At Harlem Stage, e-Moves celebrates contemporary dance artists of Africa and diaspora

Nubian Néné, one of the pop-up performers
for this season's e-moves festival of dance at Harlem Stage
(photo: Alain Wong)

Omari Mizrahi on the move for e-moves
at Harlem Stage
(photo: Robert Bader)

OMG! How to decide what shows to see this season? There's an abundance of worthwhile--indeed, downright exciting--dance productions around the city. I know the struggle well! So, please don't start throwing things when I urge you to get to yet another one: Monique Martin's e-Moves dance festival at Harlem Stage, running only through this weekend.

Martin's focus for this season is on Africa-based or Africa-diasporan artists exploring contemporary dance, as opposed to more-expected folkloric work from the continent. She has chosen Zimbabwe-born Nora Chipaumire, Lacina Coulibaly (Burkina Faso) and Ousmane Wiles/Omari Mizrahi (Senegal). Each evening also highlights dances by women choreographers in pop-up performances curated by Adesola Osakalumi. Viewers will see new, commissioned works as well as pieces re-imagined for the unique (and uniquely beautiful) space at Harlem Stage.

Chipaumire has reset her famous solo, Dark Swan (2007), on Shamar Watt, a man. Years ago, I saw the choreographer dance it; quite recently, I was fortunate to see Watt show it in a tiny corner of Chelsea's Rubin Museum where I sat perhaps not more than a foot away from him. Both artists are electrifying. But the visual intensity of this iteration for Harlem Stage is enhanced by the meeting of the brooding darkness of the space and the stark, handheld light trained on Watt and his white shirt. Dark Swan re-purposes a Russian ballet archetype as a symbol and expression of resistance, paying tribute to the determination of Africa's women.

Coulibaly adapted to the loss of his partner, Ibrahim Zongo--due to visa issues--for this world premiere of his duet, Sen Koro la (The Rite of Initiates). He adapted so beautifully, in fact, that when the audience was later informed that the "solo" we had watched was meant to be a duet, some of us gasped in surprise. I can't say that I saw much of Coulibaly's stated intention to promote "the humanity and culture of Africa, compelling the audience to appreciate its great diversity and immense cultural wealth," and I doubt this particular audience was in need of that sort of prompting. But we were treated to a solo of poetic sensitivity around timing (inhabiting the lush, flowing music but finding its own inquiry, thoughtfulness and response within it) and its own validity as a work of art. I do look forward to seeing Zongo some day, though--and, of course, much more of what Coulibaly has to offer.

A group of performers, billed as Les Ballet Afrik and led by Wiles (who dances as Omari Mizrahi), brought the house down with the celebratory Sila Djiguba (A Path to Hope). Here, music and moves of West Africa, AfroBeat, House and Vogue styles seamlessly and joyfully intersect. The young dancers making their unforgettable debut as a troupe alongside Wiles were Craig D Washington, Eva Moore, Milerka Rodriguez, Shireen Rahimi, Algin Ford, Yuhee Yang, Yuki Sukezane. I also enjoyed the masterful "pop-up" performance by Nubian Néné (of A Lady in the House Dance Company) in her solo, S T A N C E, another tribute to the self-determination and courage of women of the Black diaspora.

e-Moves continues tonight, Friday and Saturday with all performances at 7:30pm. For information and tickets, click here.

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

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Gibney presents Shamar Wayne Watt and Yinka Esi Graves

Shamar Wayne Watt (photo: Natalie Romero Marx)
Below: Yinka Esi Graves (photo: Camilla Greenwall)

DoublePlus presents three weeks of shared evenings for which established artist-curators each choose a pair of emerging artists and mentor them through the creative, production and audience development processes.

--Gibney Dance 

I am very excited about Yinka Esi Graves, a mature, serious thinker and flamenco artist. Shamar Watt is a strong physical performer with a nascent choreographic practice. These artists are both asking questions about the value of human life through different performance forms. What I care about most is how their aesthetics come through. 
Carrying the history and burden of blackness are relevant topics of discussion. But how do time, space and energy capture these issues? With little to no evolution in contemporary politics and economies of race, the body must become a weaponized agent of aesthetics for the artist. Graves’ and Watt’s performative explorations manifest the body as a site for these urgent concerns.

