Nora Chipaumire Moves to Break Boundaries

It may seem like a stretch to go from being a lawyer to making one’s mark in the world as an acclaimed dancer, director, and choreographer, but that’s precisely what Nora Chipaumire has done. Born in 1965 in what was then known as Umtali, Rhodesia (now Mutare, Zimbabwe), the award-winning multi-hyphenate was always interested in movement, but went to the University of Zimbabwe School of Law, where she received her degree in 1989, to “make her mom happy.”

“#Punk 100% Pop *N!gga” by Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Ian Douglas

Indeed, a loss for the law has decidedly been the dance world’s gain. After practicing law for a decade, the performer whom the New York Times once described as an “artist of ferocious intensity,” moved to the US in 1998 to pursue dance studies at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Earning undergraduate and advanced degrees in dance, choreography and performance, Chipaumire, whose work has been informed by her self-exile from Zimbabwe, has been virtually unstoppable ever since, with the West Coast premiere of her “Dambudzo” coming to REDCAT September 25-27 as part of an international tour.

Along the way, Chipaumire has been racking up honors that include several Bessie Awards—a 2007 New York Dance and Performance Award for her work with Urban Bush Women, and a 2008 Bessie for her own work, “Chimurenga (struggle, cry, revolution).” She also received a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2012), and a Doris Duke Artist Award (2015). The following year, Chipaumire received the Trisha Mckenzie Memorial Award for her impact on the dance community in Zimbabwe, and in 2018, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow.

Chipaumire’s body of work is undeniably impressive, and includes “Nehanda” (2021), a six-hour opera that invoked ancestral spirits, and the installation, “afternow” (2022). Prior to the pandemic, Chipaumire toured “#Punk 100% Pop *N!gga,” a three-part live performance album that she said had been inspired by her formative years in Zimbabwe. In addition to live performance, the 60-year-old has been featured in several motion pictures and made her debut as a film director in 2016 with the short film, “Afro Promo #1 King Lady.”

Fjord Review caught up with the fiendishly busy Chipaumire by Google Meet, with topics ranging from her upcoming REDCAT performance and where she sees herself in the next five to 10 years to why she doesn’t like to use the word ‘choreography.’

Growing up in Zimbabwe, was there much dance before you went into law? Also, why law and why then, dance?

Of course, Africans dance, but there was no art dance for me. There was no such thing as art dance, either. Culturally that would be incomprehensible. I studied law, because that made my mom happy, and I had the wits for it. It’s a very British education, so I had the qualifications to go into law, so I did it.

From law, I was simultaneously a high school student and university student in Zimbabwe, and was also working as a DJ, both in radio and clubs. My interests in other activities were already kind of rearing their nasty heads, so coming to America seemed an opportunity to pursue some of the other things I was interested in, such as filmmaking. I fell into dance in Northern California in the Bay Area just as an accident really. I was looking for something to supplement my long-distance running habit.

There were these amazing classes at Laney College, the whole community college thing. They were affordable, and as a very poor immigrant person, they allowed me to be in these kinds of thinking spaces: What is art dance? Who is Martha Graham? Out of other interests I had burgeoning at the time, I could move. I had the love for it.

I loved the history of modern dance, these women who gave birth to this industry, basically. I found it fascinating. As I said, I was a runner, so it kind of was a happy medium for me, the dance. It also seemed to provide a potential for an economy—meaning you could do solos, as opposed to filmmaking.

Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Elise Duval

Let’s talk about “Dambudzo,” a word that translates as ‘trouble,’ and is an immersive work reckoning with Zimbabwe’s colonial legacies and resistance movements.

I don't know what the good English word is—there is no proper direct translation. The approximate is something between a problem and trouble, or a kind of hovering.

You describe it as an anti- genre work. What was its genesis?

Genesis? My whole life is anti-genre. It’s not just about “Dambudzo.” The genesis of everything I do is trying to tell that story of living through a revolution. I think at 60 years old, all people born after 1980, are all born free in Africa. I am born unfree.

That’s always what drives me, to remind us all not to forget, that not all of us are born into this so-called free, whatever that means. I would say it all joins together as a big prism, whether it’s [the opera] “Nehanda,” whether it’s my father, or whether it’s “Dambudzo,” to kind of try and flesh out the story of having grown up in this time frame that no one seems to want to remember.

The work corresponds, as well, with the Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera.

For me, a part of the reminding us not to forget, is to also conjure up and bring into the body, the ideas and expressions of people like Dambudzo, who was really a young person when he died [at 35 in 1987]. His effort to grapple with aesthetics, [with] poetry, but also with the English language, is what really thrills me.

You also invoke the Zimbabwean shabini in the piece.

A shabini is a kind of an illicit, illegal kind of home. I mean the homestead would not be illegal, but the activities in the homestead would be kind of shady—a house turned into a beer hall, club, music rehearsal room, and also a lodging. People do live there. I have this desire to elevate shabinis in African locations as sort of a university of the people.

You’ve talked about “Dambudzo” being a ‘name, a desire, a lament, an inspiration,’ even a ‘loathing.’ How do these concepts come through in the choreography and staging?

I feel like I’ve moved away from language such as choreography and staging. I’m very invested in live work, in ‘livingness,’ so we are actually in this space both in our imagination and with my fellow performers. When the public is coming into our ‘house,’ we offer you beer, and the rooms are changing, often from being a living room to a football field.

