See "lions will roar" tonight!

lions will roar, swans will fly, angels will wrestle heaven, rains will break: gukurahundi--choreographed and directed by Nora Chipaumire and featuring original music played live by the renowned Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited--thrills and overwhelms me. The grand, propulsive, indomitable energy suggested by the title wells up, to varying degrees, in the work's visual, kinetic and sonic elements.

Romain Tardy's video projection streams over a scrim at the front of the stage and over the backdrop, creating a looming, breathing bubble of space that encloses the musicians and dancers. The images appear to expand and float towards us, inviting us to inhale them, seductively inhaling us, too. There are moments when the video shows a sky nearly blackened by silhouettes of what must be thousands of migrating birds. Perhaps it's largely because I am a birder, but each time that imagery arose, I felt shaken, not only by its beauty and dynamic flow but also by reminders of worldwide environmental and wildlife loss as well as the loss of one's native land. Chipaumire and Mapfumo, both courageous artists, represent the excellence of Zimbabwe; both are exiled from a homeland in the dead-hand grip of political repression. Tardy offers a deceptively simple visual idea here, yet one layered with profound, palpable meaning.

Mapfumo has been called "The Lion of Zimbabwe." In a previous solo, Chipaumire has worked idiosyncratic changes on classical ballet's iconic "dying swan." When this new production wrestles with all that is of earth and of heaven, Mapfumo's gentle, buoyant, healing, indestructible music flows from a seemingly limitless source. It is music that feels like confidence, spiritual security, even joy. To listen is to feel cleansed by rain. Unlike most accompanists, typically tucked away in some corner, the five entrancing musicians--Mapfumo (vocals/guitar), Lancelot Kashesha (percussion/vocals), Gilbert Zvamaida (guitar/vocals), Christopher Muchabaiwa (bass guitar) and Chakaipa Mhembere (mbira)--sit in positions of honor, at the center of the action. The dancers--Chipaumire and Souleymane Badolo, who hails from Burkina Faso--animate the space around them.

But these are dancers to be honored, too--the electric, mercurial Chipaumire, one of our greatest performers, and Badolo, her perfect partner, the perfect combination of solidity, rubbery malleability and resilience. Solos and duets work like jagged pieces of wood and metal tossed into the stream of music. Seemingly abstract, yet strongly evocative and expressive, they show us something of the spirit of contemporary, urban Africa and of the diaspora of progressive African-born artists. It is Chipaumire's intent to broaden our lazy perceptions of what Zimbabwe and Africa are all about--poverty, illiteracy, disease, continual strife--and replace our limited expectations of Africa's arts, too. I'm reminded of singer Emeline Michel's similar aim to foster awareness of Haiti's culture and strengths, and Michel would well understand the apt Rumi verse that Chipaumire quotes in her program notes:

Dance whe you're broken open.

Dance if you've torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance when you're perfectly free.

Many in the opening night audience treated the performance like a concert--applauding after every musical number, treating the dancers, too, like rock stars. Some even greeted choice moments with ululations or clapped along with parts of the music. After a short while, I realized this wasn't distracting, just different, and it might be exactly what Chipaumire wanted.  (After all, she set some of that clapping into the movement.) In a post-performance Q&A moderated by Farai Chideya, she spoke about how a lot of New York's contemporary dance artists are content to perform mostly for colleagues and people in the know, an echo chamber of sorts. She wants to break out of that "dance ghetto," as she called it. Hooking up with the world-acclaimed Mapfumo and his music, she said, frankly, is part of her strategy. As someone who has raised this issue, too, I hail her efforts. In lions will roar, her heroic vision, determination and skill have brought us a work that should resonate widely and is not to be missed.

lions will roar is presented by 651 Arts in association with Dance Theater Workshop and will offer its final performance this evening at 8pm at Brooklyn's Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts, Long Island University (Flatbush Avenue between DeKalb and Willoughby). For more information and tickets, click here and do so soon!