Africa is contemporary: Tarpaga's night at Harlem Stage

Scene from Declassified Memory Fragment at Harlem Stage Gatehouse
(photos above and below: Marc Millman)

Director/choreographer Olivier Tarpaga (foreground)
performs in Declassified Memory Fragment

Only one night to see Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project at Harlem Stage Gatehouse? How is that acceptable?

If Olivier Tarpaga's Declassified Memory Fragment (2015) had a longer run, he and his all-male cast of notable dancers and musicians would be such an edifying, exhilarating treat for New York's contemporary dance fans--and everyone else. Tarpaga--whose company is based in both Burkino Faso and Philadephia--seems tired of being labeled "contemporary" as if dance made in and exported from Africa in recent years needed a special designation distinct from the folkloric, tribal work with which we, in the States, are much more familiar.

In a post-show Q&A with choreographer and filmmaker Gabri Christa, Tarpaga declared, "It's important to to know: Africa is contemporary." In other words, Get with it, New York! We're here! With Nora Chipaumire, Faustin Linyekula, Dorothée Munyaneza and the Senegalese Mother of It All, Germaine Acogny, gracing our stages and museums in recent weeks, we're getting a right schooling in this subject this season. As Christa noted, so much of this art is "based in African tradition but also free of it."

The hour-long Declassified Memory Fragment, presented in partnership between Harlem Stage and 651 Arts, has a real-world political context--intrigue and upheaval in Burkino Faso, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe--that Tarpaga began to relate during the Q&A. It's a knotty history, and I suspect I was not the only one finding it tricky to focus on and follow. But suffice to say, for now, the dance takes off from the idea that power grabs and secrecy destabilize both democracies and human relationships. Tarpaga's stagecraft does the better job of illustrating the latter--personal rifts and reconnections--through dazzling vocalization and prop work and, in particular, unusually intimate, symbolic duets. What two competitors sharing and tangling a single slim suit jacket can do and signify is amazing.

Mystery and laughable absurdity dance cheek to cheek in this work. A third dancing partner--beauty--is in the warm, twangy, bluesy music and the poetry of the work's visual graces. It's worth noting, too, that in its design and its masterful execution by dancers Ousséni Dabaré, Aziz Dermé, Jérôme Kaboré and Adonis Nébié, Declassified Memory Fragment broadens any notion of what it means to be masculine, to be African and masculine, and to dance as an African man. And it does so in a matter-of-fact way that we can't help but see, absorb and, if we will, admire.

Music: Olivier Tarpaga in collaboration with musicians Flatié Dembelé, Boubacar Djiga and Daouda Guindo

Declassified Memory Fragment has closed. For information on future events at Harlem Stage Gatehouse, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue, Manhattan
(map/directions)

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