4th Flatfoot Access Festival – a Feast of Dance for All Abilities
Flatfoot Dance Company, in partnership with Stable Theatre presents its fourth annual edition of the Flatfoot Access Festival, offering a week-long engagement of workshops, panel discussions, and performances from 1 to 6 December during the tail end of South Africa’s National Disability Rights Awareness Month.
The festival celebrates Flatfoot’s 22-year history of encountering disability through dance education and development work, and more recently in their professional development work.
Flatfoot’s Artistic Director Lliane Loots says:
“The journey toward access and professional training for dancers living with both intellectual and physical disabilities lies at the heart of this small ever-growing festival. It is an amazing moment of celebrating not just the incredible dancers, dance makers, and choreographers participating, but of the truly transformative power of dance to transform and bind our communities together”.
The festival always invites a special guest to run workshops and offer performances, and to push and support local integrated dance practices. In previous years the festival has hosted Sydney Erlikh (USA), Jürg Koch (Switzerland), Gladys Agulhas (South Africa), and in 2025 welcome Amanuel Solomon from Ethiopia. Based in Addis Ababa, Amanuel is a professional dancer and choreographer and founder of Katim Disability Dance, the first company in Ethiopia led by a disabled dancer. Katim is a mixed ability company that has performed at the National Theatre in Ethiopia, and run an integrated dance festival engaging intellectual disability, and dancers who are deaf, blind, and living with physical disabilities.
Amanuel joins the Flatfoot Access Festival to run workshops and also to perform a solo – “Who am I?” that journeys through an evocative portrayal of the four stages of human life, from birth to death using the elements of air, fire, water and earth as the guiding frame. Amanuel’s free access workshop will focus on sharing some of Ethiopia’s traditional and cultural dances. The workshop will be held at the Stable Theatre on Wednesday 3 December from 2 – 3.45pm. Places are limited so booking is essential via Lootsl@ukzn.ac.za
Spicing up the festival for 2025, stalwart Flatfoot dancers Sifiso Khumalo and Jabu Siphika have been challenged to use the festival week to create – and premiere – two short new works for the Flatfoot dancers partnering with invited guest dancers Bheki Khotsolo and Amanuel Solomon (Ethiopia).
Look out for a new work from the 9-year-old integrated dance programme working with dancers with Down Syndrome who fondly call themselves the “Flatfoot Downie Dance Company“. They perform alongside Flatfoot in a work called “hold my heart” created by Lliane Loots in collaboration with all the dancers and is a dance journey that looks at what makes up friendships and our relationships.
Following the success of the Downie Company, the “Flatfoot Access Panthers” was started in 2023 to train the next generation of dancers with intellectual disabilities. This is now their third public performance, and together with the Flatfoot company they perform a work called “We are Rising” inspired by Mayo Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise“.
The Festival has been made possible through the partnership with the eThekwini Municipality’s Stable Theatre, with support funding from the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. The Festival acknowledges the African Dance Disability Network (ADDN) and their support and encouragement of disability and integrated dance work in South Africa and on the African continent.
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Show Information:
Flatfoot Access Festival
Venue:
The Stable Theatre
Performance Dates & Times:
5 & 6 December 2025
Friday, 5 December at 6pm
Saturday, 6 December at 2:30pm (repeat)
Performance Prices:
Tickets are R85
Scholars & Students pay R65
Bookings:
Available through Webtickets
Age Restriction:
None