--Nora Chipaumire 

Nora Chipaumire--otherwise known as one of the most exhilarating dance performers of our times--writes that she prefers to avoid calling herself a curator. So let's call her, instead, a practiced eye that allows us all to see further and wider. Fulfilling her role as "eye" and one of the mentors for the DoublePlus fall series at Gibney Dance, she has now introduced us to two exciting emerging artists--Yinka Esi Graves and Shamar Wayne Watt. I attended Watt and Graves's final show in the theater at Gibney's Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center.

When the audience first entered, Watt's Gully spring: Di exhortation was already in motion. His gnarly shadow played across a canvas curtain enclosing him like a shower stall. His mother, Valerie Davis, sat nearby, waiting to sing, play her mini-tambourine and read pointed Scripture passages at certain times during the dance.

Jamaica-born Watt draws his aesthetic for Gully spring from a prophetic spirituality that is, indeed, exhortative, magnetic, formidable. He is both high priest of a religion of his own creation--insurgency, liberation--and its exemplary warrior. For most of the lengthy, engrossing performance, the muscular, dreadlocked dancer anchors himself at the center of a broad, low platform, under the periodic drip of a gallon jug of water, and slowly rotates on his axis, gathering tension and power. He speaks, imparting searing visions to us, his captive congregation. When he stamps, it shakes the ground beneath our chairs, and when he tells us to do something--yes, you just looking on as if this is mere spectacle--he means it.

I have watched dance artists address the frightening toxicity of our times with rituals of healing. I have never watched--and felt--anything that could match this hypnotic intensity.

Watt's sermon? Every valley--or gully, if you will--shall be exalted. It is written. It is coming. We make it happen.

An intermission gave Gibney's theater crew time to reset things for Yinka Esi Graves, but maybe also offered time for us to turn to one another, talk a bit, let some of that tension out.

Graves's Twitter bio reads:

In short: born in london, grew up in nicaragua, guadeloupe, london, part educated in french, studied art history, wanted to make films, now flamenco dancer...

Her dancing has been featured in M. Angel Rosales's film, Gurumbé: Canciones de tu Memoria Negra (2016), a documentary tracing the influence of Africans on Spain and flamenco. She is the first Black flamenco artist I have seen and one of the most exciting flamenco dancers in my experience. I am grateful to Chipaumire for opening my eyes to this artist, and I hope she will return to New York so that we can see more.

Her solea--The fine line por Solea--follows a wistful, delicately sensuous prelude by Guillermo Guilén (guitar) and Ismael Fernandez (vocals). Here the dancer's authority and intensity--which, as I see it, connects her to Watt--lies in the depth and exactitude of shape in her movements, right down to the specificity of each finger. She has her own chosen, deployed power. She sweeps us up in the follow-through of impulse through inclination and gesture. And there's nothing wasted. Nothing just for filler or flash. Such intelligence, such beauty I can only call regal and bow before.

This program has concluded. For information and tickets to the DoublePlus series, click here (Week Two) and here (Week Three).

Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center
280 Broadway (entrance: 53A Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)

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#PUNK it out, Africa! Nora Chipaumire at FIAF

Nora Chipaumire, above,
and below, with Shamar Watt at far right, in #PUNK
(photos by Elena Olivo)

#PUNK is the first part of a triptych titled #PUNK 100% POP*NIGGA, a live performance album that confronts and celebrates three sonic ideologies: punk, pop, and rumba, explored through the radical artists Patti Smith, Grace Jones, and Rit Nzele. -- from program notes for #PUNK

Nora Chipaumire--a Zimbabwe-born dancer with intensity to rival any other performing artist plus, I see, the ability to land herself an interview on CNN--has made her sinewy body more than the instrument of her forthright ideas. It is a force to be reckoned with and, like her incisive mind, a force that will roll up on you the second you merely think about messing with it.

In #PUNK, company nora chipaumire's new piece for Crossing the Line 2017 at French Institute/Alliance Française, she's joined by Shamar Watt, native of Jamaica, who danced in her sensational and controversial trio, portrait of myself as my father, for BAM's Next Wave 2016. His participation in this new work makes it a duet, a fact that does not appear in the press release that I was issued, just as his bio does not appear in the program (although his name, as performer with Chipaumire, does). I don't know what all this means but, just like the unusual set-up of space and audience for the show, the presence of this killer dancer turned out to be an exciting surprise.

So, they're doing punk now...but with an African twist because Black. And because punk energy is pure joy and indomitability, and that's how Chipaumire sees today's Africa and, likely, the world's future.

The space evoked a humid, airless dive with just a few chairs for folks who needed them--regrettably, nobody advised me about this--and, otherwise, just standing room in front of the performers' territory and above it in a low balcony (where I hung out). Notable faces in the crowd signaled this as that show that everyone in contemporary dance knows they've got to be at (if not in Brooklyn at Bausch).

