The 25th edition of the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience is underway in Durban and runs until September 10.
The long-running festival got of to a great start on Tuesday, with the Centre for Creative Arts bestowing a Lifetime Achievement Award on Dr Lliane Loots, the curator and artistic director of festival since its inception.
The award serves as recognition for Loots’s visionary leadership, service to the cultural sector, and committed activism for dance education.
Dr Ismail Mahomed, director of the Centre for Creative Arts, praised Loots for her quarter of a century efforts made in very challenging socio-economic conditions.
“For a quarter of a century, under challenging funding environments, changing political landscapes, and varying socio-economic conditions, Dr Lliane Loots has championed the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience as South Africa’s longest-running dance festival and as one of the leading contemporary dance events on the African continent.
“The Centre for Creative Arts is indebted to Dr Lliane Loots for her selfless contribution that has grown the JOMBA! Festival as an iconic international platform.
“The festival has catapulted the artistic careers of many leading South African choreographers and dancers.
“It has firmly entrenched the role that the JOMBA! Festival can make to academic scholarship; and thus making her a worthy recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award for her more than quarter century of visionary leadership,” he said.
This isn’t the first feather in her cap. She bagged several national choreographic awards, commissions and invitations from all over the world.
In 2017, the French government awarded her the Chevalier l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of the Arts & Literature) Award for promoting extensive cultural collaborations between artists from France and South Africa.
And in 2021, under her leadership, JOMBA! received the National Institute for Humanities & Social Sciences Award for Best Creations for work produced in the digital space during the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the same year, JOMBA! launched an annual colloquium to advance academic scholarship in African contemporary dance.
Last year, JOMBA! was awarded the Business Arts South Africa Chairman’s Award for Arts & Education and Activism.
And that’s not forgetting the 20th anniversary of her dance company, Flatfoot.
The company began with no funding but simply the goodwill and political and artistic impulse to offer dance training to primarily black dancers who had historically and economically been denied access due to the apartheid system.
The initial impulse of creating it – the idea of growing dance and dancers – is something that the company still remains true to 20 years later.
It continues to contribute to the contemporary dance landscape of the country, as well as provide important dance training for youth in communities around Durban.
The JOMBA! Festival is on at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre and other venues in Durban.
The festival has a four-day satellite event at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg from September 13 -16.