nora chipaumire
+
oona doherty
in conversation
IN MAY 2019, WE INVITED ZIMBABWEAN-BORN, NEW YORK-BASED CHOREOGRAPHER AND PERFORMER NORA CHIPAUMIRE TO DUBLIN TO GIVE A WORKSHOP BASED ON HER PRACTICE. WHILE SHE WAS IN THE CITY, WE HOOKED NORA UP WITH BELFAST-BASED CHOREOGRAPHER AND PERFORMER OONA DOHERTY TO HAVE A CHAT ABOUT THEIR WORK, AND DANCE IN GENERAL.

BOTH OONA AND NORA ARE INTENSELY PHYSICAL AND DYNAMIC PERFORMERS, CONCERNED WITH THE ENERGY OF THE PERFORMATIVE MOMENT.

THEIR CONVERSATION ADDRESSED ISSUES OF RACE, THE IDEA OF SELLING OUT AND ECONOMIES OF PERFORMANCE.

THIS CONVERSATION WAS ORIGINALLY BROADCAST AS A PODCAST ON DUBLIN DIGITAL RADIO ON 08 OCTOBER 2019. YOU CAN LISTEN BACK OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

O: So I’m Oona Doherty, and I’m from Belfast. I’m making dances and movies, playing with photos, making collages. Teaching workshops, I’m doing that.

N: Fantastic. Nice to meet you Oona. I’m Nora Chipaumire. I’m from Mutare Zimbabwe, as well as Brooklyn New York, I was born and raised in Zimbabwe. But I make New York city my home too. I make things, living things, occasionally they land on film, but I’m interested in things that are living agitations, I would say and they take diff forms. Sometimes they are in workshop form. Yes, I’m keen on absolutely everything… everything, everything… yeah.

O: See the thing about making a living thing though – I think that’s really interesting, because I don’t know your dancing. So do you set your dancing and is it the same, if you did the dance on the Thursday and did the dance on Friday? How much is improvised?

N: Well it couldn’t be living if it was the same every single… but at the same time I would say I am absolutely notan improviser and in fact I detest that word. In relationship to black bodies because I think almost the whole world thinks, “oh yeah, you don’t think, you just improvise”.

O: Really?

N: Yeah… well at least this is my experience. [laughs]. With that word. And with things that black bodies produce. So no, liveness to me is a very interesting thing. It’s like, well, what I’m doing is thinking very deeply, profoundly, and trying to return to the same thoughts, however every day the sun is slightly different and in the moment, whoever I’m in that thinking conversation with, may just add another equation to it and maybe I’ll lean into that, but with the information of what we’ve been working on. So you can’t suddenly go completely off-road, entirely, completely. But however, it’s not reproducible in the same way, I would say, the ballet universe is executing and reproducing almost in exactly the same way, so it almost feels like those people could be reproduced, right? It could be anybody doing that work. So yeah, I would say that the thing that I do, is like, with my co-conspirators, corroborators...

O: [laughs] That’s a good word.
​
N: Yeah, that’s the word I prefer. I don’t collaborate. In fact I also detest that word, collaboration is such a poor word. I corroborate, so everybody has something at stake in the moment, and we’re all like in the heist together, so if we get caught, we’re all getting life sentences and we’re all committed to it.
Nora and Oona in conversation
O: I never thought of that before, about improvisation, the word being crap. Because you’re not just not thinking…

N: I mean I think you know language, words, relate to race, class in completely different ways. So yeah.

O: I have to be honest, like, I’m so naïve to all of that. 

N: [laughs]

O: Like, the last show I made, I just chose my mates to be in it. I was working on Max Roach, drums you know, and I was looking at jazz rhythms and loads of the music research came from black music, and it was only then I was like ‘Oh, all my mates are white and all the dancers in my show are white, and I don’t have any black mates like’, so I think I’ve a very naïve approach to race because I’m just with white people all the time.

N: [laughs]

O: I have to just say it as it is though, I can’t give you a really intellectual, ‘my idea of race’, because I’m in a bubble. I think we live in an Irish bubble. Well not even an Irish bubble, because even when I go around Europe and do my shows, it’s all white people, in the theatre and all, in France and wherever.
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N: Oh wow, that’s really amazing. I think that speaks to, that speaks to, in some ways, the art industry, the art market, that it is still pretty much a bourgeois kind of occupation and it’s very raced, it’s very racialised. I have some white friends, but that doesn’t mean nothing really… So let me just ask you this, who do you make your work for, white people? Or for your mates? Who happen to be white.

O: I think I was making it for myself really, or my family, or for the people who were in it. To answer some question… it’s for myself really. I'll try and not feel guilty about that.