We had to be on our feet, most of us, because Chipaumire and Watt were all about turning this evening into a rave-up with fans clapping and whooping. "Come up! It's a motherfucking party!" cried Chipaumire as some of us took a second too long to step up to the balcony. We then hastened to comply just as we would all go on to comply with everything the two exhorted us to do.

The performance itself amused me for the way it relentlessly lashed together typical moments of lift-off and climax in rock music performance without delivering anything in between. Chipaumire and Watt always seemed to be startin' somethin' and goin' nowhere in particular, but givin' it all they got. Repeatedly calling out New York! Are you ready??? Counting up 1, 2, 3, 4!!! Or Uno, dos, tres, quatro!!! Literally reminding us, now and again, that they're introducing introductions. Declaring "I am a world-class African nigger" (Chipaumire) or goose-stepping (Watt) to rev up (or scandalize) the crowd.

In #PUNK, Chipaumire riffed on Patti Smith's iconic lyric "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" from "Gloria." She changed the "somebody's" to "your," which makes perfect in-you-face political sense in #PUNK's context, and she kept threatening to go back to Africa and telling us what she'd do when she got there.  "Watch me!" she cried, and I kept hearing James Brown's yowl.

"Watch me! I'm in Africa now!" And, yes, she seemed to have flung every cell of her body home in an altered state. You don't want to cross this woman.

Or Watt. Both dancers were in full command of their lunging, twisting bodies and voices despite the extreme demands of the work (particularly on those strained voices) over the hour or so. I could hardly believe that Chipaumire had anything left for the (lengthy) post-performance conversation moderated by choreographer Ralph Lemon and joined by Congolese dancer Faustin Linyekula, who has three premiere works featured in Crossing the Line.

Two choice moments from that conversation:

Chipaumire:

"I'm a particular kind of Black body. I'm an African body. We hold things differently. I'm acting out against everything but more about having love, joy, having the freedom to act out, having the time to act out."

"The joy. People know how to live. They're there [Zimbabwe] partying all night, and there's a lesson in that. Life is short. You could die tomorrow. It should be worth it."

Linyekula:

"Maybe joy is another way of acting out your rage. I'm here to stay. Maybe this body will be crushed, but there will be other bodies."

"[Euro-centered thinkers] will have to wake up and realize that the world has moved on. We are creating our own world on our own terms. Africans are experts in precarity and re-inventing ourselves."

#PUNK has closed. For information on other Crossing the Line events--now through October 15--click here.

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nora chipaumire delivers a MAN-ifesto at BAM Next Wave

nora chipaumire

in portrait of myself as my father

below: with Shamar Watt

(photos: Gennadi Novash)

What a scene at BAM Fisher's Fishman Space!  People excitedly grabbing each and every one of the general admission seats. Stragglers desperately searching for places to sit with companions. Harsh lights gleaming from the corners of a boxing ring. The crowd arranged along three sides of the ring and starting to fill the balconies. And as people enter, the evening's star--Zimbabwe-born dance artist nora chipaumire--giving each person gliding past her an appraising once-over, not always silently, although her imperial silence can and will burn anything to a crisp.

I watched chipaumire with amusement and trepidation, the latter brought on not only by the mystery of what might be going on inside her regal head but also by the look of her shoulders braced and armored in football pads, the way she thrust her Black body out beyond the ring's edge and right up into our faces, the amplified animalistic growls arising from some darkened corner of the ring. And, mostly, her restlessness as she examined each unknowing, distracted bypasser, the sense of her engines revving, revving, revving.

Lemme hear you say, Yeah, she says. (Someone bravely answers, Yeah.)

I've been waiting for you.

I'm ready. I'm ready.

Her moves are rhythmic, rolling, spongey, every well-oiled joint sure of itself, tilting forward, ever at the ready.

I been ready. In fact, I was born ready.

Come on,  Brooklyn. Let's do this!

Give me a green light. Now. Now.

The name of her extravagant trio--co-presented by BAM's Next Wave, 651 Arts and Théâtre de la Ville--is portrait of myself as my father. Except that the word "father" is struck out. Here, with thoughts of her father--estranged from his family since she was only five--chipaumire takes on masculinity, specifically Black African masculinity, and sets it down in the boxing ring of imagination and of daily life. Here, no matter what time it is, it is somehow always Round One for the Black man.

nora chipaumire
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)

One-part Muhammad Ali rumbling in the jungle. One-part James Brown rumbling at the Apollo. And quite a lot of Black men fighting for their very lives on the daily. This is chipaumire, our chin-thrusting, strutting champion, delivering her MAN-ifesto along with collaborating performers, Shamar Watt and Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye (aka Kaolack).

Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye (Kaolack) with chipaumire
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)

But I have not yet mentioned the visual element that, from first to last, most spoke to me--the elastic boxing ring ropes that tether chipaumire and Kaolack's bodies and which occasionally threaten to entangle all three players. You can see them as rough leashes restraining dangerous beasts or puppet strings controlling the range and articulation of their actions. They're worn by the dancers as a matter of course--like no biggie--but why? Like the ring itself, they define how far these characters can go but, within those limits, chipaumire and her mates do their most, infusing the space with energy, with aggression, with sexuality, all the while acknowledging the lingering distortions and damage wrought by colonialism and white dominance.

I think chipaumire hopes we will see those tethers as less restricting than we might first think them to be. She is invested in breaking open the way we see African men and Africa itself. And, in a time when Black male bodies, in popular awareness, are most associated with entertainment, incarceration or genocide, she wants to imagine how Black bodies might matter to Black bodies, how Black bodies might seize their own right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She is seeking the life her father and his generation never had and striving to snap the tethers his generation accepted.

Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye (Kaolack) with umbrella
leads chipaumire and Watt.
(photo: Gennadi Novash)

Ladies and gentlemen, the question is: How do you become a Black man? A Black African man?

You slow down...you slow way down. Like you have the time, like you own time. In fact, you become time.

During the useful post-show Q&A, moderated by Simon Dove, one audience member admiringly referred to the show as "a dangerous work." I agree and admire, too. This production and its three performers are outstanding. Moreover, with this portrait, chipaumire has delivered her clearest and most commanding work to date.

With original music/soundscore by Philip White

portrait of myself as my father continues at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) tonight and tomorrow with performances at 7:30. For information and tickets, click here.

BAM Fisher/Fishman Space
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

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Alpert Award-winning choreographers featured online

Irene Borger, who directs the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, has sent me the following note about the Alpert Award's enhanced Web presence and extensive information about Alpert winners in the field of dance. Click the provided links for entry to this treasure house.

Tap artist Michelle Dorrance
(c)2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

What do some of today’s most compelling choreographers say about their work? Who – and what – has inspired them? What’s the place of collaboration in their practice? How do they view their lineage? What questions are they asking? What’s hard?

Right here: a substantive resource – the Herb Alpert Award website - filled with performance videos, exclusive interviews with choreographer-performers Nora Chipaumire, Michelle Dorrance, Susan Rethorst, Jess Curtis, and Julia Rhoads.

Michelle Dorrance, HAAIA in Dance 2014

Julia Rhoads, HAAIA in Dance 2013

Nora Chipaumire, HAAIA in Dance 2012

Jess Curtis, HAAIA in Dance 2011

Susan Rethorst, HAAIA in Dance 2010

The site itself invites questions: How does one represent an artist’s work? What makes a good interview? How do you organize text, images and time-based documentation to create useful and compelling web pages?

How does receiving a $75,000 award affect an artist? Watch here.

For a look at other risk-taking mid-career Herb Alpert winners working in Film/Video, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, click here.

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire

Brooklyn Museum 

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Thursday, November 21, 7pm

Nora Chipaumire
after winning 2008 Bessie Award for Choreography
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Wangechi Mutu in her Brooklyn studio, 2012.
Image courtesy of Wangechi Mutu
Photo: Kathryn Parker Almanas

Join artist Wangechi Mutu and dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire as they meet at the intersection of visual art and performance. 

moderated by Performa’s Adrienne Edwards

presented in conjunction with the Performa 13 biennial

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

(map/directions)

Skin in the game: Nina, Nora, Miriam

Stir Builds Over Actress to Portray Nina Simone
by Tanzina Vega, The New York Times, September 12, 2012

Should Zoe Saldana play Nina Simone? No. And that's neither a knock on the Dominican-Puerto Rican Saldana for not being African-American nor an assessment of her acting abilities. Simone's dark, dark skin and broad features--clearly not acceptable to Hollywood's image-makers and marketers even today--were essential to her experience in the world as a Black woman and to her politics. Casting a light-skinned actress with conventionally pretty features to portray Nina Simone would be as absurd as trying to turn a gay business associate into a heterosexual lover. Oh, wait....

