Lliane Loots

Lliane Loots holds the positions of Lecturer in the Drama and Performance Studies Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has a Masters degree in Gender Studies and completed her PhD in 2018 looking at contemporary dance histories on the African continent. As an artist/scholar her PhD research is framed within an ethnographic and autoethnographic paradigm with a focus on narrative as methodology. Loots founded her FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY as a professional dance company in 2003 when it grew out of a dance training programme that originally began in 1994. As the artistic director for FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY, she has won numerous choreographic awards and commissions and has travelled extensively in Europe, America and within the African continent with her dance work. She is also the founder of UKZN's Center for Creative Arts's 23-year-old JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience - a festival that promotes nurtures and facilitates dance across the continent and beyond. Loots was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government in 2017 for her work (both artistic and curatorial) in the South African dance sector.