DIGITAL JOMBA! 2026 brings free screen dance from South Africa, France, Tanzania and Brazil

As part of the 28th JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, running from 25 August to 6 September 2026 in Durban, JOMBA! once again presents its digital dance offering, DIGITAL JOMBA! 2026 which is accessible to global audiences online.

Over the past six years, screen dance has grown into a significant creative form, and JOMBA! continues to champion it, particularly work coming out of the global South. This year's programme features a curated line-up of digital artists, screened free of charge via the festival's YouTube channel.

Darkroom Contemporary retrospective

Darkroom Contemporary (Cape Town, South Africa) feature on Sunday 30 August @ 6pm (SAST) with a special retrospective programme drawing on sixteen years of filmmaking from Darkroom Contemporary, the Cape Town-based screendance company founded in 2010 by choreographer and filmmaker Louise Coetzer and photographer and filmmaker Oscar O'Ryan. Across the selected works, the company's ongoing exploration of movement, landscape, architecture, memory and the camera comes into focus, tracing the development of Coetzer and O'Ryan's collaboration and their sustained approach to choreography as a cinematic language.

The programme includes eight screendance films: Blue Funk, Not From Here, META | m o r p h, Lacuna, The Forgotten,give/take (the act of erasure), WRPD, and I walk the street with loose parts, featuring performers including Bronwyn Craddock, Mukovhe Monyai, Farnel Smart, Mthuthuzeli November, Christopher Sherwood Adcock, Louise Coetzer and members of the Dance For All InSPIRAtions Youth Company, among others.

Louise Coetzer is a Cape Town-based multidisciplinary dance artist, filmmaker and choreographer whose practice spans screendance, site-specific performance and digital media, presented internationally across Africa, Europe, North and South America. Oscar O'Ryan is a Cape Town-based photographer and filmmaker whose documentary work has included projects for the BBC and Discovery Channel, alongside screendance works screened in France, Mexico, the UK and Finland. Together they lead Darkroom Contemporary, with O'Ryan serving as the company's Technical Director.

Their work is supported by the National Lotteries Commission, the National Arts Council, the Christian Ludolph Marais Trust, and the Department of Cultural Affairs & Sport.

Brazilian collaboration Delirar o Racial

Brazilian choreographers Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira screen their work Delirar o Racial (Delirium of the Racial), on Wednesday 2 September @ 6pm (SAST). This work explores spatiality beyond conventional structures of space and time. Drawing on the thinking of philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva, the pair use methods developed in their own choreographic practice, engaging with uncertainty, and disorder to build an experimental reflection on a timeless ethics of Black life.

Pontes and Ferreira's collaborative practice sits at the intersection of dance, performance, visual art and critical thought, developed through their ongoing Repertório trilogy, which frames dance as a form of self-defence training while engaging questions of race, coloniality and the politics of the body. Delirar o Racial was commissioned by the Pivô Satélite Program in 2021.

JOMBA! DIGITAL OPEN HORIZONS

JOMBA! DIGITAL OPEN HORIZONS returns as the festival's platform for new screen dance talent on Wednesday 26 August @ 6pm. Following an open call for submissions earlier in 2026, an independent JOMBA! jury shortlisted eight works, with the final screening selection made through a voting process concluding in mid-August. The winner of 'Pick of the JOMBA! DIGITAL OPEN HORIZONS 2026' will be announced on Wednesday, 26 August, following the screening of the jury's selected works.

Works featuring in this open platform are:

Estela Lapponi: Seliberation #3 (Brazil)
Marcia Mzindle: The Weight of Being Seen: A Refusal (Durban, SA)
Zandile Sphelele Phili: NGIPHAMANDLA: Life in a Womb (Durban, SA)
Bongani Shezi: Silent Voice (Durban, SA)
Matthieu Nieto and House of Wondar: Our Mother (France/Tanzania)
Ruth Asidi and Guga Santos: Boca da Mata (Brazil)
Gregory Maqoma, Sara CF de Gouveia and Inka Kendzia: Dream’s Descent (Johannesburg, SA)

All DIGITAL JOMBA! 2026 programming is free to view at https://www.youtube.com/Jomba_Dance/streams

For more information, go to www.jomba.ukzn.ac.za