After completing two MA degrees, one in dance and the other in choreography and performance at Mills College, USA (1998\u20132002), chipaumire\u2019s international career took off from New York, where she danced in 2003\u20132008 in the Black Woman+ Urban Bush Women Dance Company. In parallel to the company work, chipaumire started to explore critical questioning of colonial history and power, for instance by engaging with two canonical works of dance history over several years (2005\u20132018): Vaslav Nijinsky\u2019s The Rite of Spring<\/em> (1913) and Mikhail Fokine\u2019s The Dying Swan <\/em>(1905).[1]<\/a> chipaumire rewrote The Dying Swan,<\/em> originally performed by a white dancer, into a solo danced by herself entitled The Dark Swan<\/em> (2005). She responded to the group work The Rite of Spring<\/em> through her solo Rite\/Riot<\/em> (2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dark Swan<\/em> has had multiple reiterations since its premiere in 2005. chipaummire adapted her solo to a group of nine men in 2010 and moulded The Dark Swan<\/em> into a choreography for 23 women students in 2013. In 2015, the Urban Bush Women Company performed another articulation of the original work. Dance scholar Ananya Chatterjea suggests that the insisting process of remaking is a \u201cpostcolonial strategy of haunting or refusing consolidation [\u2026] an intentional practice of rejecting different narrativisations of status quo\u201d.[2]<\/a> As a postcolonial method, remaking allows chipaumire to undo European dance heritage by inserting her positionality as Black African Woman. This results in choreographic interpretations that avoid simple antagonisms but rather address ongoing lines of tension in the process of re-writing. The repetition-with-difference of The Dark Swan, <\/em>over 15 years, could also be understood as a decolonial effort of delinking from hegemonic forms of knowledge. chipaumire\u2019s continuous remaking of The Dark Swan <\/em>then undergirds the situated knowledge of the Black body\u2019s ways of \u201cspeaking\u201d, moving and dancing. The emphasis on the Black African body recalls chipaumire\u2019s strong bond with Shona culture, producing embodied cultural heritage. As the cultural theorist Aleida Assmann reminds us: \u201cIndigenous memory cultures hand down their cultural heritage in a completely different way. [\u2026] The body itself is the archive; in the body and through the body the tradition that is important for the group is inscribed, performed, preserved and passed on\u201d.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Rite\/Riot<\/em> (2013), a collaboration with the Nigerian American writer Teju Cole and Kenyan American visual artist Wangechi Mutu, chipaumire develops a performative reflection on sacrifice, sourced from chipaumire\u2019s reading of The<\/em> Rite of Spring<\/em>. Her body, moving slowly, only dressed in underwear, put on display in a plexiglass cube, accompanied by a banner with the inscription Black African Body, evokes anthropological exhibition practices and museum displays of non-white humans prominent in 1913. In this manner, Rite\/Riot<\/em> ultimately challenges the colonial Western gaze and ongoing projections onto African female bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Rite\/Riot<\/em>, the duet Miriam<\/em> (2012) performed with Okwui Okpokwasili, which references Miriam Makeba, a South African performer and an anti-apartheid activist, rethinks and resists the commodification of female \u201cenfleshed Black existence\u201d.[4]<\/a> chipaumire\u2019s and Okpokwasili\u2019s broad range of movement entails different walking and stomping patterns that sit at times with aggression in the space, combined with different vocal articulations of text (for instance excerpts of Joseph Conrad\u2019s Heart of<\/em> Darkness<\/em>) and rawer forms of voicing. They activate the scenography of Olivier Clausse by different actions, whether sitting on the industrial-looking constructions or being covered by them. The overall residue of the work lies in the power of chipaumire and Okpokwasili owning definitions of Black African femininity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her subsequent piece, portrait of myself as my chipaumire\u2019s constant quest for justice and deep entanglement with the Shona cosmology is also expressed through her 2022 five-and-a-half-hour opera Nehanda<\/em>, originally produced for radio in 2021. The opera celebrates the Shona spirit medium and leader of the revolt against the colonial British South Africa Company in 1889, Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, and acts as a reminder to keep addressing neocolonial oppression. In the programme note, Nehanda<\/em> is announced as \u201ca juridical opera, taking up questions of jurisprudence in defence of the native freedom fighters murdered by the British South African Company (BSAC) on behalf of the British Empire and Queen Victoria in 1889\u201d.