Founded in 1994 Ex Nihilo works with the clear intention of moving dance beyond rehearsal studios and stages to ‘break down walls’ and engage with the public, transforming public spaces into sites for research, creation and performance. Ex Nihilo work outdoor which involves exploring space through bodies, constantly renewing each spatial experience. This gives rise to direct interactions with the ‘viewer’ outside of conventional settings and without formal invitation – whether passers-by, residents, or audience. Here lies the birth of movement and choreography.

Ex Nihilo has a long history with Durban and the JOMBA! festival, and return for this year’s 26^th edition in a much-anticipated encounter with Durban’s FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY. Anne and Jean-Antoine will collaborate with and guide the six resident FLATFOOT dancers in a series of site specific and site responsive encounters in and around Durban, and Hilton (as part of the JOMBA! and RE-ROUTING Midlands partnership).

In a choice made to perform ‘close by’ to more formal theatre and performance art spaces at this year’s JOMBA!, Ex Nihilo and FLATFOOT, encounter the outside pathways and ways of being that emerge from immersive research that looks at how space is explored by the body. Often quirky, always daring, and continuously mesmerising, this dance work is an engagement with both the everyday and the extraordinary.