Dance artist Nora Chipaumire, as I'm sure you've been hearing and reading about everywhere, has had another giant of Black music and activism much on her mind--the late Miriam Makeba. But don't expect Pata Pata, or anything remotely like it, from Miriam, Chipaumire's raw and provocative "solo for two people," set to music composed by Omar Sosa.

Performed at BAM's new 250-seat Fishman Space with Okwui Okpokwasili, this demanding, hour-long ritual digs beneath the surface of Black Woman as Icon (throwing in, less obviously, the Virgin Mary) to the archetypal id of imagination or, perhaps, reality. The intimate performance area remains quite dark almost throughout this experience, greatly magnifying the effect of sound (dripping water; heavy footfalls; a single voice ringing out or a welter of voices overlapping; orgasmic breaths, shrieks and moans) and, whenever it comes, the selective touch of light.

I was stunned to realize that Okpokwasili actually towers over Chipaumire--a majestic performer who looms larger in one's imagination than, perhaps, in reality. By the time Miriam concludes, in a blaze of light, you will have visited the place of the ancestral and archetypical intensities--desire, fear, shame, jealousy, anger. In other words, it is a hair-raising journey through the usually hidden end of the spectrum.

At the end, I stood to leave, struggling to adjust my eyes in a sudden shock of light. Meanwhile, two white women seated to my left immediately took up their pre-show chat precisely where they had left off, as if nothing at all had occurred in the interval. Unbelievable.

Directed by Eric Ting with lighting by Olivier Clausse, scenic design by Olivier Clausse/Hecho Mano, sound by Lucas Indelicato and costumes by Naoko Nagata

Nora Chipaumire's Miriam continues at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) through Saturday with performances at 7:30pm. Tonight's show will be followed by an artist's talk moderated by Simon Dove.

BAM Fisher (Fishman Space)
Brooklyn Academy of Music
321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
(around the corner from BAM's Peter Jay Sharp Building: map/directions)

Eisa Davis and Nora Chipaumire among Alpert winners

Dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire (c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

 

How exciting to see two of my favorite New York artists--Nora Chipaumire (choreography) and multi-talented Eisa Davis (theater) among the winners of this year's Alpert Award in the Arts.

The Alpert Award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to five risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theatre and the visual arts.

The prize was initiated and funded by the Herb Alpert Foundation and has been administered by California Institute of the Arts since 1994. The Alpert Award honors and supports artists respected for their creativity, ingenuity, and bodies of work, at a moment in their lives when they are poised to propel their art in new and unpredictable directions. The Alpert recognizes experimenters who are making something that matters within and beyond their field.

Read more about the Alpert Award.

Read about and hear from the 2012 winners:

Nora Chipaumire

Kevin Everson (film)

Myra Melford (music)

Eisa Davis

Michael Smith (visual arts)

A chat with photographer Ian Douglas

Will Rawls in Collected Fictions, Frontispieces (c)Ian Douglas

Photographer Ian Douglas

Click here for audio interview with Ian Douglas [14:54]

Since 2006, Ian Douglas has been actively photographing New York City's amazing contemporary dance and performance art scene, regularly working with artists like Ishmael Houston-Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Yvonne Meyer and others. He is the photographer-in-residence for Danspace Project and Movement Research, and has photographed for the New York Times, New York Live Arts/Dance Theater Workshop and more. Douglas's work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Dance Magazine and various publications throughout New York City and the world.

Click here for Ian Douglas's Web site.

Scroll down for more samples of his work for Parallels.

Ishmael Houston-Jones, Parallels curator (c)Ian Douglas

Dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire (c)Ian Douglas

Click here for information on purchasing the Parallels catalogue and other Danspace Project catalogues.

Of related interest

Movement Research Studies Project presents Photography and the Performance Journal, a discussion with photographers Dona Ann McAdams, Anja Hitzenberger and Miana Jun, moderated by Ursula Eagly.

Tuesday, March 20 at 6:15pm -- Free admission

More information at Movement Research

Gibney Dance Center
5th Floor, Studio 1

890 Broadway, Manhattan

(map/directions)

Chipaumire and Zollar make it "Visible"

Three Visible Dancers: Left to right, Dancers Kota Yamazaki from Japan, Judith Jacobs from Holland and New Yorker Marguerite Hemmings, who also is a choreographer with Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program, make their visible moves. Photo by: Julieta Cervantes


Nora Chipaumire and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar--critically-acclaimed Bessie Award winners and two of the people I most cherish in dance--will present the world premiere of their collaborative project, Visible, at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse on October 12. This ensemble work deals with the struggle of being a foreigner in US society. 