[7]<\/a> Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana was sentenced to death in 1889, and her physical remains have not been returned to Zimbabwe yet. In Nehanda<\/em>, a fulminant immersive space with a cast of 20 performers, dancers, musicians and singers, chipaumire articulates an insistent claim \u2013 as she sings-speaks through her live performance \u2013 \u201cwe want our bodies back\u201d, to decide about them in our own terms, that is African terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Audience space and performance space also merge in chipaumire\u2019s latest anti-genre work, the durational performance Dampudzo<\/em> (2024) \u2013 in Shona, trouble \u2013 premiered at the Wiener Festwochen 2024. The work incorporates sound, sculpture and dancing where participants can freely roam in space: in a specially designed bar participants are asked to actively develop concrete plans for decolonial revolutions. Finally, chipaumire has made several short films. Not Waiting<\/em> (2023) was co-authored by her long-term artistic dialogue partner, the Senegalese dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Germaine Acogny. The point of reference for Not Waiting<\/em> is the Senegalese L\u00e9bou people\u2019s exorcists\u2019 healing ritual Ndeup, where women play a central role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is impossible to cover chipaumire\u2019s entire body of work in this short article, but it is important to note that its richness reflects chipaurmire\u2019s deep curiosity to experiment with artistic media and formats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n chipaumire activates the physical language she researches through her decolonial movement practice, Nhaka. Nhaka is physically and spiritually anchored and sourced from the indigenous practices of Shona animism, such as the heritage of totems, and the spiritual contact with ancestors and spirits. As in many African dance traditions, central to Nhaka are the feet of the dancer as a means to allow swift weight shift and let energy, from the ground up, travel via the pelvis through the whole spine. Within that framework chipaumire emphasises her devotion to addressing the colonial past and present. In Nhaka dancers are asked to place the Black Power gesture (right arm raised, hand in a fist) as a measure of space between the dancers\u2019 feet. The symbol of resistance turns into a way to measure the just space that the body moves in. From that place, the performers and chipaumire herself start engaging in different walking patterns that alternate in velocity to generate what Chatterjea has called \u201ca snapshot of Black life under imperialism encompassing empowerment, devastation and resistance\u201d.[8]<\/a> Having worked in radio and as a DJ during her law studies at the University of Zimbabwe (1986\u20131989), she has developed a particular sensitivity to sound and music. A great example of this devotion was expressed most acutely in her 2018 trilogy #PUNK 100%POP *N!GGA<\/em>.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, chiapumire choreographies centre a commitment and valorisation of vocal expression in the form of singing and speaking, which adds to her works\u2019 vibrant acoustics. The voice is equally a keystone in law-making: the reading of a verdict, the hearing of testimony and the sounds produced through emotional bursts in the courtroom. Such \u201cacoustic jurisprudence\u201d[10]<\/a> echoes chipaumire\u2019s work insofar as, simultaneously to its strong visuality, it fathoms sonic imaginations that transport account of colonial violence and resistance. chipaumire uses the space of performance as a space for advocacy, reminding her audience that there is still much work to be done so that decolonisation does not remain a metaphor.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The pervasive nature of sound produces an invitation for the audience to immerse themselves in the work and become participants in it. As chipaumire prefers to call her artistic collaborators corroborators, she asks the audience to coactivate the space, and to be swayed. Spectating or being a distant audience member is out of the question. Attending chipaumire\u2019s shows, one needs to choose a side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n nora chipaumire\u2019s relentless decolonial artistic queries have led to a plentiful body of work carving out notions and practices of contemporary dance and choreography from a Black African perspective \u2013 to mention all her activities would go beyond the scope of this article. It is vital to remember that besides extensive international touring, chipaumire is equally invested in creating spaces for other artists to come together to practice decoloniality, such as