JOMBA! calls for participation

THE University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts (CCA) and the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival will launch its first inaugural three-day dance colloquium/conference in 2021 from 2 to 4 June.

This dialogues series’ called the “Jomba! Masihambisane Dialogues” aims to support focused South African and African (and Diaspora) dance and performance scholarship in an accessible and community driven manner.

The idea is to host a “Jomba! Masihambisane Dialogues” each year with a focus on new ways of engaging dance/performance scholarship, practice, and practice led research in innovative, provocative and interesting ways.

While there is some measure of ‘conference’ about it, the idea is to imagine new and innovative ways of sharing knowledge that helps support a community of African (and African Diaspora) scholars and practitioners.

With Covid and the digital move to offer dance (and dance festivals) via on-line platforms and digital spaces, one of the results has been an upsurge of deeply intimate dance and screen dance work.

ALSO READ: Dates announced for 2021 Durban FilmMart

“The colloquium aims to explore/interrogate how political, economic, social, cultural and technological forces are (re)shaping the meanings of intimacy in dance making in Africa (and the African Diaspora) in the recent wake of Covid-19,” says Dr Lliane Loots.

“It will explore past and present African/African Diaspora histories of dance and performance practice that has set up shifted boundaries around ‘intimacy’ whether this has been through re-imagined performance spaces, audience engagements, choreographic process and delivery, and the actual narratives of the performance.”

The 2021 version of the Dialogues (colloquium) will be offered on-line/digitally and in livestream.

The colloquium will facilitate keynote speakers, live and digital performance making of the keynote artist-scholars as points of discussion, debate and analysis, a focused on-line workshop/panel and a number of short selected papers/digital submissions.

The CCA calls for the submission of short abstracts/proposals for consideration for inclusion in the 2021 “Jomba! Masihambisane Dialogues”.

All the details about the colloquium and submission process can be found on the JOMBA1 website https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/jomba-masihambisane-dialogues/ . Deadline for submissions is 20 March.

Email Dr Lliane Loots at: lootsl@ukzn.ac.za.

Do you want to receive news alerts via Telegram? Send us a message (not an sms) with your name and surname to 060 532 5535.

You can also join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have signed up for our news alerts you need to save the Berea Mail Telegram number as a contact to your phone, otherwise you will not receive our alerts

Here’s where you can download Telegram on Android or Apple