American Realness

nora chipaumire

#PUNK

Co-Presented by Abrons Arts Center & Gibney Dance

Thursday, January 11: 8:30pm
Friday, January 12, 10:00pm
Saturday, January 13, 10:00pm

Run Time: 60 minutes

Abrons Arts Center, Playhouse, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan
Single Tickets $25 / Abrons Festival Pass $20

Single Tickets Festival Pass

Patti Smith declares in her iconic song, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger,” “I haven’t fucked much with the past, but I fuck plenty with the future.” Spurred by this daring proclamation in making her current work #PUNK, nora chipaumire declares herself to be an “African nigger”—the sort who fucks with the past, and fucks even harder with the present and the future. 

#PUNK is chipaumire’s first statement in a multi-part song cycle inspired by her formation, growing up in 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s Zimbabwe. Part of a tryptic titled #PUNK 100% POP*NIGGA (verbalized as “Hashtag Punk, One hundred percent Pop Star NIGGA”), these works confront and celebrate the bodies and aesthetics of iconic women: Patti Smith (#PUNK), Grace Jones (100% POP), and Rit Nzele (*NIGGA). 

Born with inherited historic and political contradictions, chipaumire’s work questions how status and power are experienced and presented through the body. The human body for her, and for those born without property, name or class, possesses a possible salvation as a vehicle for the manifestation ​of self-invention and self-determination.

#PUNK 100%POP *NIGGA is commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts with the support of by Brooklyn Academy of Music, Miami Light Project, ICA Live Art Festival (Cape Town), University of Richmond, Crossing the Line Festival/French Institute Alliance Française and company nora chipaumire.

 

Photo by Jesus Robisco