Sifiso Majola is an accomplished dancer and choreographer who works in contemporary dance and in community settings, two worlds which he both thoroughly enjoys and also tries to form bridges between. He was born and raised in Kwa-Mashu, one of the larger townships in the South African city of Durban. Through outreach programmes and community dance projects he discovered African, urban and contemporary dance, three areas he continues to combine to this very day. As a young dancer, he worked with a number of South-African and international choreographers, including Feri de Geus from Holland and John Allen from the USA.
Between 2001 and 2006, he was a member of the Phenduka Dance Theatre where he worked with Sifiso E. Kweyama. Between 2006 and 2011, Sifiso appeared in a number of First Physical Theatre productions in Grahamstown, including Chaste by the 2007 Young Standard Bank Award Winner Acty Tang. However, he never lost touch with Kwa-Mashu and the young people who live there, frequently working with them. In 2012, Sifiso Majola joined the Flatfoot Dance Company, one of South Africa’s most interesting arts organizations that works both at an international and national festival level as well as locally through all manner of community-based projects. In the past, Flatfoot has also collaborated with Introdans in The Netherlands in neighbourhood-based initiatives in the city of Arnhem.
At Flatfoot, Sifiso works with both skilled and unskilled dancers and it is for this reason that Flatfoot Dancers selected him to participate in the ICAF/SAS Summer School. His work as a community dance expert has seen him teach in townships and in Flatfoot’s rural dance programmes for young people between 8 and 30 years old.