In America, there’s this whole porch mentality, porch culture. But in Zimbabwe, you take your stool and follow the sun all around the house, and there's also that feeling of sitting around just watching things go by. Internally, we know we’re following the sun, and what’s kind of happening on the street, because also the locations of these houses are high-density areas only for Africans. You can kind of see what the neighbors are cooking, who’s got new shoes today. That kind of density is being embodied, enlivened, and brought to life in “Dambudzo,” for however long it takes us to make that happen.

“Dambudzo” by Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Marie Stagatt

Wow! And what about the score—are all of you also making music?

The full picture is we have worked as both sound and movement makers, and we design the environment. I’m primarily responsible for conceptualizing all of this. There are a lot of capable people who play traditional Zimbabwean instruments, and vocalists. We try to pretty much hold ourselves responsible for everything, including the gesture of the light, meaning you see what we intend you to see.

You recently performed “Dambudzo” in Berlin. How did that go?

It was stupendous. I mean, it was completely sold out every night! People were very touched, frequently moved to tears. Some were inadvertently smacked by mud thrown around! Since there’s no real seating, unless you invent ways of seating, people follow the action and certain things kind of happen. What can I say, it was brilliant!

I feel a great deal of gratitude that people come to the work. Without the public, then you’re just having another process day. It moves from being process to being a living thing as soon as the public is in the space. I walked away feeling able and capable.

Does this mean you won’t be working on a proscenium stage at REDCAT?

We absolutely don’t do proscenium stages, so everything is brought to kind of a democratizing zero. There’s no us and them; people move around, and I have to say some elders or handicapped people figured out how to sit down. We even have very young people, three or four years old. The intention of the work is to have no museuming of the performers. No public gets to see it and just look at us. We’re all one with nature.

I’m curious as to how one becomes a member of your group?

If they’re called to the work and to the energy around us, then they’re welcome to hang out with us. We do not audition. People who are part of the team, some I have 20-year-old relationships with, some maybe as young as a five-year-old relationship. It’s all people understanding that we’re trying to shift the world of ideas and to bring to the table our own terms. We’re not trying to respond to what art history is, because none of us knows what that is.

We have our own practice that we’ve been building for over 10 years now that we are immersed in. And if that kind of hits the spot for you and it feels like that’s the world for you that is also implicated in spirituality and justice, then this is the band for you.

“#Punk 100% Pop *N!gga” by Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Ian Douglas

Cool! Can you please describe your movement practice?

Let’s say I have been moving away from the coloniality of the modern body as informed by the modern dance into what is the African and Black body, and that has led me into thinking about soil, land— because that is the context for African bodies, outside of what is industrial, and what was brought onto the continent by the colonial project. That investigation, I would say, is not unlike butoh —what does it mean to move like yourself, how do you move if you never took a ballet class?

And it’s not just improv, because we’re also very intent on the rigor, the discipline, daily returning to it again and again and again. It’s a practice. You can only get better by returning to it again and again. What is the relationship to gravity that informs how you hold your body? Instead of defying gravity, we surrender to gravity. It’s really informed by land, by nature, it’s very interesting, Victoria, but people never really try to talk to me about the practice. They’re into the work.

You not only studied dance formally at Mills College, but also traveled to Cuba and Jamaica. How have these different styles of dance informed your work—and notice that I’m not saying ‘choreography.’

‘Work’ is better because it is work. They all allowed me to return to myself. There was no point in pursuing anything outside of Africa where all those places were looking to Africa. They helped me understand that part of the colonial drama is that you don’t realize your self worth because you’ve never been allowed to think of yourself of being worthy. So going to Jamaica or to Cuba and realizing that all these people were focusing all their energies on their retentions where I was already African, it wasn’t about retention. It was with what I live with.

What do you want audiences to take away with them from “Dambudzo?”

Beauty, aesthetics that are informed by the love of being human, justice. What could happen if we really believed that we were not second-class citizens, and what happens when we try to remove the aristocrats from our way of thinking and try not to copy European art history as African bodies. That’s what I want the public to walk away with; the same joy they would walk away from a Fela Kuti concert, from a Thomas Mapfumo concert, from a Bhundu Boys concert, because none of those people were making compromises based on trying to sound or look a little ‘civilized.’

Finally, Nora, where do you see yourself in the next five to ten years?

To be healthy, happy, that’s what I want. I want the work to be everywhere. I have a mission—I kid you not—I feel like if people think of Nora Chipaumire as the African Pina Bausch, I’m ready. I want for the work to be everywhere, taught everywhere, read everywhere, by all intelligent beings.

Victoria Looseleaf

Victoria Looseleaf is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based international arts journalist who covers music and dance festivals around the world. Among the many publications she has contributed to are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dance Magazine and KCET’s Artbound. In addition, she taught dance history at USC and Santa Monica College. Looseleaf’s novella-in-verse, Isn't It Rich? is available from Amazon, and and her latest book, Russ & Iggy’s Art Alphabet with illustrations by JT Steiny, was recently published by Red Sky Presents. Looseleaf can be reached through X, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In, as well as at her online arts magazine ArtNowLA.

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INTERVIEWS | Victoria Looseleaf