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Flatfoot dance Company presents - Seeing Red

Media Release

 

FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY presents BUSY SEEING RED

KZNSA GALLERY: 21 February 2020 @ 6.30pm

 

Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company celebrates its 17th anniversary this year as one of South Africa’s leading contemporary dance companies with a new dance theatre work, Busy Seeing Red at the KZNSA Gallery on Friday 21 February.

 

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With an international touring reputation for excellence and a host of national awards under its belt, Flatfoot’s arrival at this momentous 17th mark is a testament to a dedicated team of dancers and administrators.

 

In keeping with its reputation of creating and performing edgy, controversial, beautiful and intelligent dance, Flatfoot partners with the KZNSA Gallery to offer a site responsive dance work that ask the audience to engage all the different space of the gallery. In a fluid display of exquisite technical training, Flatfoot’s 7 resident dancers dive heart first into the inner politics of ‘seeing red’. Asking questions that are on all of our lips as South Africans, Busy Seeing Red, negotiates the personal politics of anger. From exploring remembrances of colonial race and current gender violence, this dance theatre work offers a surprisingly gentle embodied encounter with dance that will leave audiences breathless.

 

Embracing a collaborative creative process of making this performance, the three senior Flatfoot dancers (Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika and Zinhle Nzama) have jointly collaborated in the choreography with Artistic Director of Flatfoot, Lliane Loots. “As a dance maker I am increasingly interested in the power of multiple voices to tell stories and what better way than to encourage the profound dance voices of the senior Flatfoot dancers to bring their vison to this work”, says Loots. She continues, “it is and has been a remarkable journey making this collaborative dance work and seeing what we share and where we differ as South Africans – I remain deeply humbled by the power of our dance/art to allow dialogue – especially at a time in history when there is so much rage and anger”. 

 

Also featured in Busy Seeing Red is Flatfoot junior company dancer, Mthoko Mkhwanazi stepping into his first professional choreographic role in the company. “Seeing this young Flatfoot dancer in the role of choreographer in this work is a testament to not only his own talent and drive, but to the nurturing role that Flatfoot had played in offering this space to our up and coming practitioners”, says Loots.

 

Dancing in Busy Seeing Red are; Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika, Zinhle Nzama, Sbonga Ndlovu, Ndumiso Dube, Siseko Duba, and Mthoko Mkhwanazi. Lighting and sound design by Wesley Maherry and Clare Craighead.

 

The Busy Seeing Red  will be performed at the KZNSA Gallery is on Friday 21 February at 6.30pm. Tickets cost R60 and seating is limited. Tickets can be pre-booked via flatfootdancecompany@gmail.com or on a first come first serve at the KZNSA Gallery on the night. Door sales and Gallery open from 5.30pm. The KZNSA restaurant and coffee bar will be open for pre/post show meal and drinks.

 

This dance work will travel onto the Hexagon Theatre in PMB in early May 2020.

 

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FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY presents BUSY SEEING RED KZNSA GALLERY 21 Feb 2020

Media Release

 

FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY presents BUSY SEEING RED

KZNSA GALLERY: 21 February 2020 @ 6.30pm

 

Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company celebrates its 17th anniversary this year as one of South Africa’s leading contemporary dance companies with a new dance theatre work, Busy Seeing Red at the KZNSA Gallery on Friday 21 February.

 

_DSC8603a.jpg

With an international touring reputation for excellence and a host of national awards under its belt, Flatfoot’s arrival at this momentous 17th mark is a testament to a dedicated team of dancers and administrators.

 

In keeping with its reputation of creating and performing edgy, controversial, beautiful and intelligent dance, Flatfoot partners with the KZNSA Gallery to offer a site responsive dance work that ask the audience to engage all the different space of the gallery. In a fluid display of exquisite technical training, Flatfoot’s 7 resident dancers dive heart first into the inner politics of ‘seeing red’. Asking questions that are on all of our lips as South Africans, Busy Seeing Red, negotiates the personal politics of anger. From exploring remembrances of colonial race and current gender violence, this dance theatre work offers a surprisingly gentle embodied encounter with dance that will leave audiences breathless.

 

Embracing a collaborative creative process of making this performance, the three senior Flatfoot dancers (Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika and Zinhle Nzama) have jointly collaborated in the choreography with Artistic Director of Flatfoot, Lliane Loots. “As a dance maker I am increasingly interested in the power of multiple voices to tell stories and what better way than to encourage the profound dance voices of the senior Flatfoot dancers to bring their vison to this work”, says Loots. She continues, “it is and has been a remarkable journey making this collaborative dance work and seeing what we share and where we differ as South Africans – I remain deeply humbled by the power of our dance/art to allow dialogue – especially at a time in history when there is so much rage and anger”. 

 

Also featured in Busy Seeing Red is Flatfoot junior company dancer, Mthoko Mkhwanazi stepping into his first professional choreographic role in the company. “Seeing this young Flatfoot dancer in the role of choreographer in this work is a testament to not only his own talent and drive, but to the nurturing role that Flatfoot had played in offering this space to our up and coming practitioners”, says Loots.

 

Dancing in Busy Seeing Red are; Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika, Zinhle Nzama, Sbonga Ndlovu, Ndumiso Dube, Siseko Duba, and Mthoko Mkhwanazi. Lighting and sound design by Wesley Maherry and Clare Craighead.

 

The Busy Seeing Red  will be performed at the KZNSA Gallery is on Friday 21 February at 6.30pm. Tickets cost R60 and seating is limited. Tickets can be pre-booked via flatfootdancecompany@gmail.com or on a first come first serve at the KZNSA Gallery on the night. Door sales and Gallery open from 5.30pm. The KZNSA restaurant and coffee bar will be open for pre/post show meal and drinks.

