Encountering Disability through Contemporary Dance in Africa
The Researchers
Yvette HutchisonLink opens in a new window is Professor in Theatre & Performance Studies, in the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures. Her research focuses on Anglophone African theatre, history and narratives of memory, and how intercultural performance practices can challenge ongoing postcolonial issues. She was Principle Investigator on this UKRI-funded project (Feb 2023-July 2025) with Dr Lliane Loots, who is a senior lecturer in the in the Drama and Performance Studies Programme at University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and an award-winning artist-activist-choreographer-curator.
The Challenge
The project was set up to explore how disability has been conceptualised in different African contexts via local views, which particularly impact people living with disabilities because of its via strong magico-religious framing, and in negotiation with past histories of colonialism that have defined belonging in specific ways. It then set out to analyse how integrated dance, as an embodied form and practice, can challenge these views and expand citizenship for people living with physical and intellectual disabilities in Africa.
Our Approach
The research is interdisciplinary - bringing critical disability studies, postcolonial research and contemporary dance into dialogue with one another. Central to this project was the establishment of the African Dance Disability Network (ADDN) to connect integrated dance practitioners, researchers and educators. Together, using action research methodologies, we traced the diversity of the artistic practices on the continent, articulate how dance has a unique capacity both to illuminate the substantial flaws and exclusionary nature of modern concepts of citizenship and offer a path to resolving these issues through this integrated form of dance that allows for adaptive choreographies, and tangentially, consider how African and Europe/ global integrated dance practices compare. We worked closely with Unmute Dance Company and FLATFOOT DANCE Company in South Africa, and three companies and artists in east Africa - Ondiege Matthew and Dance into Space, Kenya, Amuel Solomon and Katim Dance in Kenya and Tebandeke Joseph in Uganda. This involved seeing their work in situ, facilitating exchanges between artists to share skills and approaches to integrated dance and interviewing them to include in our research outputs, so their voices are heard.
Image - Tebandeke Joseph inTime Machine - Unveiling the inner strength. Photo Herman Verwey.
Our Impact
The book Encountering disability through contemporary dance in Africa (Routledge, 2026, Open access ) offers an intersectional exploration of how disability is understood in relation to citizenship, global critical disability studies, postcolonial studies and dance across diverse African cultures. It offers the first analysis of the role of networks and festivals in expanding integrated dance, considering how festivals are outward looking and networks focussed on the communities themselves; and how both impact public perceptions of disability both within Africa and globally.
The network has enabled regular discussions, seminars, shared work in progress between participants online on bi-monthly basis and via live encounters between participants at the various festivals. The has enabled the collation and dissemination of the various encounters facilitated, festivals and work being done; and made the artists and their work more visible, while keeping them connected to one another. The funded exchanges between companies across the continent has increased skills and confidence for the artists, while enabling debate on approaches to choreographing techniques across diverse disabilities. The mini-festivals and inclusion in the international mainstream contemporary dance festival JOMBA! Dance Experience Festival at the UKZN, Durban, SA., and a focussed ADDN-JOMBA Access Colloquium-Festival 4-day event at Stable Theatre in Durban, SA in 2024 has led to greater visibility for the companies and enabled them to connect across the continent and globe. This has led to collaborations between companies and artists, and more recognition. For example, Tebandeke Joseph was invited to work with Introdans in the Netherlands as a direct result of JOMBA 2023, and Ondiege Matthew received the Order of the Grand Warrior from the Kenyan President in October 2025 for his 33 years of intersectional work with marginalised communities in Kenya.
Image Poster for ADDN-JMBA festival-Colloquium 2024