N: Yeah… I would say I make my work for myself too but I happen to be black and African so that’s a massive consideration that there would be others like me, but I would also say I’m not so naïve. I’m not so naïve [laughs].

O: Yeah, of course.

[THe art market]  is still pretty much a bourgeois kind of occupation and it’s very racialised.
​> NORA

 N: I’m not so naïve, I grew up in Africa and race is not something that you’re naïve about. So I would say that the work actively is trying to carve out a space where ideas from a black African imagination could also reach out to other people who look like me. However, I’m also not naïve about the fact that when the work circulates, a great deal of those people who I hope to reach aren’t in the audience. So the work has to also be broad enough, deep enough, to land wherever it lands. So you know when people ask me ‘who’s the audience?’, I generally just give up and say ‘you know, it’s smart people, thinking people, you know, anybody with a brain’, or even sometimes people without brains, maybe they discover their brains along the way. I don’t know it’s just nice to have people come and sort of participate in an act of living, which is what I think of a performance is, this experience of living.
Nora Chipaumire in Portrait of Myself as My Father
O: Yeah. Because my first… I made a wee solo and it was about, em… we call them ‘hoods’ in Belfast, so skinny white lads who are probably about 15 years old, drinking and smoking too much, they’re not going to be in the fucking theatre, do you know what I mean?

N: Well, unless, well they could be… they could be, I would like to think they could be.

O: Well for sure they could be, but generally, they’re not going to walk in…

N: No, they have to be invited in and what brings them in? What lures them into a space like a theatre? And I think that probably that is also something we are tasked to think about. I mean I don’t know how it works here in Ireland or in Europe in general, but the American space you have presenters who are really determined to make the artists figure out how to lure their public into the theatre. And so if you’re like writing grants or something, there’ll be questions like ‘Who is your public? How are you going to reach out to them, how are you going to bring them into…’ and I’m like ‘well, what’s your job? What are you doing for civic society to make things more equal or something?’ Beyond making tickets available or… not even free, because I think a lot of black people find free things to be unworthy, so it’s not so much about free, but it’s like you know… even these areas where these theatres are desirable to go to… they don’t have the ambience, that kind of invites people.

​O: Yeah, yeah. We have the same thing in Ireland, in all of Ireland and the North for sure, but especially in the north. For a while there was only a bit of money thrown at us if you did cross-community work, for after the war, 'well I’m doing a bit of catholic/protestant, do a wee play about that'. But then the lineage of that is that’s where the money is and so then there’s a whole culture, a generation have gone but let’s make it about that, because then we’ll get the money and we can make our show kind of thing. So I think Ireland’s quite good at community stuff and it should be like that, otherwise you’re just playing in a circle to the same group of 25 people or something. But also, the reason why I say I sold out is because I was really lucky and  I got to go and do my show in like dance festivals and I was like ‘yeah, I’m going to go to a dance festival’ instead of saying ‘no, I’m going to stay at home for a year and sign loads of paperwork to try and do a prison tour, where the show should be, because that’s where the lads are’. And I went off to France and… do you know what I mean? So I sold out with it, you have to like be at home, spending a year writing, going through the paperwork to bring the show to them. You have to bring the show to them, you can’t bring them into the theatre, you have to go to them.

You have to bring the show to them, you can’t bring them into the theatre, you have to go to them.
​> OOna

N: Of course not, yeah yeah yeah, but then it’s also… I like that word, sold out, selling out, what does it mean to sell out? It has such a deep resonance with me. Because if you are considered a sell-out in the political culture I come from, that’s a death sentence right there.
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O: Yeah.

N: But at the same time, I think, I mean clearly these are different political regions and time-zones even. The one way to bring new ideas is through these Euro-centric kind of spaces. Which are of course already compromised. But the other way, which you’re saying, go to the prisons, go to where the public is, so for instance, if I were to go to where my public is, that’s also not considered art in a way. And a good part of me wants to be invading this art market, as well as having legitimacy in my community.

O: Yeah, yeah. Shooting in all directions. 

N: Well for me I find the invasion, the occupation of these festivals, kind of essential, even though there is a way that these festivals always find a way to essentialise you too. So it is a back and forth… I mean, I find that these festivals value the people making the festivals, and the people attending the festivals. They’re a little bit ahead of the game anyways. It’s like playing catch-up all the time. Even though I’m really keen on bringing my rudeness into the space, I think they still win.

