What if the way out of grief isn’t escape, but confrontation? Lone Motsomi’s “Kgololo” turns the body into a diary, a therapy room and, ultimately, a place to come home to.
GOSEGO MOTSUMI
Some stories arrive with a script. Others arrive in the body.
On August 30, Lone Motsomi will bring Kgololo — The Way Out Is Inward to Maitisong Theatre, but calling it simply a dance performance misses the point. This is an emotional excavation set to movement — part theatre, part ritual, part reckoning.
And that is precisely why Kgololo matters.
WHEN DANCE BECOMES THERAPY
In Setswana, kgololo means liberation. For Motsomi, the word carries another layer: it is inspired by her late father’s name, transforming something inherited in childhood into a symbol of adult healing.
The piece follows a difficult route through childhood pain, grief, absence, resentment and spiritual questioning before arriving at self-acceptance.
Motsomi’s own research, The Rhythm of Healing: The Healing Power of Dance, explored how movement can support emotional restoration. Kgololo takes that research off the academic page and puts it under the stage lights.
There are no neat answers here. Instead, there is the uncomfortable business of sitting with confusion and confronting the things that refuse to disappear.
“One figures out how to mother themself,” the production notes say.
“Dance becomes the language through which suppressed emotions can be expressed and released.”
A STORY THAT COMES HOME
After earning a Master of Fine Arts in Dance Choreography and Theatre Production from Nanjing University of the Arts in China, Motsomi is returning to Botswana with a work that is deeply rooted in home.
Mpho Sebina, the production’s media and marketing coordinator, calls it “a homecoming” — a return from the world stage to “her own ground, her own people, and a story of liberation.”
That return gives Kgololo another significance. Motsomi is not simply presenting contemporary African dance; she is using it to ask what African stories can look like when memory, identity and healing occupy the centre of the stage.
THE BODY AS A MEMORY BANK
With more than 12 years in performance, Motsomi has worked across dance, theatre and film, including productions such as The Woman King, Shaka iLembe, King Shaka, G20 and Blood & Water. She has also performed on Broadway in PULA! The Musical.
But Kgololo is perhaps her most personal stage yet.
Directed by Tefo Paya and produced by MotherK Masire, it brings traditional influences, contemporary movement and storytelling into an intimate solo performance.
Because sometimes liberation isn’t about forgetting the past.
It is about finally being able to move with it.
SIDE BAR
August 30, 2026 | Maitisong Theatre
Tickets: P200 single | P300 double | P100 students
Bookings: Webtickets