[When the soul speaks the Body Moves]
The Sibikwa Arts Centre proudly presents the first International BODY MOVES Dance Festival for able bodied and disabled dancers to be held at the Sibikwa Arts Centre in Benoni from the 10- 16 October 2022. The Festival challenges perceptions and expands understanding of dance and disability, promoting cultural exchange, collaboration and cooperation between African and European countries. The participation of the dancers and dance companies from Ireland, Italy, Flanders and the Netherlands has been made possible by the generous support of their respective European embassies. The South African dancers have been supported by the Gauteng Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, and Joseph Tebandeke, a choreographer from Uganda, has received financial assistance from the British Council and Tractus Art.
We are pleased to announce that four new works will be premiered at the Festival:
- A collaboration between Moving into Dance disabled dancers from their Enable Through Dance programme and Sibikwa dancers from the Inclusive Creative Arts Programme (ICAP). This new dance piece yet untitled will be choreographed by Joseph Tebandeke from Uganda.
- Unmute Dance Company from Cape Town in collaboration with MonkeyMind Company, a Flemish contemporary and Performance Company based in Ghent lead by choreographer Lisi Estaras.
- A new duet will be created for Eva Eikhout a Dutch dancer and TV presenter to be partnered by Thapelo Kotlolo, a dancer from Sibikwa. Adriaan Luteijn from Introdans in the Netherlands will choreograph the duet.
- The Italian company Officine di Creazione will premiere a new work and Sighile Hennessey from Ireland will make her debut solo performance.
The South African companies participating in the Body Moves Festival supported by the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture (Gauteng) are Flatfoot Dance Company from Durban, Sibikwa Arts Centre, and Moving into Dance. Unmute from Cape Town has received financial assistance from the General Representation of the Government of Flanders in South Africa.
This multi-faceted Festival includes workshops from 10 – 14 October at Sibikwa and open to all abled and disabled dancers. Choreographers from the Netherlands, Ireland and Italy will facilitate the international workshops. Unmute Dance Company will facilitate workshops in schools.
To promote conversations between academia, civil society organisations and artists about disability and dance a hybrid colloquium hosted at the Sibikwa Theatre and live streamed on the Sibikwa Arts Centre Facebook page will take place on Thursday 13th October from 18h00 – 19h30 and Saturday 15th October from 16h30 to 18h00.
The entire Festival including workshops and rehearsals will be filmed as part of a collaborative research project on Disability Dance and Citizenship in Africa, spearheaded by Dr Lliane Loots [Founder of Flatfoot Dance Company & Lecturer at KZN SA] and Prof Yvette Hutchinson [University Warwick UK].
All events will take place at the Sibikwa Arts Centre, Cnr Liverpool and Bolton Rd Benoni. Registration to participate in the workshops and colloquium is free on Quicket. Tickets are available on Quicket for the dance programme on the 15 & 16 October from 2 – 4 pm, tickets bought on Quicket are R80 per person, for a group booking of 10 or more R70 per person, and R100 at the door.
Background To The European Dance Companies
Supported by the Representation of Flanders
Flanders – MonkeyMind Company a Flemish contemporary dance and Performance Company based in Ghent and founded in 2018 by dancer/ choreographer Lisi Estaris. In recent years the work of Lisi can be described as ongoing research into her MonkeyMind dance language. MonkeyMind refers to the endless chatter in one’s head when one jumps from thought to thought and emotion to emotion. Lisi discovered new opportunities to develop her dance language through interaction with dancers with Down Syndrome.
Supported by the Embassy of Italy
Italy – Officine di Creazione: In 2000, a collaboration began with CEPS, an association from Bologna, and Paola Palmi in the form of an annual workshop with a final performance outcome. These workshops continued until 2007 when it became possible to establish a company for disabled dancers, Officine di Creazione. Initially the disabled dancers work alongside abled dancers, then the Company grew and now it is constituted by 12 dancers, three of whom will perform at Body Moves.
Supported by the Embassy of Ireland
Ireland –Equinox Theatre Company based at the KCAT Arts Centre in Kilkenny. Equinox Theatre Company is an ensemble-company dedicated to the creation, development and touring of inclusive theatre work. Sighile Hennessy a performer, mover and theatre artist co-founded Equinox in 2008 and makes her debut solo performance at Body Moves with the solo “Out There”
Supported by the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Netherlands – Introdans based in Arnhem is one of the leading contemporary dance companies in the Netherlands its mission is to present high-quality work, which tours internationally. Adriaan Luteijn, a choreographer and artistic manager of Introdans, facilitates inter–active workshops that teach young people to participate in dance classes and performances of integrated and disability dance. Introdans professional productions include young people with autism, people with physical, mental or sensory impairment, wheel chair dancers, over 75-year-old dancers and pupils from regular and special education schools.
Supported by the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture (Gauteng)
Flatfoot Dance Company [Durban] has a 28-year history of working in integrated arts. It is particularly well known for its 6-year-old integrated programme fondly referred to as 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. This particular dance programme celebrates community across the divide of race, gender and ability.
Moving into Dance [Johannesburg] was born in the cruel turbulence of 1978 Apartheid South Africa. It was an artistic response to the destructive policy of apartheid. The vision was to draw on the creative capacity of the human spirit to connect enliven and transcend. In keeping with its founding vision Moving into Dance introduced its Enable Through Dance programme in 2016 which seeks to inspire confidence and self-esteem in the physically disabled through creative means especially dance.