“Visible attempts to reveal the conflicted nature of my experience, the loneliness of the foreigner, the constant push and pull between homeland and new frontier. It explores the idea of community versus the individual,” said the Zimbabwe-born Chipaumire.

Commissioned and nurtured by Harlem Stage, Visible features an international cast and creative team: 

Souleymane Badolo (Burkina Faso), former Urban Bush Women member Ca.Dé (Guadeloupe), Marguerite Hemmings (Jamaica), Judith Jacobs (Holland),  historian John O. Perpener II (Washington, D.C.), Kota Yamazaki (Japan), who also designed the costumes, and percussionists Bashir Shakur and David L. Alston.

Visible runs October 12-15 (7:30pm). For more information and ticketing, click here.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue (at 135th Street), Manhattan
(directions)

May it RESONATE! with you

RESONATE! African America in Sound and Story launches its after-school arts programming today at 4pm with song/spoken word artists Chandra Rule and Somi at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center.

Co-presented by Lincoln Center's Meet the Artist and New York University's Institute of African American Affairs, this series of four free events for high school and college students will also welcome the acclaimed singer/musician Toshi Reagon (April 13), dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire (April 20) and the And Lay Duo--two members of the Ethiopian funk/groove collective Debo Band (April 27).

Each performance, celebrating the rich cultural diversity and innovative artistry of the African diaspora, will be followed by a discussion and Q & A moderated by Ethiopian singer Meklit Hadero, Artist-in-Residence of NYU's Institute of African American Affairs.

Free! Reservations not required.

Wednesdays, 4pm-5pm
David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center
Broadway between 62nd and 63rd Streets, Manhattan
(directions)

Kovgan: images of Nora

Alla Kovgan: Shoemaker

Nov/Dec Journal Part III, Dance Films Association

Filmmaker Alla Kovgan talks about the making of NORA with dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire

"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
directions

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!

Zollar and Chipaumire: A beautiful "City" is born (UPDATED)

A thrilling journey began yesterday at Harlem Stage with the public launch of "Naked City," part of larger conceptual work, visible/invisible, being developed by choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Nora Chipaumire. Commissioned by Harlem Stage for its WaterWorks Program, the piece honors Harlem's people and their stories and is strongly rooted in the aesthetics and practice of jazz.

Naked City was performed by an international cast of exciting dancers, including several members of Zollar's Urban Bush Women troupe. Hard to believe that these folks did not thoroughly rehearse this piece forwards and backwards for weeks and that they'd only come together earlier in the day to figure out what they were going to present to us! I mean, really!

Since it's truly a baby work-in-progress--one that will continue growing through many more exploratory events like last night's showing and feedback session--I certainly won't offer a review of what I saw. But I will urge you to get on Harlem Stage's mailing list so that you can follow "Baby" as she grows and perhaps, if you take part in one of these events, help her along her way.

Congratulations to Zollar and Chipaumire and their dancers and thanks to Harlem Stage's Patricia Cruz (Executive Director) and Brad Learmonth (Director of Programming) for welcoming us to partake in this auspicious beginning.

Special Update: "Naked City" will be performed by the members of Urban Bush Women at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), November 21-22.

Eat, dance and be merry!

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) invite you to two full days of complimentary dancing, workshops, and cutting-edge cuisine.

Friday, September 11:

10am–12pm: Workshop with French choreographer Pierre Rigal

1–6pm: Dance Class with Odile Duboc, Latifa Laâbissi, Olivier Dubois, and Germaine Acogny (represented by Nora Chipaumire)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Studio 6A
450 West 37th Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues), Manhattan

Saturday, September 12:

1–6pm: Le Bal NYC

Central Park, East Meadow
Entrance on Fifth Ave and 99th Street, Manhattan

Kindly RSVP by calling 646-731-3206 before Wednesday, September 2.

Program

On Friday, September 11, attend a workshop with world-renowned choreographer Pierre Rigal at Baryshnikov Arts Center, followed by a fun and invigorating class with four of France’s most respected choreographers: Odile Duboc, Latifa Laâbissi, Olivier Dubois, and Germaine Acogny (represented by Nora Chipaumire). Each choreographer will teach brand new dances created especially for Le Bal NYC, the free public dance party/picnic in Central Park that will launch FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival the next day.