O: Yeah, I think that’s what I mean by sell out, it's like, I had to do it to experience it and I’m really proud that I did it, going to get to do gigs basically, but then it was only through doing the gigs I was like… yeah ok, so maybe you have one audience member who really gets it on that night and you have a cry and you have proper kinetic empathy and something was touched and then it’s kind of worth doing it. But for the amount of times you get on an airplane, the amount of money that was spent... oh you’re going buy the show and it’s going to go here, you’re creating waste a little bit. Because you get some good empathetic, kinetic connections, but the majority of those 200 seats see it as like, ‘there’s going to be lots of fancy white programmers and a wee skinny white girl going ‘remember the young lads in prison’, what’s the bloody point of that? That’s a big waste.

N: Yeah… but could you earn the same in the prisons, doing prison tours? 

O: No, I’d have to do it for free, I’d have to save up and do it for free, but maybe like I wouldn’t feel like it was wasteful. I mean, half the boys in prison might be like ‘what are you doing, this is really boring, get out.’ And maybe it’s for my own privileged guilt I’m doing it too. But I feel like, I’ve done the festival circuit so now I have to do the prison circuit just to figure out what the hell I really think about it.
N: Yeah, I don’t actually think I have a choice but to do the festivals. Again, back to the racial thing and the economy of bodies. I don’t have an option. How do I live? How do I make the work? So to some extent it’s a necessary compromise to do the festivals, so then I hope that the number of times I’m on and off airplanes, in crappy hotels, even though I have to say, DRAFF did the most amazing thing by me, you know, I’m in like… a really, really beautiful place, I feel like yeah, big up DRAFF… so then I feel like, that’s also the other side of these kind of connections that we’re trying to make in the world, that you do run into… not every presenter is an asshole and they want to do good and I have enough respect for the positions they’re also in because they’re mediating between the government and the public and it’s not always… they’re kind of like the police. It’s not a happy situation to be in, but somebody’s gotta do it. So I have compassion for some of these presenters. What I do try to do is keep the work, the intention what it is. And I think for the most part, I do walk away from theatres feeling like, ‘I did my part, if you didn’t get it, that’s your problem’. But I feel good about what I did. The integrity of the work is there. You know, like, what choices do we have, you know, some visual artists decide not to participate in galleries, and have private buyers and… the whole thing of the physical thing that we produce and sell, you can’t do it here and sell it online. You have to do it. And what are you buying really.
Oona Doherty in Hard to be Soft
O: I think that thing for me, is only really for the Hope Hunt, the solo that I made about those lads, because I think with the other two shows… I think if it’s really from you, from like, your bones then it doesn’t matter if you do it in a bin or in a festival, you just do your thing. But the Hope Hunt one is from me, but it’s kind of about, it’s trying to make it about young lads, that’s not me. So then maybe I already have a bit of torque with why I'm doing this in the first place, who I am showing it to? Rather than the other shows, which is just like you spitting out some kind of truth thing, then it doesn’t matter whose looking.

N: Exactly because you too are your own audience. I’m the first audience for my work, so even if I’m doing it for myself, it’s like a prayer when you go to pray, or you make a confession, you don’t need an audience. But if there’s an audience, then glory hallelujah, the energy’s bigger, more amplified. But I really believe that the work itself needs to exist…
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O: Yeah well I think so… even just from the small thing I saw of the PUNK show, you were giving it stacks. I’m not very good at creating formed symbols for people to read messages in, I’d rather just feel the pain, feel the joy and then hope that it splatters out on someone. It’s maybe more messy. I’m not forming stuff… even this sentence right now, ha. 

I’d rather just feel the pain, feel the joy and then hope that it splatters out on someone.
> OOna

N: Yeah, I think the experience… but I’m interested in form. I think there’s a certain rigor that allows even this kinaesthetic dilemma to be even more present. Yeah, I think they can work together. There’s some kind of structure, there’s some kind of form, there’s something... but then in it, I’m living, I’m alive. I’m very much interested in liveness. 

O: I think by form I meant… I think I agree with you actually with what you’re saying, you’re more eloquent with it…

N: [laughs] I’m not, I’m just rambling..

O: You help me understand… I think I meant like when someone calmly presents an image of pain, or joy…

​N: Yeah, but that’s shit though.
Nora at the DDR. Studios
​O: So they’re distant.

​N: Yeah, that’s disembodied stuff… like they’re just giving you lines or whatever, catastrophic bullshit. It’s not a sincere thing. I’m interested in the sincerity. I’m in this moment, I’m not acting – I’m me. So I wonder if you… So then you can only do your own work or does it translate to other people? I mean, other performers, not the public of course.

O: What do you mean? Doing other people’s shows?

N: No, no, no, can you set your work, can somebody else do your work? It’s just a question I’m grappling with at the moment.

