JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival to honour choreographer Robyn Orlin with Legacy Artist award

Renowned dancer and choreographer Robyn Orlin will be honoured with a Legacy Artist award at the 26th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival.

“The JOMBA! festival’s 2024 overall curatorial theme and provocation is ‘the memory of home’ and we can think of no South African artist better suited to unpack both the simplicity and complexity of this in her work,” said Artistic Director and Curator Lliane Loots.

The festival will pay homage to Orlin’s innovative, political and deeply interrogated dance and theatre work that spans more than four decades of dance-making in South Africa and internationally.

JOMBA! takes place at The Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre in Durban from 27 August to 8 September, with a satellite festival at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg from 11 to 14 September 2024.

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Celebrating the artist

JOMBA! will celebrate Orlin’s vision and practice, her wit, humour and insight, and for significantly contributing to the country’s rich critical contemporary dance history and legacy.

“Memories are about history, belonging, sometimes suffocating nostalgia, and maybe also about charting new futures… Robyn’s work is all of this and more,” Loots averred.

Born in 1955 in Johannesburg, Orlin has shifted the boundaries of what most consider dance to be, often falling into witty and biting political satire.

Her love of kitsch, tutus and yellow plastic ducks has seen her creating iconic images that still haunt a South African dance landscape.

Orlin was trained at the London School of Contemporary Dance (1975-1980), then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1990-1995).

Her career began as a dancer, choreographer and then teacher in South Africa, where she was quickly spotted, as much for the singularity of her dance making, as for the chaos that reigns in her creations. 

Her dance piece Daddy mocks the difficulties and shortcomings of the young rainbow nation, but also classical ballet as a trajectory of discrimination, enabled her to tour in Europe and brought her international recognition.

Now living in Berlin, Orlin will present We wear our wheels with pride and slap your streets with color … we said ‘bonjour’ to satan in 1820 at the festival in collaboration with Moving into Dance.

It is a deeply personal work that emanates from one of Orlin’s childhood memories of visiting Durban.

“Orlin’s work has not been performed in South Africa for many years, and so it is with great thanks for the support from IFAS (Paris) and IFAS (Johannesburg), that JOMBA! welcomes her back to South Africa as our 2024 JOMBA! Legacy artist.”

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Finding the way home

Loots said the theme for this year’s JOMBA! will ask what it means to find our way home. 

“This year’s JOMBA! is set against a backdrop of both local and global political renegotiations of what it means to be human, to belong, to have a home and to be a citizen of a country (and of a planet),” Loots said.

“Against an occupied Gaza, a ravaged Ukraine, anti-foreigner right-wing political movements in Europe, a South African government of national unity that is busy manoeuvring for power.”

Four selected local and international dance companies will travel to Johannesburg and the Market Theatre and will feature in a week-long celebration of some of the world’s most profound and provoking dance makers and dance companies.

The selected dance companies include Deepak Kurki Shivaswamy from India, Yaseen Manuel from Cape Town, and the renowned South African dance company, JAZZART.

Audiences in Gauteng will have four days to revel in the performance excellence of this curated contemporary dance platform from 11 to 14 September 2024, alongside special free workshops.

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