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The theatre buzzes with anticipation — the familiar hum of pre-show chatter rippling through it.
Ordinarily, the dimming lights and fading music would cue the audience to settle in, a ritual that prepares one for the world about to unfold on stage.
But that night at Artscape, in Cape Town, convention was defied. Lorin Sookool appeared amid the chaos, weaving through the audience, greeting and interacting with people as if she were one of us.
No dramatic spotlight, no gradual hush. Her presence was bold, disarming even.
She claimed the space with a confidence that made you lean in, recalibrate your expectations.
It was a radical departure from tradition, one that effectively shattered the fourth wall before it could even be built.
It was my first time seeing Sookool perform. I had walked in without knowing the context of her craft, without any preconceived notions of what her dance manifests.
But I was grateful for an earlier encounter — a casual lunch with the 2023 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for dance.
It was during this conversation that she revealed the thematic pulse of her double bill: Woza Wenties! and 3 Mense Phakathi.
The former is a solo performance that explores decoloniality through an intensely personal lens. The latter, a group choreography, challenges power struggles and dynamics within the South African context.
“It’s about the ongoing undoing of colonisation,” she explained, her voice steady with conviction.
I latched onto that phrase, curious to see how she would embody such complexity through movement.
But it was more than just a thematic exploration. Sookool spoke about the process of choreographing such a double bill, describing it as an intuitive journey.
“Everyone who is part of the show comes as themselves all the time,” she said.
The dancers echoed this, emphasising how they had been encouraged to bring their authentic selves into the space.
“We were allowed to evolve, and that was okay, because we don’t bring our same selves to the world everyday anyway,” one of them shared.
This approach became evident the moment Sookool took to the stage. She was bare, vulnerable, yet commanding.
Her movements were fluid, navigating the dimensions of time and memory. Each gesture was heavy with narrative, her body becoming an archive excavating histories buried beneath layers of colonial conditioning.
In Woza Wenties!, Sookool’s solo became a powerful act of resistance. She confronted the colonial gaze head-on, using her body to reclaim narrative agency.
Her movements were deliberate, peeling away layers of cultural erasure. She danced as if unearthing fragments of identity that had been strategically concealed or lost.
Then, mid-performance, a familiar sound punctuated the air — 144 in Tinsimu Ta Vakriste, from a collection of Christian hymns.
It reverberated through the theatre, pulling at threads of memory and identity.
It was intimately familiar, echoing the cadences of my own heritage. In that instant, the choreography’s messaging crystallised.
The hymn’s presence was not incidental. It spoke of redemption, but of whose redemption was it singing?
In this context, the question hung heavy. By invoking a religious tradition tied to colonial history, Sookool exposed the contradictions within imposed identities.
The hymn, a symbol of colonial religious indoctrination, was repurposed, its narrative reframed.
Through her body and the hymn, Sookool crafted a potent commentary on colonisation’s many faces.
She confronted the ways it has stripped us of our identity, compelling us to conceal who we truly are.
Her performance was not just a dance; it was a dialogue, a confrontation with history.
But Woza Wenties! was just the beginning. The evening continued with 3 Mense Phakathi, a group performance that I can only describe as complex, even unsettling.
Sookool’s choreographic intent became even more provocative. Where Woza Wenties! was deeply personal, 3 Mense Phakathi was unapologetically political.
It tackled power dynamics and social hierarchies, interrogating the legacies of colonialism that persist in contemporary South Africa.
But this was no didactic lecture. It was layered, abstract, refusing to be easily interpreted. I have to be honest — it was difficult.
Sookool had told me, “I want you to come with no expectations at all,” and I did.
Yet, the piece challenged me to build and absorb multiple narratives — perspectives that I perhaps misinterpreted.
It was not a comfortable experience. At one point, the dancers engaged in a series of confrontations, their bodies colliding, entangling, resisting.
The movements were frenetic, almost chaotic, but there was a rhythm to the disorder.
It felt like a physical manifestation of power struggles, of contested identities. The complexity of 3 Mense Phakathi was intentional.
Sookool’s choreography does not provide answers; it asks difficult questions. The performance refused to be neatly packaged or resolved.
It was confrontational, challenging the audience to grapple with its themes, long after the final bow.
This is rare in contemporary South African dance, where narratives are often made palatable for broader audiences.
Sookool defies this expectation. She provokes, questions, disrupts. She does not entertain; she interrogates.
After the performance, there was an opportunity to engage with Sookool, to ask her questions about her work.
But even this conversation was layered, complex. The audience struggled to articulate what they had just seen, a testament to the depth of her interrogation.
This is not a criticism. On the contrary, it speaks to Sookool’s power as a storyteller. In a landscape where art is often expected to provide easy answers, she forces us to confront our own discomfort.
She is fully aware of this.
“I feel like we need to talk more as practitioners and do so critically,” she said.
“I was deliberate in inviting dance humans from all the little factions of dance — there are theatre humans, thinkers, and writers.
“We are all dealing with the same things and are creatives and makers in South Africa.
“I am aware that I am doing a thing that might be perhaps a bit odd, so I want to open it up and get us talking.”
Her words stayed with me. It became clear that 3 Mense Phakathi was not about providing a neatly packaged narrative.
It was about questioning the very structures that shape our identities, the power dynamics we navigate daily. It was about discomfort, about confronting what we often prefer to leave unspoken.
As the lights dimmed at the end of the performance and the applause erupted, I remained seated, grappling with the boldness of her interrogation.
Sookool had not just performed; she had started a conversation that refused to end with the curtain fall.
I walked out of the theatre with more questions than answers, unsettled yet inspired.
And maybe that’s the point. Sookool does not offer resolution; she offers a mirror — a reflection of our complexities, our histories, our ongoing journey of decoloniality.
She is not merely a performer. She is a provocateur, a storyteller who dances at the intersections of memory, identity and power.
And as I stepped out into the night, her words echoed once more,
“It is an ongoing practice and an ongoing rehearsal.” Indeed, the work is never truly finished.