nora chipaumire
Nehanda Manifesting Thinking
© Nehanda - Manifesting Thinking, nora chipaumire © Sachyn Mital ©
© Nehanda - Manifesting Thinking, nora chipaumire © Sachyn Mital ©
© Nehanda - Manifesting Thinking, nora chipaumire © Sachyn Mital ©
Artistic direction and choreography, nora chipaumire
Performance, nora chimpaumire, McIntosh « Soko » Jerahuni, Fatima Katiji, Tatenda Chabarwa, Jonathan Daniel, Kei Soares-Cobb, Peter Van Heerden, Lucia Palmieri, Sylvestre Akakpo Adzaku, Gilbert Zwamwaida, David Gagliardi, Othnell « Mangoma » Moyo
Sound, Vusumuzi Moyo
General management, Sylvestre Akakpo Adzaku
Technical and production Director, Serena Wong
Production and diffusion, Tommy Kriegsmann
Executive director, Alexandre Lemieux
Company manager, Astrid Rostaing
Produced by ArKtype
Commissioned by Fairfield University Quick Center for the Arts; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; PEAK Performances at Montclair State University; Komische Oper Berlin
With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Artists “Bubble” Residency program, New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, NYSCA, NEA, Mid
Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Residency hosted by PACT Zollverein (Essen), CSC, Bassano del Grappa
Co-directed by Théâtre de la Ville – Paris; Festival d’Automne à Paris
Nehanda is a performative project in the form of an opera which looks at the trial and death of a revolutionary leader of the Shona people at the time of British occupation. Texts, chants and different musical elements fuse together in a powerful work which investigates both the legends of Zimbabwe and its colonial past.
Nehanda, an opera lasting five hours and fifty minutes, only the final chapter of which, Manifesting Thinking, is presented, is underpinned by a frenzied life force. On the confines of art and activism, the artistic practice of nora chipaumire, the New York-based, Zimbabwean artist, is renowned for the questions it raises about the performative, black-skinned body. This time around, she uses an episode dating back to the conquest of her country, at the close of the XIXth century, by the British Empire in order to probe into the legend of Nehanda, a spirit much venerated by the Shona people and which only inhabits women. The opera’s libretto draws its inspiration from the all-too brief trial and execution, in 1898, of Nehanda’s medium, Charwe Nyakasikana, the female organiser of the first revolts against British rule. Accompanied by a sizeable, energy-filled troupe of dancers, singers, musicians and performers, nora chipaumire is the conductor for this piece of musical theatre in which the disorder which follows that of life itself is only apparent because of the rigor that is behind it, and which authorises it.