Then, on Saturday, September 12 you’ll attend Le Bal NYC and assist the choreographers in teaching the dances you’ve just learned to the crowd in the Park—all while sampling snacks created by some of the hottest chefs in France and NYC!

What is Le Bal NYC?

A fresh new take on some classic French traditions, the “bal populaire” and the “pique-nique” are reinvented as Crossing the Line is launched on the East Meadow in Central Park. French choreographers Odile Duboc, Latifa Laâbissi, Olivier Dubois, and Germaine Acogny have specially created short new dances to be taught section by section to the public. As both audience and performers of the new work, participants get an insider’s look into the mechanics of contemporary choreography as well as the creative imagination of dance personalities. To sate the appetite of all these dancing feet, the Omnivore “brigade” will be creating special Crossing the Line Bento Boxes—a unique vision of the picnic with different elements created by innovative master chefs Inaki Aizpitarte, Alexandre Gauthier, Pascal Barbot, and Michel Bras from France, as well as New York’s David Chang and Wylie Dufresne.

Dancers of all ages are invited to participate in Le Bal NYC, a unique celebration set to take place in East Meadow, Central Park on Saturday, September 12, 2009.

Le Bal NYC

What is Crossing the Line?

Crossing the Line is FIAF’s annual fall festival, conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of transdisciplinary artists working in France and New York City. Initiated, conceived, and produced by FIAF (the French Institute Alliance Française) in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, the third annual edition of this inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival further develops its focus on artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. Over three intensive weeks this fall—whether by performing shopping, watching sounds, composing films, or reading movements—audiences will join in exploring and tasting a unique collection of outstanding new works and experiences, and discovering new revelations from each of these extraordinary artists.

Crossing the Line

French Institute Alliance Française
22 East 60th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues, Manhattan

Movement (R)evolution Africa

A few days ago, I posted my review of Nora--a 2008 documentary about Nora Chipaumire and her life in Zimbabwe by filmmakers Alla Kovgan and David Hinton. At the end, I added a link to information on Movement (R)evolution Africa (a story of an art form in four acts), an earlier documentary directed by Kovgan and Joan Frosch, Nora's producer.

Unfortunately, at the time, I was unable to say anything more about M(R)A, since my computer's media player had balked at reading the DVD. However, since then, my regular DVD player kicked into action, and now I'm thrilled to be able to urge you to add both films to your must-see list.

If anything, M(R)A electrified me even more than Nora--which is really saying something.

M(R)A is an absorbing, kaleidoscopic introduction to contemporary dance as conceived by artists from many of Africa's regions, artists committed to reflecting 21st Century African realities.

Creators and performers familiar to most serious dance fans--such as Chipaumire, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of New York's Urban Bush Women and Germaine Acogny of Senegal's Jant-Bi--flow through. But we're also treated to numerous tastes of unfamiliar cultural aesthetics and troupes, such as exquisite Company Rary from Madagascar. If your notion of dance from Africa extends only to theatricalized versions of traditional tribal dancing from Africa's West, it's time for you to see M(R)A. Among other things, this film certainly makes the point--still a necessary lesson for many Americans--that the continent of Africa is not only abundant in cultures but historically impacted by, and, in turn, strongly influential upon, a world of cultures.

With lush, fast-paced imagery and a range of intimate interview clips, M(R)A celebrates Africa's contemporary artists as searching innovators who clearly have much to teach and share with American artists. One of my favorite segments involves an exploration of the African concept of contact dance. The filmmakers piece together samples of this from many of the companies, and I found the palpable human connectedness, groundedness and inherent drama even in abstract movement deeply affecting.

You will want to own a copy and revisit M(R)A many times to catch new ideas and inspirations and to dream of seeing artists you might not yet have had the opportunity to see in New York or elsewhere.

For further information and to view a clip from M(R)A, click here.

Chipaumire: dancing her path of light

For fans of Nora Chipaumire--and anyone who has yet to encounter this extraordinary dancer-choreographer--I strongly recommend Nora (2008), a 35-minute, award-winning film by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton.

"I am a dancer," begins the film's opening narrative text, "Born by the side of the road/on June 26, 1965, in Zimbabwe/which was then called Rhodesia." These simple facts--and shots of the rounded humps of mountains and of hands quietly resting atop the skin of drums--soon give way to poetic, often fanciful, always passionate storytelling by way of text, dance, breathtaking cinematography by Mkrtich Malkhasyan and original music by the legendary Thomas Mapfumo.