O: Yeah, I think so. But it’s like you said earlier about the language, if you have really tighter language, that is knife direct, that you can’t help but feel the feeling. Then you know, a really eloquent sentence, to be like, do this sentence. And it doesn’t matter where you arms and legs are, what it looks like, but you’re going to feel it and then I know that you’re feeling it and then you’re doing the work.

O: Yeah, I think writing, finding the words for the way in. And then some person needs a slightly different word to another person to get them in the same world or whatever.

O: Usually I write a big poem score, that’s for everybody, and that’s the world and then as you’re working with them, if someone needs, like, more like… like ‘falling down through bricks’ and someone else needs to be like actually jelly’. But you’re going to the same place but you need two different things at the minute. To get everyone away from your habits is basically all it is usually, to get a bit lost so that you don’t go… you think you’re doing a show but actually you’re doing an old phrase from five years ago. Yeah, anyway, that’s another thing. I think I’m trying to do the same thing over and over again. But I don’t realise that I’m trying to do the same thing until the show’s over. Or halfway through a show you start having the idea for the next one because it’s born out of a little germ from the first… so there’s a line for sure. But hopefully getting more eloquent along the way even if you’re changing forms to say it. 

N: Trying to understand it better. Yeah, I would say, no doubt, I’m just invested in the same thing. What does it mean to be black and African? And so maybe… it’s a script, maybe it’s words, maybe it’s gesture, maybe it’s sculpture… but to me, I don’t really distinguish between the genres… a photograph or it’s a wire sculpture. All trying to build a vocabulary, all these things are tools in a way to investigate the same thing, and yeah, I wouldn’t say I’m not even confused about that, I’m just interested in the same damn thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand it, because it’s confounding to me.

O: You’re making a book. Are you making a book?

N: I think ultimately, whatever we leave behind… well, I think the body is a book … I think you know there are objects called books that we make, we can make, and do make, that we’re interested in making too. I’m also very keen on making a book. It’s a living book, so it’s continuously being made, but I’m also very keen on this idea of the body being the book. And there are many, many chapters that I feel like both myself and humanity in general haven’t even gotten to.

O: Chapters… like what? What do you mean your body’s a book? You trust that your body remembers everything?

N: It does remember everything, from even ancient time, so that we come into the world already marked with information imprinted into us, so as we live out whatever our short life is, it’s a question of unpacking what’s inside, or understanding the script that you already came with, as well as that which you write from your own kind of living and understanding and stuff. And I think this is kind of what’s exciting about the performative act – whatever you’re doing, there could be something else that I’m looking at.

O: Yeah.

N: That you may be consciously…

O: Because you’re looking at it through your…

N: Yes, that too, of course. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Yeah.

O: Yeah, so it’s never finished, you’ll never get there.

N: Even in death it’s not cos that’s then… kind of… a different kind of spiritual understanding of how we are, even in death I don’t think it’s over, I think it’s just another chapter. I think for me the work that I make is my ongoing doctoral thesis, I’m learning new skills, new technologies, with each kind of work and shifting… how do I use these turntables, how do I use that, I’m acquiring skills of course, so the work is teaching me something, as well as my co-conspirators, we are all learning something, but I’m utterly convinced that the public is changed. The difference is I may have a way to account for the things that I’m acquiring and the normal audience just says ‘Well, I felt something’, but that is not something that I would dismiss as nothing. I think that kinaesthetic, that cellular kind of comprehension of something, even when there’s no vocabulary, is something, is more than something, is an it. It’s a big thing and that’s why it matters to keep doing the thing and with others, to congregate with others, even if the others may be totally all white, it doesn’t matter, they are humans and… I mean, I frequently feel in Europe that that’s the audience that needs it the most.

perhaps it’s not an accident to be in those obscure or kind of all-white bourgeois spaces trying to corrupt the walls and penetrate people’s skins or something.
​> NORA

N: My fellow black and African folks, kinda, we’re like a thousand years ahead of some of this shit, like we already know it. And so, perhaps it’s not an accident to be in those obscure or kind of all-white bourgeois spaces trying to corrupt the walls and penetrate people’s skins or something, so yeah, I do think the audience is changed and it may take them much longer to understand what happened in that moment. So sometimes I get odd communications, like, ‘Yeah, I saw your work a year ago, it just hit me now’. It took that long of kind of just like living with it and the ‘What was that?’

O: Yeah. Thank god you said that though, so it’s worth keeping trying. That’s hopeful. If a kinetic empathy connection is… it’s worth trying then, you know, it’s worth it to keep trying.
You can find out more on Oona Doherty's work here, and on Nora Chipaumire's work here. 

​Published: 8/10/19