Immigrants. Dance. Arts.

nora chipaumire

 
nora chipaumire is yelling into a microphone with one fist raised high

Mission Statement

Born in Mutare, Zimbabwe and based in NYC, nora chipaumire has been challenging and embracing stereotypes of Africa and the black performing body, art, and aesthetic. She is a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe’s School of Law and holds a M.A. in Dance and M.F.A. in Choreography & Performance from Mills College. 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 places. Her work include portrait of myself as my father (2016, premiered at Peak Performances, Alexander Kasser Theater,Montclair, NJ); rite riot (2013, premiered at French Institute Alliance Française's Crossing the Line festival, FIAF); Miriam (2012, premiered at Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music Fisher Theater, Brooklyn, NY); The Last Heifer (2012, premiered at PLATFORM 2012: Parallels, Danspace Project, New York, NY), Chimurenga (2003, premiered at ODC Theater, San Francisco, CA); Lions will roar, swans will fly, angels will wrestle heaven, rains will break, gukurahundi! (2009, premiered at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL); and Dark Swan (2005, reconstructed in 2014 for Urban Bush Women at FOCUS DANCE, The Joyce Theater, New York, NY).

chipaumire is currently touring a new work titled #PUNK %POP *NIGGA (2018), commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with the support of BAM, Miami Light Project, ICA Live Art Festival (Cape Town), University of Richmond, Crossing the Line Festival/French Institute Alliance Française and company nora chipaumire. chipaumire has been featured in several dance films including Cassa Cassa (dir. Elodie Lefebvre, 2011) nora (Dir. Alla Kogan and David Hinton, 2009). chipaumire 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. Her current and ongoing projects include chicken farming in Burkina Faso and creating "living archives" with contemporary dancers in Harare, Zimbabwe.

chipaumire most recently received the 2016 Trisha Mckenzie Memorial Award for her impact on the dance community in Zimbabwe. She is also a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant recipient and a 2015 Doris Duke Artist. She was awarded the 2007 Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University Center for the Arts and the 2012 Alpert Award in the Arts. She was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University in 2014-2015, a United States Artist Ford Fellow in 2011, a MANCC Choreographic Fellow in 2007-2008, 2009, and 2015 and she is currently a fellow at The Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) at University of Cape Town.

chipaumire is a three-time New York Dance and Performance (aka “Bessie”) Awardee: in 2014 for the revival of her solo Dark Swan set as an ensemble piece on Urban Bush Women (UBW), in 2008 for her dance-theater work, Chimurenga, and in 2007 for her body of work with UBW—where she was a featured performer for six years and Associate Artistic Director (2007-2008). Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Le Monde, Johannesburg Sunday Times, Chicago Tribune, Süddeutsche Zeitung and supported by the MAP Fund, the Jerome Foundation, NYFA B.U.I.L.D., National Dance Project, NYSCA, The Joyce Theater Foundation with support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her latest work, portrait of myself as my father (2016), is commissioned by Peak Performances @ Montclair State University, co-commissioned by MDC Live Arts in partnership with Miami Light Project, Georgia Institute of Technology, 651 ARTS, Dance Center of Columbia College, and company nora chipaumire. It is the companion piece to rite riot (2013), a solo rendering of The Rite of Spring, commissioned by FIAF and presented at Crossing The Line festival in New York City and Les Subsistances in France.


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