a time of distressed funding and a closing off of platforms for dance. We want to grow exposure for contemporary dance in Johannesburg with programming that focuses attention on the brilliant dance makers in our country who often garnish acclaim internationally, but have limited local spaces to present their work.”
To this end, JOMBA! and JOMBA! @ The Market Theatre are delighted to be honouring veteran South African dance maker, Sbonakaliso Ndaba, as the 2025 JOMBA! Legacy Artist. She is being honoured for her innovative choreographic work that spans over three decades of dance making in South Africa and internationally. Also deeply significant to this JOMBA! Legacy Award is Sbo’s lifelong commitment to initiating many performance dance training initiatives, including Phenduka Dance Theatre, Indoni Dance Arts Academy and recently SboNdaba Dance, a non-profit company dedicated to strengthening the performing arts in Cape Town. Her long-term impact on training professional contemporary dancers and the legacy of this is felt throughout South Africa—and JOMBA! is deeply humbled that we get to honour her and her work in this way.
Sbo and her SboNdaba Dance present, ‘In Search of Our Humanity’, a masterful new work that takes the audience on an emotional journey through South Africa’s evolution. From the ancient, free-roaming Khoi and San ancestors, to the struggle for unity, it showcases the nation’s growth and defiance. This dance work is a vibrant celebration of culture, resilience and the shared humanity that binds us all together.
In 2024, JOMBA! launched the innovative joint annual dance commission by the CCA JOMBA! and The Market Theatre with the express purpose of supporting innovative and provocative South African dance makers. Titled the ‘PHAKAMISA Dance Commission’ – with reference to the isiZulu idea of lifting up and holding – this commission is an ongoing commitment to JOMBA! and The Market Theatre’s partnership to grow and support South African dance. Greg Homann says, “It’s wonderful this year to be partnering with the National Arts Festival and the Standard Bank Young Artist programme to award this year’s commission to Soweto-born Asanda Ruda.”
Asanda presents a double-bill that speaks to her ongoing artistic exploration of Afro-contemporary dance, and a deeply African sense of spiritual self-healing. Her programme includes her acclaimed solo ‘KEMET (Black Lands)’, which earned her a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. The work embodies her pursuit of individuality and spiritual enlightenment through the transformative power of dance.
Carefully negotiating festival’s provocations, JOMBA! @ The Market Theatre is proud to also welcome Durban’s award-winning FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY with ‘BODIES OF WATER’. The piece is choreographed by Lliane Loots in collaboration with the six FLATFOOT dancers (Jabu Siphika, Zinhle Nzama, Sifiso Khumalo, Siseko Duba, Sbonga Ndlovu, Ndumiso ‘Digga’ Dube) and live music by Refiloe Olifant (violin), Mandla Matsha (Percussion), and vocals by Sifiso Khumalo. ‘BODIES OF WATER’ embraces a double-meaning as the dance work negotiates the ecology of water alongside an awareness that the human body is made up of mostly water. Setting the dancing moving body as a breathing metaphor for climate justice, the dancers face what happens to bodies in times of personal and political crisis. Set against an African geopolitics, and a larger ‘body’ of social dis-ease, ‘BODIES OF WATER’ comes back to the ideas of how we relate to ‘bodies of water’ as both artistic and political metaphors for survival.
And as a treat for dance fans, for one glorious performance only on opening night, catch Réunion’s COMPANY SOUL CITY and dancer/choreographer, Didier Boutiana. JOMBA!’s commitment to supporting and featuring artist of the Global South sees Didier Boutiana offer his new solo ‘KANYAR epilogue’. Didier Boutiana, whose roots are in hip-hop, is an expressive and transcendent dancer whose solo offers a deep critical dive into a contemporary world of fanaticism and painful self-glorification. Not to be missed!
If this is not enough, leading up to JOMBA! @ The Market is a chance for audiences to see the Naledi-nominated dance production, ‘Father & I’, before it heads to Durban for the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival.
There are also a series of workshops with the guest artists during JOMBA! @ The Market. These workshops are offered free of charge to dance practitioners, but booking is essential as places are limited. The workshops are only open to dancers 16yrs and older.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the JOMBA! experience.
Full JOMBA! @ The Market Theatre Programme:
Wednesday 10 September:
- 30pm: KANYAR epilogue. by COMPANY SOUL CITY and Didier Boutiana (Réunion) – Barney Simon Theatre
- 8pm: Sbonakaliso Ndaba and SboNdaba Dance – In Search of Our Humanity (Cape Town, South Africa) – John Kani Theatre
Thursday 11 September:
- 8pm: Sbonakaliso Ndaba and SboNdaba Dance – In Search of Our Humanity (Cape Town, South Africa) – John Kani Theatre
Friday 12 September:
- 30pm: Asanda Ruda (PHAKAMISA Commission) (Johannesburg, South Africa)– Barney Simon Theatre
- 8pm: BODIES OF WATER by FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY (Durban, South Africa) – John Kani Theatre
Saturday 13 September:
- 30pm: Asanda Ruda (PHAKAMISA Commission) (Johannesburg, South Africa)– Barney Simon Theatre
- 8pm: BODIES OF WATER by FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY (Durban, South Africa) – John Kani Theatre
Booking and tickets via Webtickets.
Free workshops with guest artists:
Tuesday 9 September: 4 – 5.30pm with Didier Boutiana
Thursday 11 September: 4 – 5.30pm with Sbonakaliso Ndaba
Saturday 13 September: 10am – 11.30am with Asanda Ruda
Saturday 13 September: 4 – 5.30pm with Sifiso Khumalo and FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY
E-mail 2024jomba@gmail.com to book a place – at least 1 day in advance of the workshop. No booking, no participation!