Durban’s much-loved FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY heads to Kenya on 24 February for a two-week exchange project with Nairobi and Siaya based DANCE INTO SPACE. The exchange comes out of a large project headed by Dr. Lliane Loots (Artistic Director of FLATFOOT) and Prof. Yvette Hutchison (Warwick University, UK) that is setting up a network of African choreographers, researches and dancers called the African Disability Dance Network (ADDN). Funded by a two-year grant from UKRI – AHRC, that will be officially launching digitally on Tuesday 20 February.
Alongside a portfolio of award-winning performance work, FLATFOOT’s integrated dance work has seen it nationally spearhead work with dancers with Down Syndrome, and its numerous programmes with dancers with physical disabilities. FLATFOOT travel to Kenya to share and learn from sister dance company DANCE INTO SPACE (DIS) headed by Ondiege Matthew. DIS, whose work has seen them collaborate with artist from Birmingham Rep (UK) and whose work is supported by Amnesty International, offer a mission to share artistic skills with people from all walks of life and to create work that cross all sorts of borders – both physical, cultural and social.
Loots and Matthew met first in Nairobi in 2019 and have kept a strong connection over the lock down years and now finally get to meet in a dance studio. Loots says, “I cannot begin to say how excited I am by this opportunity to work with Ondiege. He is a man whose dance work and vison are blazing trails in Africa. While our friendship is strong, being able to move together and share creative energy is a dream. I remain so humbled by Ondiege’s agenda to create deeply humanising integrated dance practices in Africa – I am looking forward to learning from him!”
Loots travels to Kenya with three of the senior FLATFOOT dancers, Sifiso Khumalo, Jabu Siphika and Zinhle Nzama, where they will engage a full daily programme of shared classes and training and begin to work on joint choreography with their Kenyan counterparts.
In a rounding off of this exchange, Matthew and some of his DIS Kenyan dancers will travel to Durban, South Africa, to the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience (hosted by the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2024 to share their work with South African audience and dancers.
Pictured here: Lliane Loots and Ondiege Matthew – a “selfie’ taken in Nairobi in 2019
Supplied.