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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#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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Chenjerai Hove, 59

Chenjerai Hove, Chronicler of Zimbabwean Struggles, Dies at 59
by William Grimes, The New York Times, July 23, 2015

Chris Berry and Maija Garcia's "Legend of Yauna"

Chris Berry,
writer/composer, The Legend of Yauna
(photo by Jamie Soja)

Maija Garcia, 

director/choreographer, The Legend of Yauna 

(photo courtesy of the artist)

The Legend of Yauna, which ran for two nights this weekend at BAM Fisher, is a sprawling work of storytelling through theater, dance, music and visual art. Its collaborators--Grammy-winning world music artist Chris Berry and director/choreographer Maija Garcia, best known for her work with Bill T. Jones's FELA! on Broadway--aim to teach the kind of curiosity and unstoppable courage people need in order to heal their lives and communities. It's a noble mission that I wish I could fully support. Unfortunately, the work is undermined by uneven casting and overall quality as well as issues of cultural appropriation.

Produced by Berry's Banakuma organization, this work draws from the musician's attraction to an eclectic range of philosophies, symbols and ritual practices, primarily his experience of the ways of the Shona of Zimbabwe. A white American born in California, the musician believes that a vision and subsequent synchronicities led him to discover a profound spiritual connection to the mbira (thumb piano) and drums of southern Africa. Inspired by his exploration, he has devised an intricate metaphysical system related to the four elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth. (Watch Berry's tutorial on Vimeo. See also World music artist Chris Berry goes digital, Quibian Salazar-Moreno, Boulder Weekly.)

Visualizing Chris Berry's Black Panther Queen (above)
and hero Yauna (below)
(artwork by Leif Wold)

Leif Wold's fantasy-style illustrations of Berry's mythic characters add visual gravitas and charm to Legend's production, but their intricate collaging of symbols from African, Hindu, Northwest indigenous and perhaps other traditions too strongly evokes a New Agey cherry-picking tendency. Everything--from traditional stories to ritual dance styles--gets tossed into Berry and Garcia's post-racial, colorblind blender. The appearance of Zap Mama herself--vocalist Marie Daulne portraying the Black Panther Queen dressed in Catwoman-style getup--is a missed opportunity. Daulne's much-heralded participation is what made me take a chance on Legend, but Daulne appears for one song (with poor sound quality) and a quick dispatch up a flight of stairs past the audience and out of sight.

Legend is a classic Hero's Journey, where the hero's disobedience to his wife ("Don't open the forbidden door!") leads to loss, disorientation, failure, tragedy and...well, you know. At two hours, including an intermission, it could stand judicious trimming, and elements of its staging--especially its frequent use of balcony scenes that are hard to see or properly hear--can be awkward and frustrating. But the live music often has warmth and, among the many cast members, Benjamin Sands (Yauna), Oscar Trujillo (Great White Eagle), Laurie M. Taylor (Sula and Gurthusula) and Naoko Arimura (Sah-i-Sah) bring distinction to their performances.

Rujeko Dumbutshena workshop for annual SOAK Festival

The 2013 SOAK Festival presents dancer Rujeko Dumbutshena in a special LEIMAY Ludus Lab on June 9.

Rujeko Dumbutshena (photo by James Petrozzelo)

Participants will learn movements inspired by traditional Zimbabwean African dance. Rujeko’s class is influenced by her study of West African, Congolese and ballet techniques as well as her experience in FELA! The Musical. She is passionate about teaching the rhythmic intricacies embedded in Zimbabwean dance traditions in a manner that is accessible to people regardless of their previous dance experience. Students will have the opportunity to internalize the movements and rhythms of a dance form that is rarely performed or taught.

June 9 | 4pm-6pm | @ CAVE home of LEIMAY

58 Grand Street (between Wythe and Kent Avenues), Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Fee: $22 (online registration required)

REGISTER HERE

For information on all SOAK workshops, click here.

