nora chipaumire
#PUNK 100% POP *N!GGA
Performing her musical trilogy for the first time in its entirety, iconoclast choreographer nora chipaumire returns to Crossing The Line Festival with #PUNK 100% POP *N!GGA. Inspired by her formative years in Zimbabwe during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, she confronts and celebrates punk, pop, and Congolese rumba through the music of Patti Smith, Grace Jones, and Rit Nzele. In three distinct sonic and visual landscapes, chipaumire continues her career-long investigation of portraiture and self-portraiture, biography, subjecthood, liberation, and independence.
In #PUNK, chipaumire enacts punk’s rejection of the status quo, ethics, and ethos, embracing the possibility that there is no future, that the future is in the present. 100% POP is an imagined utopia drawn from the memories of a formless girl being shaped as she discovers Grace Jones. Conjuring up the depth and swagger of Congolese vocal performer and animator Rit Nzele, *N!GGA is inspired by the inventive and joyful worlds of sapeurs, sebenes, atalaku, and rumba musicians of Africa.
In English and Shona
3 hours, two 15-minute intermissions, no late seating
Tickets $20–$25
The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
Co-presented with The Kitchen
Supported by the Hermès Foundation within the framework of the New Settings Program
Supported by the Hermès Foundation within the framework of the New Settings Program
About the Artist
Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe and currently based in New York City, nora chipaumire has been challenging and embracing stereotypes of Africa and the black performing body, art, and aesthetics since she started making dances in 1998. She has studied dance in Africa, Cuba, Jamaica, and the U.S. and has performed internationally in France, Italy, Japan, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and many other countries. chipaumire is currently touring portrait of myself as my father (2016), an exploration of masculinity and black African manhood. She made her debut as film director in 2016 with the short film “Afro Promo #1 King Lady,” commissioned by Dance for Film on Location at Montclair State University. Other recent work includes a digital book project, nhaka (2018).
Image © Ari Macropoulos