RONA, which means “together” or “we” in Sesotho, is a collective film by Gaby Saranouffi, deufert&plischke, Moeketsi Koena and Thabiso Heccius Pule. Moving between everyday life, dance, music, and community work, the film unfolds a multi-voiced portrait of Johannesburg—raw, poetic, and immediate. Created within the framework of the community performance project Ballroom Bliss Soweto, the film places at its center voices that are all too often unheard: women and children who find their own forms of expression within the tensions of poverty and gender-based violence. Filmed across three very different locations in the city, RONA weaves together dance, music and spiritual practices into a powerful cinematic narrative.
More than 40 local participants contributed to the film, which emerged from an intensive on-site collaboration—a process that also led to the founding of the Rona Collective (Johannesburg/Wuppertal). RONA invites audiences to experience Johannesburg from a perspective that often remains invisible in everyday life, while also raising the question of the role contemporary art can play in dialogue with cultural traditions and the resistances of life.
Born in Tamatave, Madagascar, Gaby Saranouffi is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, and Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Dance Festival I’Trôtra and Vahinala Company in Madagascar. As a champion for the Malagasy art form of her home country, Saranouffi has toured extensively both nationally and internationally with highlights including Asian Improvisation in Korea, Tanz Im August in Berlin, the Festival Montpellier Dance in France and Dance Africa Dance Festival in Mali. She has also taught at a number of prestigious dance schools including the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris the Regional Conservatory of Reunion Island and the Bern Conservator.
deufert&plischke have worked continuously as an artist duo for more than 25 years, realising over 50 international projects across four continents. Their practice combines choreographic research with social practice, developing long-term forms of collaboration between artists, local communities, institutions, and international partners. Rather than producing isolated works, they conceive their projects as open artistic processes that evolve over many years, integrating new contexts, perspectives, and participants in different locations.
Since their early works in the early 2000s, deufert&plischke have explored how choreography can enable collective imagination, shared authorship, and social encounter. Audiences are understood not as spectators but as active participants in shared situations. Rooted in dance, their work brings together performance, music, film, photography, installation, and participatory formats to create multilayered spaces of experience.
Dancer, teacher and choreographer, Moeketsi Koena hails from Soweto and is the current Director of Inzalo Dance Theatre Company and associate director for Madagascar International Dance Festival I’Trôtra. Described as “dynamite exploding” Koena has danced and choreographed for the Soweto Dance Theatre, Moving into Dance, Pretoria Technikon and had work commissioned by the Grahamstown Art Festival and Artscape Theatre Center in Cape Town. He has taught and choreographed internationally in the Netherlands, Belgium and the USA.
Thabiso Heccius Pule – a professional dancer, choreographer, event manager, and founder of Creative Tree & Projects – started dancing in 1998 with Community Dance Project. He has worked with various choreographers and appeared in many local and European productions. He is currently working on projects for the Ndofaya Youth Festival and the biennale of Soweto Arts Sessions.