through the female-run cultural space nhereraHUB in Harare, Zimbabwe, with its radio station that chipaumire heads. Finally, chipaumire\u2019s rich pedagogical engagements in different dance schools around the globe include a powerful bond to the Senegalese School \u00c9cole de Sable, directed by Germaine Acogny, where she regularly teaches a younger generation of dance artists. chipaumire\u2019s fierce sense of artistic experimentation and her social and political advocacies are potent grounds for countering the Global North’s cultural supremacy and to keep on pushing for a more just world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1<\/a> J\u00e4rvinen: A Cultural History of Ballet \u2013 Five Centuries of a European Art Form<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2<\/a> Chatterjea 2020, 193.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3<\/a> Assmann 2024, 197.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4<\/a> Bradley 2023, 92.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5<\/a> Companychipaumire n.d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6<\/a> chipaumire 2022, at 16:05\u201316:18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7<\/a> PEAK Performances 2022, 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8<\/a> Chatterjea 2020, 127.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9<\/a> DeFrantz: Black Sensibilities \u2013 Contemporary Dance of an African Diaspora<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10<\/a> Parker 2021, 22.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 11<\/a> Tuck & Yang 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assmann, Aleida. 2024. \u201cArchiving the Body \u2013 Cultural Memory and the Practice of Intangible Cultural Heritage.\u201d In Klein, Gabriele, Fanz Anton Cramer (eds.) Materialities in Dance and Performance. Writing Documenting Archiving<\/em>. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bradley, Rizvana. 2023. Anteaesthetics Blacks Aesthesis and the Critique of Form<\/em>. Stanford: Stanford University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chatterjea, Ananya. 2020. Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance<\/em>. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n chipaumire, nora. 2022. \u201cportrait of myself as my Companychipaumire. n.d. \u201cstatement |\u00a0nora chipaumire | 2014\u201d. Accessed 12.10.2024 www.companychipaumire.com\/touringwork<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parker, James. 2021. \u201cThe sound scape of Justice.\u201d In LaBelle, Brandon. Acoustic Justice<\/em>, New York: Bloomsburry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/disco.teak.fi\/tanssin-historia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/portrait_Duo-Solo_Elise-FitteDuval6-1024x683.jpg\")
father<\/s><\/em>, 2024. Elise Fitte-Duval<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nManifold choreographic articulations of contemporary Black African livelihoods<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
father<\/s><\/em> (2014), chipaumire continues on the subject of gender and portraiture in dialogue with her earlier interest in the topic of sacrifice, reminiscent of the exploration of The Rite of Spring<\/em>. In portrait of myself as my father<\/s><\/em> she investigates the male African body via the figure of her father and his absence during her childhood: \u201cAs Stravinsky\/Nijinsky suggest in their monumental work The Rite of Spring<\/em>, is the sacrifice of a human being limited to primitive societies? I believe that in Africa, the sacrificial offering has been the Black African male, and not the young female virgin.\u201d[5]<\/a> Placed in the context of a boxing game, in collaboration with the Senegalese American performer Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye a.k.a. Kaolack and Jamaican American performer Shamar Watt, chipaumire performs a fictionalised character of her father. Sport is here the avenue for Black masculinity to define itself, or as chipaumire says: \u201cUsing sports as a space where you can make yourself, you can build yourself. And again, I am building an image out of a colonial space.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/disco.teak.fi\/tanssin-historia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Dambudzo_180124_byMarieStaggat-0636.jpg\")
Movement language, voice, audience participation as decolonial choreographic strategies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Finally<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Literature<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
father<\/s>\u201d. Choreographer\u2019s Cut: How nora chipaumire choreographed portrait of myself as my father<\/s>. Video 37min 47sec, www.youtube.com\/watch?v=cGNywmwWX9g&t=17s<\/a>. Accessed 12.10.2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n