Transmitter by Jacki Job

Conversations 2010 #1
Thursday 12 August, 8pm (60mins)
The Substation Theatre
Admission: $15 (concession for students and senior citizens) and $20
To buy tickets, please call 63377535 or 6337800
Presented by The Substation

In Transmitter, choreographer/dancer Jacki Job explores the weight of life through a unique dance language.

Deliberately slow and featuring highly sculpted movements, Transmitter will be performed to the sounds of the wind and sea of Cape Town. Layered on top of that will be fragments of rhythms that will serve as a metaphor for memories, thoughts and emotions.

Simultaneously re-defining and searching for her identity as an artist, Jacki Job has found it important to embrace her mixed cultural heritage as a coloured South African in her work. She enjoys performing in an eclectic way and creating work that cannot be definitively labeled.

The history of coloureds in South Africa is a layered one. The tales of pain, hatred and love, from the time of Jacki’s indigenous forebearers, the Khoi-San, to the mothers and fathers of the community she grew up in, flows through her. Her body forces her to remember and so redefines her path.

In Transmitter, Jacki Job will attempt to show how life – with its accompanying responsibilities, guilt, hopes and disappointments – can weigh us down.

First choreographed and performed in September 2009, Transmitter has been performed on different occasions in different theatres across the world.

Artist Bio

In 1995, Jacki Job launched her independent solo career and won the FNB/Vita “Best Female Dancer” Award. The following year she was awarded with the FNB/Vita “Young Choreographer’s Grant. At that time, with the aim of performing outside of South Africa, she created a solo work that focused on her identity as a woman of mixed cultural heritage. This work, entitled “Daai za-Lady”, has made a significant impact on her personal artistic style and approach to performance. To date, traces of this piece constantly appear in her work.

She has taught at the Rambert Ballet School in London and the University of Cape Town. In 1998 she officially renamed her company name to Spiral Productions and concentrated on creatingwork that mixed performance genres, challenging the audience and herself to rebel against the notion of irrefutably labelling work. To date, she has choreographed more than 40 original full-length works and performed in at least 8 countries.

Based in Tokyo since 2005, Jacki Job also became a full recipient of the Bunko Cho Fellowship Program in the same year.