BORDER CROSSINGS, BREATH AND REVOLUTION
JOMBA! OPENING NIGHT ADDRESS BY Dr. Lliane Loots (JOMBA! Artistic Director)
There is a strange breathlessness right now. Environmentally, we are living on a planet gasping for air. The covid pandemic attacks the lungs as oxygenated breathing becomes more and more difficult, and I think of George Floyd whispering, “I can’t breathe”. The porous borders between bodies, skin and lungs are no longer clear. This somatic corporeal experience is our political reality.
Borders, real and imagined, are under siege. As dance makers and artists engaged with the body as site, the body as archive, the body as memory, and the body as potential future … our art form becomes a necessary space to navigate border crossings that are both necessary and revolutionary.
For this our 23rd edition of JOMBA! in 2021, we took as a curatorial provocation, this idea of “Border Crossings” to navigate an opening zeitgeist for our current times. Given the global, African and South African current and ongoing civil, health and cultural crisis — of ill-fated borders erected, broken down, reconstituted (sometimes very violently) and rebuilt anew — we at the Centre for Creative Arts and JOMBA! continue to use this dance festival space to fight to honour the cultural workers of South Africa, Africa and our global partners who all (in their own divergent ways) continue to forge pathways that cross and intersect problematic geographic, gendered, health and artistic borders.
We honour all the dance makers who we feature at this year’s JOMBA! for how they continue to open critical dialogue and, most significantly remind us — because it is sometimes forgotten in crisis — that all revolutions need beauty. I am reminded of Alice Walker’s “revolutionary petunias”, and Ben Okri saying, “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, and to love”. Our art — and our dance making — is this winding (and sometimes disappearing) road that helps us to keep moving.
So, to honour that we all, despite our collective breathlessness, are indeed still moving, I take this moment to welcome you to the opening of the 23rd JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience — we remain deeply committed to hosting a space that, once again, offers profound support and nurture, and a serious artistic engagement with South African, African and international contemporary dance and dance makers.
Tonight’s opening features our 2021 JOMBA! Legacy Artist, Jay Pather. JOMBA! is delighted to be honouring Jay Pather in this way for his over 3 decades of critical and profound dance making that has often driven important shifts in the South African dance landscape, and which has also seen Jay’s training processes birth generations of new dancers.
Pather is no stranger to JOMBA! and has, over the years, presented numerous of his dance works with Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre at the festival. As founder and director of the company, Pather’s work exemplifies the “Border Crossings” of this year’s festival provocation.
His unafraid and artistically unrelenting gaze into cultural clash, into the dis-ease of what it means to be a contemporary South African, bears witness in a programme tonight called Undertow that is a composite film comprises skilfully curated excerpts from (amongst other works by Pather) Qaphela Caesar, rite, Body of Evidence and Hotel featuring Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre. It is archive, it is memory, and it is the future present all rolled into one.
I invite you to immerse yourself in this 13-day experience — to engage (all totally free of charge) some of the planets most important dance voices. JOMBA! is also a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit to rise — and to share in community that is, perhaps, our most valuable asset right now as artists.
I end only to say a few thanks to a team that sits behind me tonight and who have helped hold this space with love and care.
· I begin by thanking Ismail Mahomed — the director of the Centre for Creative Arts. I thank him for immeasurable support, for new avenues and pathways around this neighbourhood, but mostly for his intense kindness,
· I acknowledge the Centre for Creative Arts team who have helped get JOMBA! here tonight, especially Nonsikelelo ‘Yenzi’ Ndaba.
· I continue to thank the University of KwaZulu-Natal and our College of Humanities for having the vision to support and nurture the Centre for Creative Arts,
· I thank Wesley Maherry for being the technical guru that has made our digital delivery for JOMBA! possible.
· I thank Sharlene Versfeld whose media and publicity campaign has supported the global reach of this festival. I want to acknowledge her passion and ethics.
· I thank Clare Craighead for her careful leadership of the JOMBA! KHULUMA blog and writing residency.
· I thank Thobile Maphanga for her innovative and powerful voice, and welcome her onto the curatorial team for JOMBA! 2021 as our curator mentee.
And lastly to our funders who put the money where we needed it — thank you:
- The Andrew Mellon Foundation
- The National Institute for Humanities and Social Science (NIHSS)
- And the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre and the Indian Consulate here in Durban.
I end, by quoting Arundhati Roy, who reminds us, despite so much gasping for air at this time, that dissident revolution is always possible — and I know I always look to the dance makers to find the navigation points.
Arundhati Roy says:
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Thank you!
