DURBAN’S much-loved Flatfoot Dance Company will be launching its first Flatfoot Access Dance Festival at 18:30 on November 25, at the Courtyard Theatre located at Durban University of Technology. Three new works created by Flatfoot will be showcased, celebrating the power of dance to transcend narrow definitions of who can dance.

Flatfoot’s approach to community dance development in KwaZulu-Natal has seen it offering what artistic director Lliane Loots calls, “A dance philosophy and practice we refer to as ‘living democracy’, where we find ways to make dance accessible to all, no matter physical or intellectual ability, geography, race, gender and any other intersectional category around identity.”

The Company has nationally spearheaded one of South Africa’s only dance programmes with dancers living with Down Syndrome, affectionately called the Flatfoot Downie Dance Company. This programme began in 2017 and continues with four incredible dancers, Kevin Govender, Michaela Munro, Charles Phillips and Karl Hebbelman. Working in a partnering methodology that sees the Flatfoot Company dancers working alongside, this festival offers three works:

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The first is Loots’s collaboration with the dancers called, Same Difference, which premiered to standing ovations at SIBIKWA’s Body Moves Festival in Johannesburg in October 2022. Loots says, “‘Same difference’ is an idiomatic phrase often used in English that indicates that two things are not really different in any important way. This was the starting point for creating a dance work that plots the meetings and partings of a group of eight South African dancers who journey into a way of seeing one another.”

The second work on offer sees Flatfoot partnering with guest choreographer from Chicago (USA) Sydney Erlikh, who has come to Durban to share integrated dance practices with Flatfoot. Erlikh is an artist, educator and doctoral candidate in disability studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She was co-awarded a 2019-2020 Schweitzer Fellowship, which led to the creation of the Inclusive Dance Workshop Series at Access Living in Chicago.

Talking about her new work with Flatfoot and the Flatfoot Downie Dance Company, called Shield of the Heart, Erlikh says, “In a world where safety is a concern, those who guide you become a shield you wear on your heart. We all came together here in Durban as a disability community to share knowledge and culture. This dance work – our dance work – is a score that will never be the same. Through it, we share our vulnerability and create safety for one another. The dance piece asks where you find safety and who has been a shield for your heart.”

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The final work on the programme is a collaboration between Loots, Flatfoot and Julia Pitt, a dancer living with cerebral palsy. Julia has always considered herself a dancer and has literally watched every local performance Flatfoot has ever done. A chance meeting started a working process in February, and this festival offers Julia’s first public performance with the company. Loots has worked collaboratively with Pitt and Flatfoot’s Jabu Siphika and Zinhle Nzama to create an intimate and moving trio called, Perpetual Motion.

Tickets are R50. Seating is limited, so booking is essential. Contact Clare at flatfootdancecompany@gmail.com.