Home » SOUTH AFRICAN CROSSINGS » JOMBA! & CROSSINGS » Robert Ssempijja (Kampala, Uganda)
Choreographed and Performed by: Robert Ssempijja (Kampala, Uganda)
Music: Öz Kaveller (Germany)
Costume: igc Fashion (UK/Uganda)
Set Design: Tebandeke Joseph (Uganda) and Robert Ssempijja
Lighting Design: Kizza Moses (Uganda)
Cinematography and Editing: Kizza Moses (Uganda)
Sponsors and Funders: The JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, Dance Revolution East Africa and Company Christoph Winkler.
This dance film takes the viewer on a journey of self-discovery around the decolonial questions that interrogate what home is and where we belong. The dance film investigates the colonial foundations which underpinned the architecture of Kampala City and its contemporary impacts, exploring the weight of the city’s colonial years and the people’s endurance, of how identity is formed by a cities structural design. Ssempijja’s film lyrically questions how Ugandan’s can expect to grow and thrive as a city and as a people when the foundation they have were neither built nor meant for them.
Robert Ssempijja is a Ugandan Contemporary Dance Artist with a career in formal and informal dance settings as well as a person who works in the era of post-colonialism and decolonisation. He has practiced his art in three different continents with different companies, projects and choreographers like Christoph Winkler (Germany), Nora Chipaumire (New York/Zimbabwe), Qudus Onikeku (Nigeria), Patrick Acogny (France/Senegal). He continues to develop new aesthetics and forms of dance.