PINA (double bill)

Kwanele Finch Thusi:

‘…As black people, our bodies are still seen as exotic exhibitions for freedom. I ask the complicated questions in this work, what do you see when you look at me? With so much of conflict that arose in 2020 & 2021, the Black Lives Matter movement underpinned the necessity and purpose of this work’.

Pina is based on the stories of old and young Black men and the power of expression, movement and dance in telling their stories. In Pina, Kwanele Thusi dissects the perception in society about a Black male identity and the Black body. For example, words and the movements of the body suggest that a Black male body must be strong and physical. Kwanele Thusi decolonises this image of the Black male body and shows in his solo and duet the vulnerability and softness of the Black male body and a Black identity. For Thusi, his own black queer identity is the starting point for all his work. His PINA is a CRY, A SCREAM, a queer response to the canonized historical image of the Black man. 

Kwanele Finch Thusi: 

‘PINA asks for a revision around prehistoric implications that still subjugate the black person as 'less than, inadequate and to be feared'. As black people, our bodies are still seen as exotic exhibitions for freedom. 

In the discourse, black bodies are de-textualized, recognized as exigent beings unto themselves, but also beings which exist in a complex system of others. And as such, the work helps us to trace back knowledge about the perceptions of the black body, showing how these bodies have been conceived through colonist frames and re constructed to generate knowledge about the contemporary black body which displaces it in positions of mist trust, fear and anxiety.'