 

This dance work will travel onto the Hexagon Theatre in PMB in early May 2020.

 

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FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY presents UNDER THE SAME SKY Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre : 24 – 28 April 2019

MEDIA RELEASE

 

FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY presents UNDER THE SAME SKY

Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre : 24 – 28 April 2019

 

In a remarkable feat of perseverance and beauty, Durban’s Flatfoot Dance Company celebrates its 16th anniversary with a new dance theatre work, Under the Same Sky, at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre  from  24 to 28 April.

 

With an international touring reputation for excellence and a host of national awards under its belt, Flatfoot’s arrival at this momentous 16th year mark as one of South Africa leading contemporary dance companies, is a testament to a dedicated team of dancers and administrators.

 

In keeping with its reputation of creating and performing edgy, controversial, beautiful and intelligent dance, Flatfoot dives heart first into the zeitgeist of contemporary South African identity, in Under the Same Sky and “asks us to remember our humanity and the place that art holds in teaching resilience”.

 

Three new dance works by Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika and Lliane Loots will premiere in this season.

 

“These works asks of us to step back to negotiate the humanity within all of us,” says Artistic Director of Flatfoot, Lliane Loots. “We take a look at where we have come from, in order to understand who we are, and who we might become. So we are delving into the heart of South African identity, which is both dream and nightmare; both nostalgia and violence. We have not doubt that these works will leave the audience overawed at the sheer beauty of the power of contemporary dance to tell our real South African stories, as it provokes and challenges through the images created, but it also allows the audience to breathe and be reminded of what makes us human.”

 

Sifiso Khumalo’s work Ngaphesheya (loosely translated to mean ‘beyond’ or ‘over there’) is a personal journey back to Khumalo’s own childhood in Clermont growing up with the scourge of ‘necklacing’ as a political weapon. In this piece, made from a questioning and very present perspective in 2019, asks where we are going if our history (and where we come from) means nothing. 

 

Jabu Siphika’s growing feminist voice as a choreographer, opens up in her latest work titled Death of a Dream.  Working from the personal to the political, Siphika has created an evocative duet that looks at disintegrated personal relationships as a metaphor for disinterred political hopes and dreams. Beautifully danced by Siphika herself in partnership with Mthoko Mkhwanazi, Death of a Dream is heartbreaking in its beauty.

 

Lliane Loots’s unsheltered, ends the programme. Loots’s award-winning style that combines video, spoken word and dance in a ‘total theatre’ experience, finds its artistic legs in her newest work. unsheltered moves Loots and Flatfoot’s quest for humanity into the global domain and starts to “unbuild” the meaning of the walls that are the prevailing political agendas of many first world nations. It asks the audience to journey with the dancers into the heart of difference and what it means to embrace a hurt, damaged and vulnerable humanity. Loots’ dance work has a poetic depth that will provoke and delight audiences.

 

Dancing in the season are Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika, Zinhle Nzama, Sbonga Ndlovu, Ndumiso Dube, Siseko Duba, and Mthoko Mkhwanazi. Lighting design is by Wesley Maherry.

 

Catch Flatfoot Dance Company’s 16th anniversary season Under The Same Sky at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre from 24 to 28 April. Shows are at 7.30pm on 24, 25 and 26 April and at 2.30pm on 28 April.  Tickets available through Computicket are R85 and R65 (for scholars, students, pensions and block bookings of 10 or more seats). (There is a special performance for schools at R30 per scholar and teachers come free on 26 April at 10.30am. Bookings for schools only are via Lootsl@ukzn.ac.za).

 

https://online.computicket.com/web/event/under_the_same_sky/1292038803/617314048

 

Flatfoot Dance Company presents “N’gila” (I am here) - an integrated dance performance with dancers with Down Syndrome.

Media Release

Flatfoot Dance Company presents “N’gila” (I am here) - an integrated dance performance with dancers with Down Syndrome.

 

Flatfoot Dance Company is proud to present its second annual integrated dance programme working with dancers with Down Syndrome. “N’gila/I am here” is choreography by Lliane Loots in collaboration with the eight dancers from Flatfoot Dance Company and the fondly referred to Flatfoot Downie Dance Company at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre on Tuesday 20 November at 6.30pm.

 

This landmark once-off performance will feature the unique partnering of the professional Flatfoot dancers with their Downie Dance Company members. 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 15th 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.

 

The 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 this performance is the culmination of this year-long programme.

 

 “N’gila/I am here” will not only move and delight audiences but will challenge the very core foundations of who we think can and should dance professionally. Four Flatfoot dancers (Sifiso Khumalo, Qhawe Ndimande, 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.

 

Flatfoot’s award-winning choreographer, Lliane Loots 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 see that space between who we think we are and who we want to be, and I have been humbled every day by what these eight dancers bring to making dance.' 

 

As a special offering the five Flatfoot Junior Company members will also perform “Sesfikile!” as the curtain-raiser at this performance. This work won critical acclaim at the 2018 JOMBA! Fringe.

 

This looks to be one of the highlights on Durban’s dance calendar and this one-off performances is being offed as a fundraiser to help support the Flatfoot Down Syndrome Dance programme for 2019. Tickets are limited and are R80 each. To pre-book tickets contact: flatfootdancecompany@gmail.com. Pre-booked tickets can be collected at the Sneddon box office from 1 hr before the start of show on Tuesday, 20 November. Patrons should note that there are no card facilities are available at the venue.

 

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 Captions to all photos by Val Adamson:

Four FLATFOOT dancers (Sifiso Khumalo, Qhawe Ndimande, 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. Pictured here are the dancers in their performance of ‘cardiac output” at last year’s JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience.