In WozaWenties, a semi-autobiographical piece, Sookool makes risky choices which pay
Loren Sookool’s Dance presentation took place recently at Artscape Theatrein Cape Town where the writer alongside with other media from Johannesburg were invited to attend.
By Tonderai Chiyindiko
“Have you seen Loren’s work”? This was asked of myself not once but at least twice if not more by people who I assume were either fans, supporters or somehow connected to dance artist, choreographer and performer, Loren Sookool, who was presenting WozaWenties and 3 Mense Phakathi at the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town as the 2023 Standard Bank Young Artist (SBYA) for Dance award winner.
In WozaWenties, a semi-autobiographical piece, Sookool makes risky choices which pay off to present this in-your-face work which is at the same time is exquisite and nuanced, slow and deliberate, but with a delicate playfulness and seriousness in equal measure. In the piece, Sookool comes across as an artist who is not seeking adoration or attention but rather one who is demanding that you sit with her, in her story, her struggles, and all that makes her who she is which she presents warts and all!
Issues of identity and struggle canoften be dreary and difficult to stage but in Sookool’s hands, something mundane like costume changes is done in such a meticulous way and in full view and it comes off as a powerful statement of the artist’s feelings about why these things are important. In even inviting an audience member onto the stage, the illusion of the fourth wall is broken in such a way as to drive across the point that conventions and everything else that contemporary dance has been thought to be in its form and presentation is not what the audience should expect.
For 3 Mense Phakathi, Sookool introduces us to three bright eyed young dancers, each carefully cast not only for their technical skills but for what they bring to the work as human beings existing in/as specific bodies in a wider yet broken society that makes some people prominent and visible, and at the same time systematically erases and makes others invisible.
The two works are complimentary in how they are clear and deliberate about what issues the seek to address, where redress is needed and their insistence that those stories, they each carry, individually and collectively will be seen and heard. Ultimately, the decision to experiment with form and structure, with sound, with costume, lighting and overall staging is vindicated in how the overall experience is one which does not provide any easy answers to the difficult, yet necessary questions raised.