Body Politic loves works in progress and is now in its 16th iteration as a beloved space in which the artistic community can nurture work that is non institutional but also anti establishment! It's become a well-loved safe queer normative and inclusive space where artists come to try out their piece, to risk mistakes and to research in real time with their audience. This provides so much opportunity for us all to engage with work as process and not product.
Founded in 2018 by Louise Westerhout BODY POLITIC is an informal Live Art event which illuminates ways performing artists address their bodies' complicity with, or resistance to, dominant social ideologies and structures. So far the work of over 75 local and international performance artists has been showcased including Lorin Sookool, Kaulana Williams, Amy Louise Wilson, Qondiswa James, Kanya Viljoen, Lungile Lallie, Genna Gardini, Lukhanyiso Skosana, Kopano Maroga. Naledi Majola, Nadine McKenzie, Themba Mbuli, Kanya Viljoen.
she begins where she is (working title)
This work unfolds in the aftermath of a collapse. Drawing on the residue of multiple eras of working, it asks how bodies continue to organise themselves once the frameworks that governed them no longer resonate. The project explores movement and sound as ways of sensing and making meaning beyond inherited systems, privileging embodied knowledge, listening and emergence over fixed or recognisable form.
Lorin Sookool is an independent dance artist, mother and seeker. Her praxis is process-based, intuitive, and slow by design, engaging socio-political questions through embodied research. She is the recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance (2023) and the Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance and Choreography (2021), and feels most at home in the waves of Muizenberg, where movement and listening continue to teach her.
Ek sal my vel uittrek
The piece centres around the journey of self and going back into my lineage to learn where we come from, then the searching and unlearning of the inside, of being outside the binary and finding meaning of transness. Revisiting childhood-self and sexual experiences to coming to terms with body and skin: inside and out. TW:strong language
Dianne Du Toit Albertze is an award-winning writer from Namaqualand. She studied drama at Stellenbosch University, and completed her honours degree in directing in 2018. Her seminal novel Bottelnek breek bek was published by Human & Rousseau in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Jan Rabie-Rapport prize, among others. She received the Reinet Nagtegaal text prize in 2025. She regularly freelances for Die Burger, Huisgenoot and Klyntji.
snake skin
snake skin is a ritual of self renewal through shedding. 18+ and TW: possible mentions of sexual abuse
Roxanne de Freitas is an interdisciplinary performance artist creating sensuously evocative and socio-politically incisive encounters.
Phallic Smash
An experimental live art exploration of consent and nuanced sexual abuse and accumulated childhood trauma. Using the materiality of clay and the practice of storytelling, the work is a candid conversation on romance and intimate encounters over the years.
Qondiswa James is a freelance cultural worker living between Cape Town and Johannesburg. She is an award-winning writer and theatre-maker, performance artist, film and theatre performer, installation artist, arts facilitator and activist. She has received her Masters in Live Art, Interdisciplinary and Public Art and Public Spheres at the Institute of Creative Arts. Her work engages the socio-political imagination towards mobilising transgression.
This performance invites our insecurities for a cup of tea—and Sokkie. Together we negotiates the space between vulnerability and self-love, moving between the desire for connection and the fear of rejection. We explore how agency can be reclaimed through small gestures and shared rituals.
Disclaimer: The piece gradually opens up to be participatory. Everyone is welcome to engage within their own ability and level of comfort.