The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative: “a launch pad for artists’ international careers”

The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC) is one of South Africa’s leading dance organisations, founded by artistic director PJ Sabbagha. Since 2015 FATC has been based at the Ebhudlweni Arts Centre, in rural Mpumalanga, where it remains committed to the creation of innovative and provocative dance theatre. The centre provides arts training programmes for the community, residencies for national and international dance professionals and hosts The My Body My Space: Public Arts Festival. ANT Mobility grants have supported the participation of artists from the SADC region in various residency programmes and productions over the years. 

The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC) and My Body My Space Public Arts festival (MBMS) have directly benefited through numerous ANT Funding grants over several years. In each instance the grant has been instrumental in enabling the cross-border work of young and emerging artists from across the SADC region. Projects have included creating residency and collaborative opportunities for dance makers, choreographers and performers from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa as well as presenting the work of artists working in SADC countries outside of South Africa and FATC’s annual MBMS in Emakhazeni Mpumalanga. Beyond the meeting of artists, the grants have enabled meaningful results including the creation and public presentation of new international collaborative works that speak to the lived realities of collaborating artists, offering a window into each other’s worlds and sharing this with a wider SADC audience. FATC & MBMS’s ANT funding has catalysed new long-term international partnerships that have been sustained over many years. Most significantly through the various projects’ focus on young emerging choreographic voices the ANT funding has been a launch pad for various artists’ international careers. The funding played a role seeding new collaborations and introduced artists personally and creatively to peers from the region as well as exposed their work to festival curators and programmers enabling future opportunities.