"Outside you, there is no place"

Badolo and Chipaumire (photo by Elle Chyun)

Obo Addy with Chipaumire and Badolo
(photo by Elle Chyun)

Still fighting, tooth and nails, for survival, Dance New Amsterdam isn't going quietly into the new dance season. No, sir. Not with an opening program that features dancers Nora Chipaumire and Souleymane Badolo and the Ghanaian master drummer Obo Addy.

In two final performances, tonight at 8pm and tomorrow at 3pm, the artists present their DNA-commissioned collaboration--Art/Family/Our Lives: I Ka Nye. It's a charming, affecting portrait of the real-life romantic and creative partnership between two brilliant, stubborn and ultimately charming people--Chipaumire (born in Zimbabwe) and Badolo (from Burkina Faso). It is also something of an elusive, rambling story, told in the imagery of movement, words, percussion and soul music, that builds a captivating impression over time without ever landing on a definitive point. It comes off as a vivacious, even rambunctious, work-in-progress--the story, the relationship, I mean--inside a finished theatrical work.

An odd couple. Chipaumire: cool, commanding one with a condor-like wingspan used to great effect. Familiar androgynous appearance and strength here tempered by moments of feminine softness and rosy nail polish. Dancer of sober, spare, sometimes halting moves. Can look at you (and at Badolo) with a wary, intense stillness that harbors godknowswhat. Badolo: the dancer as Trickster, as eternal smile-bringer. Agile, undulant. Whole body likely to erupt into a complexity of fast, frisky movements. The fussiness of it all likely to annoy his partner, who, in one moment of exasperation, interrupts to announce, "The problem is you dance too much...!"

Over the hour--with Addy providing rhythm, blessing, gentle counsel and irresistible encouragement by boogie-ing to James Brown's "Cold Sweat"--Chipaumire and Badolo engage and challenge each other. It is these vibrant challenge dances, these moments of honest sharing disguised as one-upmanship that delineate the differences between Chipaumire and Badolo, first separating them and then sealing them together in admiration and respect. These moments feel, to me, particularly African and Black in spirit within the contemporary context of this piece and methodologies of these exciting artists.

Get your tickets for Art/Family/Our Lives: I Ka Nye here or call 212-227-9856.

Dance New Amsterdam
280 Broadway at Chambers Street, 2nd Floor, Manhattan
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