Inkomo, a Season 8 ensemble works, is performance as ritual. The piece deploys an all-women cast to blur and rethink boundaries, roles, functions, and relationships of power and personhood that have been inherited over time.

A single character emerges, donning a grey and white uniform. She considers herself in an invisible mirror, oblivious to the audience before her. A whistling sounds out and the others, all dressed in the same fashion, slowly join her.

She begins to twist and turn, performs a clumsy pirouette. The others flock. They are quick to correct her, to nip and tuck. She arches her back, sucks in her stomach, performs again. It is the first of many collective vignettes, each one mining a sliver of personhood, behaviour, and patterning unique to the individual amongst the ensemble. True to its name, there is much breying and murmuring, the soundtrack to a herdlike movement that both holds and belies a series of striking and singular gestures.

This relationship between the collective and the individual, the private and the public, is the basis for a rich and nuanced performance that pursues, always, a return to balance. Through the work of sharp choreography and slick and intuitive sequencing, the performance is able to hold myriad moments and experiences, each one with its own crescendo and seamless segue.

Alongside the physicality of it all, and running through the work like a resonant chord, is a commitment to collective narrative and musicality.

– David Mann

CREDITS:

CONCEPTUALISERS & PERFORMERS | Zarcia Zacheus, Siphumeze Khundayi, Ayanda Seoka, Sibahle Mangena, Thulisile Binda & Khanyisile Ngwabe
DIRECTORS | Faniswa Yisa & Bongile Gorata Lecoge-Zulu