Lorin Sookool

Lorin Sookool is an independent South African performer, choreographer and facilitator.

With a Bachelor in Music from the University of Cape Town’s School of Dance (2013), professional experience in two local contemporary dance companies (The Playhouse Company in KwaZulu-Natal and The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative in Mpumalanga) and eight years in the performance theatre industry, Sookool has performed both locally and internationally with a number of choreographers including PJ Sabbagha, Mamela Nyamza, Jay Pather, Jessica Nupen, Athena Mazarakis, Lliane Loots, and Sean Bovim.

Having its roots in practice-based research, Sookool’s own performance interests are reaching beyond choreography and into the broader realms of the role and position of the (dance) artist in society – particularly as connected to South Africa’s socio-political contexts.

In terms of her dance practice, she is currently working on defining a method of approach to the improvisational dance that she recognizes as a developing thread in her professional history. In an effort to answer questions of audience accessibility, she has explored multiple spaces as sites for expression; the stage, the street, the screen and social media, working between and within the disciplines of dance, performance art, installation and costuming. Her work is becoming a, practical, deepening of her own understanding of, and negotiations with, the private and public spheres as well as the personal and political, through public performance and experimentation.

Sookool’s work has been presented at numerous South African performing arts platforms: The Centre for the Less Good Idea and Dance Umbrella, ICA Live Art Festival and Infecting The City, Jomba! And Interpret Durban, MY Body My Space, Vrystaat Kunstewees and she has been selected for a number of local and international residencies and fellowships including the Pina Bausch Fellowship (2021), Co-Residency (2020), OPENlab (2018), AIR Artist In Residency (2016) and Crossings III (2013).

Her solo and group works include Bad (2016–2018), It’s Like A Second Skin (2017–2018), The Moon and Her Bloom (2018), Sitting Still and Chocolate Cake (2019), #ColouredConversations: The Forgotten Ones (2019), Prayer Room (2020), The Blunt Blades of Bravado (2020) and Mulato Sujo (2020).

The politics finding expression in her work are informed by her own lived body-politic of being a so-called coloured, female artist navigating the postcolonial South African paradigm, finding its relation to a wider public and taking cues from contemporary life.