Gabrielle Martin chats with SoKo Jena about Kamwe Kamwe ("One by One"), coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival!

Show Notes

Gabrielle and SoKo discuss: 

• What does Kamwe Kamwe mean and why is it important to the show? What are the origins of this production?

• How does the political factor into your work, and how do you navigate the space between the body, voice and spiritual?

• How do you approach the political significance of the black body on stage?

• Why do you define your work as being a spiritual practice?

• What is the Soko totem?

• What is your process of incorporating all the various aspects into the visual world of the piece?

• How does Kamwe Kamwe connect or depart from your other work?

• What is your company's role in cultivating contemporary dance in Zimbabwe?

About Kamwe Kamwe

Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) is a force of movement and song—a meeting of ancestral rhythm and contemporary resistance. On a sand-covered stage, four Zimbabwean dancers move through a terrain of poles, elastics, and projected images, their bodies speaking what history has silenced. Echoes of those disappeared through colonial and ongoing violence are carried in the haunting truths revealed through body and voice.

Choreography that transforms dance into testimony, this is a reckoning on racism and human rights—a body-to-body reminder that liberation is built in motion, and that no one moves forward alone. Kamwe Kamwe (One by One) is both protest and prayer: a dance of solidarity rising from the dust.

About SoKo Jena

SoKo Jena is a Zimbabwean multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and founder of jena_practice, a platform bridging traditional Zimbabwean performance with contemporary artistic expression. A graduate of the University of the Arts (Philadelphia, USA) and the Dance Trust of Zimbabwe, Jerahuni has collaborated with influential mentors such as Peter John Sabbagha, Nora Chipaumire, Ja Willa Jo Zollar, Boyzie Cekwana, and Mamela Nyamza. His work investigates identity, resilience, and spirituality through movement, sound, and ritual, often combining live singing with contemporary dance.

His creations, including Kamwe Kamwe / One by One and The Architecture of Blackness, have been presented internationally at festivals and venues such as SPIELART Theatre Festival (Germany), In2IT International Dance Festival (Norway), Atelier Automatique (Germany), and Festival de Dança Itacaré Danse (Brazil). Through his practice, Jerahuni continues to expand Zimbabwean cultural heritage into a global dialogue, offering audiences powerful performances that merge tradition, innovation, and political urgency.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

SoKo joined the conversation from Brazil.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript