Biography
Kwanele Finch Thusi is a South African choreographer, performer, and creative director working at the intersection of contemporary dance, performance art, and theatre. His practice explores the body as a site of identity, transformation, and social inquiry, often engaging themes of gender, memory, and belonging.
Finch’s work spans both experimental performance and youth-centred theatre through his ongoing collaboration with ASSITEJ South Africa, where he has developed and facilitated performance work with young people across diverse contexts. Alongside this, he creates independent choreographic works that interrogate form, presence, and embodiment. His recent works include Swan Lake and PINA, a contemporary duet exploring physical language and relational identity. Finch’s approach combines physical rigour with conceptual inquiry, creating work that is both accessible and critically engaged.
Synopsis
"Then there was three of us" is a live art performance that attempts to locate a gender that does not yet exist. Performed by Kwanele Finch, the work begins with a simple premise: the body we recognise is incomplete.
What we call “male” and “female” are rehearsed positions — inherited, repeated, and socially stabilised. This performance interrupts that stability by placing the body in a continuous state of undoing.The performer does not represent gender. Instead, the body becomes a site where gender fails, mutates, and reconfigures in real time.
