About:

Project title: WATH

The starting point is “WATH’’ ‘’Kao wath e aora/kulo/nam” taking a bath at the steepy riverbank, the stream or the lake. A setting that is a fundamental space in African rural life that serves as a social, functional and recreational space.

In vulnerable stage this rite of passage is a confrontation and exploration of the thematic, cultural, and experiential, the elements surrounding "Wath’’ are of childhood experience, echoes of space where fostering early independence lies, awareness of one's surroundings and where freedom is re-imaged, pre-exploration and curiosity of the known and the unknown is faced based on the complexity it embodies.

Wath embodies a transition point between the safety of the home and the wildness of nature, the bonding through waters, the feel of mud, the sound and waves of the flowing stream are potent, sensory anchors to early life.

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Concept:

The artist is reflecting on demystification and constraint of cultural diversity within social spaces, marriages of same culture or different cultural backgrounds and how they can provoke, or subject to intentional shifts around stiff unyielding overlays of presumably notions of how cultures should act, acceptance of cultural dynamics, integration and instinctiveness approach that emphasizes on the needs of the environment like status on finance, superiority thus may have effect on cultural structure and distort quality in other practices and cultures. In this work, the dancer’s body acts as a vessel that absorbs the weight of external expectation, pre-meditated social outcome, it embodies the thoughts and objectives on how to avoid essentializing, stereotyping individuals or while fostering genuine respectful engagements. 

How can traditions be genuine, hold its respect, and continue with layered engagements if we can’t acknowledge the resilience and the evolution of it, can one celebrate it without stereotyping the experience?

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Wath images - click here