ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the work of Lliane Loots and her work with the FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY and the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience Festival. It explores the company’s work with the FLATFOOT Downie Dance Company and other dancers living with physical and intellectual disabilities. It traces the company’s methodologies for developing integrated mixed ability training, professional dance and how they engage communities with their work. It begins with an overview of the company’s history, then we hear from Loots, founder and artistic director of the company and Jabu Siphika, a long-standing dancer with FLATFOOT. Finally, there is analysis of how the company has developed a particular workshop methodology that enables what Loots terms a ‘living democracy’, how they navigate the productive tension between working in communities and in professional spaces, and how they have mobilised festivals to develop integrated dance in Durban and beyond.
