A New Performance Language

I walk into Roulette, a rough-around-the-edges world music venue, a couple of blocks from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). I am attending “Dambudzo,” presented as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival, brought to the neighborhood by the bold imagination and creative enterprise of Zimbabwe performing artist Nora Chipaumire. I know this will be a different kind of performance—there are no seats. The music hall, stripped bare of all furnishings except for a few blue plastic tarps strung up overhead and a suspended revolving strobe ball, is transformed into a shabini—a makeshift speakeasy in Southern Africa—where music, bodies, and revolutionary ideas collide. We are invited into the space as participants in a conjuring of Chipaumire’s experience of her home country, Zimbabwe, with its political complexity involving the struggle for independence followed by the struggle for a just self-rule with integrity.

Performance

“Dambudzo” by Nora Chipaumire

Place

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY, October 15, 2025

Words

Karen Greenspan

“Dambudzo” by Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Tony Turner

The title “Dambudzo” refers to the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987), known for his literary compositions dealing with the disruption of colonialism (an imperative that is also core to Chipaumire’s art and practice). But what looms with equal significance to this work is the meaning of the word dambudzo. In a post-show discussion, Chipaumire reminds us that the word and its meaning came long before the man. She describes it as evoking the condition of being or having a problem, worry, or trouble. Chipaumire frequently laments that there are no neat English translations for words and ideas endemic to the Shona culture of Southern Africa. And this sentiment extends to the language of western dance and performance.

After moving to the United States in her mid-30s with a law degree from the University of Zimbabwe, she enrolled in formal modern dance classes in northern California. “I found it completely wrong,” claims Chipaumire, “I kept wondering when they were going to get down to the dancing. I could not trust Western movement. It was part of the colonial project.” Driven by a passionate conviction and rigor, her artistic practice and mission is about “creating an alphabet, a language, informed by an African black aesthetic.” Using the most basic elements—mud, cloth, boards, nails, sound, music, light, movement, and a fearless imagination—Chipaumire creates an immersive experience of reflection, resistance, and ritual.

So, what does ‘trouble’ look, sound, and feel like? Inside the performance hall, one can hear a soundtrack of barking dogs while stomping, clapping, and shrill whistles are heard from outside. The strobe light projects dizzying concentric circles over the walls and floor of the darkened space. On a screen across the upstage wall of the stage, a film projection shows two men (team members) chasing each other in a cobblestone courtyard. Suddenly, the same two men are running back and forth inside the performance space amid incoming attendees.

“Dambudzo” by Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Tony Turner

More cast members enter the hall (nine are listed in the program)—men in black t-shirts and black pants, women wearing black skirts. Some sit down on box stools and enjoy a conversation and laughter. Others move through the space with large video cameras or carry placards. By now the sound is at full volume filling the room with the lively jit music of Zimbabwe’s Bhundu Boys, the 1980s band that powered the African resistance movement with its bright and spirited sound. The Zimbabwean dancehall genre lifts spirits and moves bodies with the impulse to dance—its characteristic guitar spinning out buoyant melodies undergirded by drums pulsating their earthy rhythms. It certainly jolts the cast members onto their feet with sudden energy launching them into steppy footwork that would put the Irish to shame. Their dancing morphs into hip isolations that speed up into rapid vibrations that then alternate with repeated large arm movements. People circulate with their drinks and smartphones. It feels like a party.

The movements become more space-consuming as cast members travel back and forth through the room—skipping, running, step-kicking, and side-stepping. The melodious strains blur into a murky cacophony as someone grabs a spotlight from the floor and moves it, redirecting our gaze. A cast member introduces a soccer ball, and more people get in on the action—chasing and kicking the ball. The room and the game keep changing; now the ball is flying overhead.

Two of the overhead tarps, stretched on large wooden frames, are now lowered to form side panels reconfiguring the public space. The energy changes; and what was a party now descends into violence. A victim is thrown against a stage wall caked with mud. His sweat-covered skin is now mud-smeared as he falls to the floor, the others kicking him. The muddied victim walks amongst the audience members extemporizing on a saxophone as the Afro-pop soundtrack joins in to rouse everyone to dance again—albeit with a more sober quality. The cast members lie down on the floor and rest for a spell while the audience members continue the dancing.

“Dambudzo” by Nora Chipaumire. Photograph by Tony Turner

When a giant dog-shaped panel descends from above dividing the room, the performers urge us through the arched gap between the dog’s fore- and hind-legs. In this more intimate space, Chipaumire takes the microphone like a nightclub host and invites everyone to sit down for “music practice.” She remarks, “If I fumble with my English, it is because it’s not my mother tongue. It’s a war trophy.” The performers play traditional Shona instruments—mbira (thumb piano), drums, and rattles—and sing songs of exquisite complexity layered with polyrhythms and call-and-response vocalizations. Everyone is a musician. In post-colonial Zimbabwe, where political and socio-economic struggles continue, making music is a cultural and a spiritual practice—a survival strategy.

The final song slows down as deep metallic tones establish the rhythm, and multiple voices layer atop in varied textures. The saxophone sings out a soulful riff for this sonic good-bye until once again, we hear dogs barking. The room darkens and on a projection screen, silhouettes of the performers, who are moving like canines, are seen exiting into the night leaving the barking sounds of dambudzo hanging in the air.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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