Sibikwa Arts Centre [Benoni] A community based organisation founded in 1988 in Daveyton a township east of Johannesburg it has grown over the years to become South Africa’s foremost multi –disciplinary arts centre. Initiated in 2018 the Inclusive Creative Arts Programme [ICAP] builds the capacity of marginalized youth with neurological learning disabilities who are out –of –school- out of –work. It aims to provide these vulnerable youth often excluded or neglected for not responding well to typical classroom settings the opportunity for personal and professional development through the arts.
Supported by the Representation of Flanders.
Unmute Dance Theatre [Cape Town] a company of artists with mixed ability / disability using physical theatre, contemporary and integrated dance to create awareness on accessibility, integration and inclusion of people with disability within the main stream of society. The company came into existence in 2013 after a performance entitled “Unmute”. Within the past 9 years, Unmute has developed various inclusive projects that have created access and integrated people with and without disability in one environment.
CHOREOGRAPHERS
Flanders: Lisi Estaris began to dance in Coroba, Argentina. After combining her studies in social work and professional dance training, she chose dance as a career path. She won a scholarship to study dance and music at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem and thereafter joined the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv. She moved to Europe and started her European career with Les Ballets C de la B. Lisi began to create her own work independently choreographing dance for theatre productions and other dancers. This is her second visit to SA in 2018 she worked with the Hillbrow Foundation. She has been granted a scholarship by the Flemish authorities to research the themes of kinaesthetic empathy and the mirror neurones. Lisi will be choreographing a collaboration between MonkeyMind Company and Unmute.Dance Company
Italy: Paola Palmi studied dance in Italy and France and worked with a variety of dancers. Paola is a Hatha Yoga teacher, and she studied traditional Japanese sword practice, and attends Toa School of traditional Chinese medicine. She is the creator of her own personal Dance and Organic Movement method developed over years of experience working in various social, educational, cultural, artistic and therapeutic contexts. She has been teaching for forty years conducting workshops and seminars, working on projects for primary and secondary schools. She founded Lavori in Corso and the integrated ‘Officine di Creazione’. She is one of the founder members of Spiralia, the partner association of her Company
Ireland: Sighile Hennessy choreographer co–devised and created “Out There” with direction and assistance from Cindy Cummings and Stephen Batts. In 2014, Sighile was the recipient of an Arts and Disability Connects Award. She has performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and was instrumental in founding the Equinox Theatre Company. Stephen Batts is artistic director of the Echo Theatre Company based Derry and is a performer, director and dancer. Cindy Cummings is an independent dance artist based in Kilkenny whose practice manifests in a wide range of forms with several unifying themes; the vulnerable and mutable place of the body within contemporary society.
South Africa: Lliane Loots – Flatfoot Dance Company was established in 1994 as a part-time training programme that aimed to offer technical contemporary dance training to Durban/ eThekwini –based dancers. In 2003, she founded the full time professional dance company. As Artistic Director and Choreographer of Flatfoot, she has won numerous awards and has travelled extensively in Europe, America and Africa both as teacher and choreographer. Presently she holds the position of senior lecturer in the Drama and Performance studies programme at the University of KwaZulu –Natal. She completed her PHD looking at contemporary dance /performance histories on the African continent. She is Artistic Director of the annual JOMBA dance festival.
Netherlands: Adriaan Luteijn – In 1998 he ended his career as a dancer at Introdans, and from this time on he began to develop his choreographic activities for a range of dancers and institutions in the Netherlands and far abroad. He doesn’t really regard himself as a major innovator of dance language, but more as someone who creates theatre with dancers. In all of his works, connection and the human variety are the keywords. He flourishes with the friction and collision happening in his working processes with dancers from usually separated worlds. These deliver the energy. For both dancers and spectators.
Luteijn enjoys ‘serendipities’, special opportunities that cross his path and that also inspire people with whom he creates. People that come from a wide variety of physical, social, cultural, intellectual worlds ( for instance the Dutch Olympic Volleyball team, hip-hop-waacking and vogueing dancers, older people, dancers with a physical and/or intellectual handicap, whole families) all of whom he places alongside the professional Introdancers, and always with remarkable results. Luteijn feels it’s important to build bridges. And in his view of things, dance is a superb, non-verbal way of doing that.
Over the years he has created various works for Introdans. In 2020 he created Pro Forma, a trio for 3 dancers with outspoken physiques. Eva Eikhout, one of the dancers, joins Adriaan to Benoni and they will create on the spot a work together with a South African Dancer and presenting it in the festival
Uganda: Joseph Tebandeke is an emerging contemporary dance artist researcher from Uganda with an interest in physical intervention for the common spaces. His energy and capacity builds upon what he explores with different bodies, daily objects and space specifically exploring and questioning the intersection of the world where the concept of being able or disable meet. Inclusion, authenticity and accessibility is what he builds his art on. He strives to give back to his community through his work. His works have been shown over the world through online platforms and through his performances in different European and African countries. He will be working with dancers from Moving into Dance Enable Group and the Sibikwa, Inclusive Creative Arts Dancers.
