In ‘Voyage Entre Deux’ (Journey Between Two), 2013–2020, is a four chapter film in which Mokha imagines a dialogue with himself and with the public around what it means to be an artist and a Congolese citizen who does not conform with heteronormative society.
This first chapter examines the role of artists in Congolese society: their status, challenges, and their everyday realities. Following the words of fellow choreographer Faustin Linyekula—“an artist is first and foremost a citizen”—it is a call for their rights and responsibilities. Mokha explores an imagined dialogue both with himself and with society. What does it mean to be in between? Who am I? Who are we? What should I choose? What does society want? Why? Who has the grip on power? Do I have the right to speak? Do I have a voice? What can I do with it? Without offering definitive answers to such questions, Mokha aspires to take control of his present and to afford himself the power to reinvent his future.
Over the last decade, Dorine Mokha has developed an intensely personal practice connected with questions of identity and memory. Through his autobiographical dance works, Mokha discloses the challenges and realities of social life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Addressing struggles of being an artist, belonging, social rejection, sexual abuse, and homophobia, the trilogy Entre Deux (Between Two) (2013, 2015, 2020) epitomized this trajectory.
Voyage Entre Deux (Journey Between Two), 2013–2020, revisits the issues and topics first raised by Entre Deux through the creation of a 80 minute film in four chapters. Each chapter creates a collage of choreographic scenes, spoken word, music, and footage extracted and adapted from previous works to enable him to relocate the suffering and trials of the past through the overcoming of adversity, and the perspective of his new life in the present.
These four film chapters travel through time to revisit the past and examine the present. From this place they aspire to build a new future based on shared experiences and the desire to consolidate a better society based on mutual respect and tolerance. They are exercises in the healing power of dance, music, and storytelling in which the artist responds to the emergency of being a responsible citizen. Through being a voice for himself and others, he becomes an artisan that weaves together materials and references that trigger change and transformation.
