Nora Chipaumire: Dambudzo

In a powerful performance incorporating dance, sound, painting, and sculpture, nora chipaumire confronts colonial legacies in a transformed REDCAT theater. Drawing inspiration from the Shona word dambudzo, meaning “trouble,” as well as the ideas of Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera, this new work considers the revolutionary possibilities of performance. REDCAT becomes home to a shabini—an informal bar set up in private residences where citizens gather to debate politics and plan community action. Amid a soundscape of barking dogs and live music, visitors will be immersed in what the four-time Bessie award winner describes as “a name, a desire, a lament, an inspiration, even a loathing—a poem—that speaks to the 1980s before the fall of communism and the end of apartheid.” Reflecting on the complex struggles of her home country, Zimbabwe, chipaumire’s work expands beyond theater into a lived experience of resistance and ritual. Refusing to be confined by category or discipline, her anti-genre performance is an insurgent act of remembering, disrupting, and dreaming forward.