Globalfest producers announce multicultural music lineup

Zimbabwean to Headline Globalfest 2013
by James C. McKinley Jr., The New York Times, November 13, 2012

Thomas Mapfumo to play Carnegie Hall in October

Carnegie Hall

in partnership with  
World Music Institute

presents 

Thomas Mapfumo

Saturday, October 20 (10pm)

Thomas Mapfumo

Known as "The Lion of Zimbabwe," Thomas Mapfumo has popularized the music of his native country throughout the world with his revolutionary, spiritually charged chimurenga (Shona for "struggle") music. Introducing the electric guitar and bass while maintaining the core rhythms and melodies of the traditional mbira, his songs became veritable anthems for the independence movement of his country in the 1970s, and later a litany of criticism of the Mugabe government. Mapfumo, now living in exile in the US, has been hailed as a musical visionary and one of Africa's greatest bandleaders. He performs with his group, The Blacks Unlimited.

Part of Carnegie Hall's World Views series in Zankel Hall

For information and tickets, click here.

Zimbabwe: trauma of the Gukurahundi

Art Exhibit in Zimbabwe Rouses Ghosts of Gukurahundi
by Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, January 23, 2011

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!

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/

Chipaumire's revolution

Chimurenga (struggle, cry, revolution) is a work of brazen poetry, memory and cleansing by one of the world's most authoritative performers, Bessie Award winner Nora Chipaumire. The visual and sonic design of the whole--including Alex Pott's sound installation and the film by Chantal Buard and Kristin Tieche--is a knockout, one of the most impressive productions Dance Theater Workshop has presented in this and many a season. All praises to the entire creative team behind the sophisticated artistry on display now through tomorrow evening. And all hail Chipaumire, at the helm, inviting us on this nonlinear journey into charged historical and personal, psychic experience.

More information and ticket reservations

My interview with Nora Chipaumire on Body and Soul podcast

Nora Chipaumire: Body and Soul podcast

Acclaimed dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire--recipient of a 2007 New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Award--joins me to discuss her vision and mission as a Zimbabwe-born contemporary dance artist of Shona heritage. She previews her April 30-May 1 solo season at Dance Theater Workshop.

BIO

Nora Chipaumire was born in Mutare, Zimbabwe during the Chimurenga Chechipiri, or second war of liberation. A self-exiled artist now based in New York, she investigates the collaborative process within cultural, political, economic, and technological identities of African contemporary life. Her work is transnational, unafraid, and eager to burn cultural, creative, and geographic boundaries. She creates provocative and politically relevant multimedia dance work, illuminating the struggles of human identity in an increasingly borderless world. Her work is inspired by art from her native country such as shona sculpture and chimurenga music--art that results from the often violent convergence of rural, urban, African, non-African, cultural, economic, colonial, and technological ideas. A visionary African contemporary dance artist, her work speaks to the human condition with power, authority, and urgency.

Nora Chipaumire is a recipient of a 2007 New York Dance and Performance (aka "Bessie") Award. She is also a Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) 2007-08 Choreographic Fellow. She is a recipient of National Dance Project (NDP) Tour Support in 2007-08. She also received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant to participate in the JANT-BI Diaspora Project in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal in May and August 2007. Nora was honored with the Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University Center for the Arts on March 10, 2007. She is featured in the documentary "Movement (R)evolution" and is the subject of the documentary-in-progress, "Nora Chipaumire: A Physical Biography," directed by Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, supported by a 2007 EMPAC DANCE MOViES Commission.

A graduate of the law school of the University of Zimbabwe, Chipaumire received her MA in Dance and MFA in Choreography and Performance from Mills College in Oakland, CA. She has shown her work widely and danced with a variety companies in the US and abroad. Most notably, she is a member of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's world-renowned Urban Bush Women.

UPCOMING EVENTS

"Chimurenga" at Dance Theater Workshop, April 30-May 3 (7:30pm).

Coffee and Pre-Show Talk, April 30 at 6:30, with Charmaine WaTalk, April 30, with Brian McCormick

Student Matinee, May 2, at Noon

LINK

Dance Theater Workshop
http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org

Urban Bush Women
http://www.urbanbushwomen.org/

Body and Soul is the official podcast of InfiniteBody dance blog at
http://infinitebody.blogspot.com. Subscribe through iTunes or at
http://magickaleva.hipcast.com/rss/bodyandsoul.xml.

(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

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