Miriam
Past Dates
| Dates | Location |
|---|---|
Feb 13 - Feb 15, 2014 |
Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco, CA, USA |
Jan 21 - Jan 26, 2014 |
Miami Light Project, Miami, FL, USA |
Jul 13, 2013 |
Alverno Presents / Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI, USA |
Apr 26 - Apr 27, 2013 |
Diverse Works, Houston, TX, USA |
Apr 23 - Apr 24, 2013 |
Fusebox Festival, Austin, TX, USA |
Apr 19 - Apr 20, 2013 |
Kelly Strayhorn Theater/Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
Apr 04 - Apr 06, 2013 |
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, College Park, MD, USA |
Jan 01 - Mar 31, 2013 |
Les Subsistances, Lyon, France |
Mar 15 - Mar 16, 2013 |
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, USA |
Mar 05 - Mar 10, 2013 |
University of California Santa Cruz and CalArts, Los Angeles, CA, USA |
Feb 22 - Feb 23, 2013 |
New Arts New Mexico/North Fourth Art Center, Albuquerque, NM, USA |
Oct 05 - Oct 06, 2012 |
Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY, USA |
Sep 21 - Sep 22, 2012 |
The Flynn, Burlington, VT, USA |
Sep 12 - Sep 15, 2012 |
BAM Next Wave Festival Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY, USA |
Sep 07 - Sep 08, 2012 |
Time Based Art Festival, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, USA |
Aug 25, 2012 |
MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, USA |
Jan 20 - Jan 21, 2012 |
Light Box at Goldman Warehouse , Miami, FL, USA |
“Miriam seeks both to capture the darkness associated with Africa and to undress baroque Western fears of the continent. Miriam does that and more.”
– Willamette Week
With Miriam, nora chipaumire created her first character-driven work—a deeply personal dance-theater performance that reverberates with tensions: between public expectations and private desires, between objectification and power, and between darkness and light. Miriam invites the audience into an immersive experience of being an outsider, requiring the engagement of all five senses.
The inspiration for Miriam springs from the cultural and political milieu of chipaumire’s southern African girlhood, her self-exile to the U.S., and her self-discovery as an artist. Additional literary and legendary influences – the writings of Joseph Conrad and Zimbabwean novelist Chenjerai Hove; the life of South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba; and the Christian iconography of Mary—come into the work as layers of text, sound and image that enrich the mysterious and haunting world of chipaumire’s creation.
In performance, the persona embodied by chipaumire emerges from a pile of rocks onstage to convey a woman’s struggles with the burden of objectification and the weight of resistance in a world defined largely by others. Her efforts are abetted by an otherworldly character, both angel and devil, performed by Okwui Okpokwasili. In their interplay, Miriam renders in vivid images the intensity of women who fight to create themselves despite the dual legacies of strict cultural traditions and imperialist racial views that define female beauty and power.
For the past ten years, I have been investigating Africa and discovering my private iconography – stones, tennis shoes, ululations, whistles, bare light bulbs – all objects and sounds that define place. Physical movement is my first language, but words can and often do work as a barrier to — or boundary of — interpretation, understanding or meaning. In constructing my theatrical world, a world in which I have full agency and power, I have been creating self-portraits that I hope convey political, aesthetic, and historical purpose whilst complicating, implicating, and destroying the concept of the African female body as subjugated, colonial, tribal, un-knowable. My intention is to engage the “art canons” — Western as well as African — without selling my native culture on a global market, or losing my connection and responsibility to my native culture. With Miriam, I am implicating my own physical being in a vast geographic and historic landscape. My Miriam is disobedient, obstinate, rebellious and beloved, in keeping with the meaning of her name in both its Levite and Hebrew origins — a name carried by the mother of Jesus, the sister of Aaron and Moses, as well as the iconic singer and political activist Miriam Makeba.– nora chipaumire
Premiere Date
September 12 -15, 2012
Premiere Venue
BAM Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Brooklyn, NY
nora chipaumire, Creative Direction, choreography, and performance / Eric Ting, direction / Okwui Okpokwasili, performance / Omar Sosa, composition / Olivier Clausse, Lighting Design & Scenic Design / Hecho Mano, Scenic Design / Naoko Nagata, Costume Design / Malika Mihoubi, Costume Design / Lucas Indelicato, Sound Designer / Philip White, Sound Engineer / Josh Johnson, Production Management & Lighting Direction
Source Texts: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad / Bones by Chenjerai Hove
Additional music: J.S. Bach, Goldberg Variations (BWV988) performed by Glenn Gould
Produced by MAPP International Productions
Miriam has received generous support from: The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W.Mellon Foundation; The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The New England Foundation for the Arts’ Production Residency for Dance Program, with funding from the Andrew W.Mellon Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; and the NPN Forth Fund.
Miriam is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).
Miriam is also co-commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music (Brooklyn, NY); Les Subsistances (Lyon, France); and Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland (College Park, MD). Miriam was created during a residency provided by The Joyce Theater Foundation, New York City, with major support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s NYC Cultural Innovation Fund and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Creative and production residencies were also provided by the Experimental Music and Performing Arts Center (Troy, NY), Brooklyn Academy of Music (Brooklyn, NY), MASS MoCA (NorthAdams, MA), Centro per la Scena Contemporanea/CSC (Bassano del Grappa, Italy), Les Subsistances(Lyon, France), and Kelly Strayhorn Theater (Pittsburgh, PA).