Chipaumire, who left Zimbabwe in 1989 and lives in New York City, collaborated on the screenplay with directors Kovgan and Hinton. Due to the repressive political situation in her homeland, the film was shot in Mozambique, near the Zimbabwean border. In a dream-like collage of sequences, Chipaumire revisits the red earth of her land, her people, her memories of childhood and youth. We get a sense of the often terrible familial and societal ingredients that set in motion a free-spirited, strong-willed, committed artist.

The film highlights Chipaumire's skillful chameleon nature--athletically masculine at one moment, romantically demure at another; towering and severe at one turn, playful at another. It is--all of it--utterly convincing, absorbing, intriguing. The film also draws together the sources that flavor her contemporary dance, which has won her world-wide acclaim and a 2007 Bessie Award--from village women's dancing to the fierce toi toi of Zimbabwean freedom fighters of the chimurenga (war of liberation) and to expansive, celebratory disco dancing.

Malkhasyan often shoots Chipaumire's dance segments through partitions or the framing of schoolhouse windows and doorways, not only achieving arresting compositions but also alluding to the searing realities of Zimbabwean and familial conflict that shaped this woman and, for a time, confined her. Together, these two artists create a most effective, imaginative partnership of dance and environment.

For additional information about Nora and to view brief excerpts, click here.

For information on Joan Frosch and Alla Kovgan's 2007 film, Movement (R)evolution Africa--which features Chipaumire as well as performers from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Senegal and the US--click here.

Upcoming screenings of Nora

• July 17-27, 2009 - Festival internazionale del cinema d’arte, Bergamo, Italy, http://www.teamitalia.com/
• July 22 - August 2, 2009 - Durban International Film Festival, Durban, South Africa http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/
• July 29 - August 2, 2009 - Pan Africa Film and Arts Festival, Atlanta, USA, http://www.paff.org/
• July 24-August 9, 2009 - Melbourne International Film Festival, http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/

The audacity of Leichter

The Barnard Project--a collaboration of Dance Theater Workshop and Barnard College's dance department--brings students together with some of the foxiest choreographers around. The artistic residency program culminates in a season of new and developing works at DTW, and this year's lineup features pieces by Morgan Thorson (Minneapolis), Nora Chipaumire, Susan Rethorst and Nicholas Leichter.

Thorson's Monuments and Other Points of Interest: A Revisionist Construction of Closeness deploys an ensemble of bare-legged, skittering, sloshing women in bonnets that look like a soft-blue version of what the Sisters of Charity nuns wear in Doubt. There are also long tables wrapped in blue ruffled skirts, and I really can't tell what's going on here, but I enjoyed the tickling, eccentric musicality of the movements. Chipaumire's bismillah (which means, "in the name of Allah") evokes a tight-knit community of women. Among its subtle graces is the way the choreographer--herself, an extraordinary performer--has taught her young dancers to articulate the muscles in their torsos. Rethorst has shaped her corps of dancers into an ecosystem in a piece marred only by a tendency towards cutesiness. All three of these choreographers seem to be dreaming up societies and have shaped respectable, if not yet exciting, works out of these imaginings.

And then there's Leichter's Waltzes, Wonder and First Choice--made "with additional choreography and assistance by Aaron Draper"--which is a little bit different.

For one thing, it has a high-charged pop soundtrack--Mariah Carey and John Legend's "Born Again," Alicia Keys's "Falling," First Choice's "It's Not Over" and more. It has young men in business shirts and ties paired with women in--uh-oh!--midnight-blue party dresses. And you know exactly what's going on when it starts off with two of these dancing at--instead of with--each other, coldly missing opportunities to touch, hold and connect.

As the businessmen confront their dates--and, sometimes, one another--the mood becomes hectic, desperate and sometimes downright mean. The movement--broad and often awkward to a cartoonish extent--challenges each member of the hardworking corps with the speed and complexity of its isolations. I think Leichter, in working with these fledgling dancers, got the project precisely right. His work always strikes me as raw, almost like outsider art. He tosses street and club and folk stuff in with the fact of doing theatrical dance on a stage, and he refuses to smooth it back. I think these young Barnard dancers click with something there and grab hold and go with it.

The Barnard Project continues this evening at 7:30 and concludes with 2pm and 7:30pm performances on Saturday. Click here for information and ticketing.

Creating "The Scales of Memory"

Compagnie Jant-Bi of Senegal and Urban Bush Women of Brooklyn Come Together
by Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, November 16, 2008