FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY presents “STAND BY ME” with the FLATFOOT DOWNIE DANCE COMPANY
The Flatfoot Dance Company presents its third annual integrated dance programme working with dancers with Down Syndrome titled Stand by Me at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre on Tuesday 12 November at 6.30pm.
This landmark once-off performance will feature the unique partnering of the professional Flatfoot dancers with the fondly-referred to “Flatfoot Downie Dance Company”. This unique dance programme is unprecedented in South Africa and is a celebration of the power of dance to shift lives and to negotiate difference and inclusivity.
Flatfoot celebrates its 16th anniversary this year and has - as one of its core values - the practice of dance (in education and in performance) as a tool towards what it calls “living democracy”. This dance programme celebrates community across the divides of race, gender and disability.
This programme began in August 2017 with the visit of Dutch choreographer Adriaan Luteijn of INTRODANS and his collaboration with Flatfoot. The company has continued this work over 2018 and 2019 and this performance is the culmination of this year-long programme.
“Stand By Me will not only move and delight audiences but will challenge the very core foundations of who we think can and should dance professionally,” says Lliane Loots Artistic Director fo Flatfoot. “This dance journey is about learning to stand next to our neighbours and acknowledging their humanity.”
Four Flatfoot dancers (Sifiso Khumalo, Siseko Duba, Jabu Siphika and Zinhle Nzama) partner up with their counterparts, Karl Hebbelman, Charles Phillips, Kevin Govender and Michaela Munro in a dance explosion that is an affirmation of faith, courage and the joy of dance.
Loots, who is the company’s award-winning choreographer, says “creating this work has been a journey into discovering community and into discovering what it means to engage a firm and loving assertion of self and identity. All nine of us in the rehearsal room have been forced to look inward and to find the spaces inside ourselves that embrace the true meaning of ubuntu, and I have been humbled every day by what these eight dancers bring to our process”.
As two very special curtain-raisers for this evening, Flatfoot will also showcase work it has been doing in its unique 2019 “Junior ADD: Girls to Women” dance programme. In this programme 10 young girls between the ages of 11 and 14 years were identified from Flatfoot community dance programmes run in KwaMashu and Umlazi. “They have been working with the company every Saturday during 2019 for special technical dance skills training as we believe that these amazing girls are the next generation of Durban (and Flatfoot’s) dancers,” says Loots. “They will perform a work choreographed for them by Flatfoot’s Zinhle Nzama called Kivuli.”
The second work called Fire in Me! features four Flatfoot Junior Company members (Mthoko Mkhwanazi, Siseko Duba, Nondumiso Dube and Sbonga Ndlovu). This is an athletic and magical foot-stomping work created for them especially for this event by Flatfoot’s Sifiso Khumalo who continues to grow a technical style that combines his own African dance roots with contemporary technical training.
The season promises, as always, to be one of the highlights on Durban’s dance calendar and this once-off performance is being offered as a fundraiser to help support the Flatfoot Down Syndrome Dance programme for 2020.
Tickets are limited and cost R80 each. To pre-book contactflatfootdancecompany@gmail.com .
Pre-booked tickets can be collected at the Sneddon box office from 1 hr before the start of show on the 12 November. This is cash payment only as no card facilities are available.
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