LDIF18 Launch: Meet Nora Chipaumire
With LDIF18 just over a week away, we cannot wait to celebrate International Dance Day at the 2Funky Music Café on the 29 April. International Dance Day seeks to promote the art of dance around the world. Dance is both an art form and a method of communication in cultures around the world and is practised by millions of people. What could be a better way of celebrating, than an evening with Zimbabwean dancer Nora Chipaumire?
The Launch event features a performance from Nora Chipaumire, accompanied by Shamar Watt and South African DJ Atiyyah Kahn, bringing dance and music together. Inspired by Grace Jones and pop music of the eighties (David Bowie, Pink Floyd, the Police, Talking Heads). The event will be an audio-visual feast!
Ahead of her international performance here in Leicester we sent Nora a few questions to ask her how she felt about presenting her piece in the UK and entertaining Leicester for the very first time.
We’re so excited you’re coming to Leicester! Are you looking forward to performing 100% POP for UK audiences?
NORA: I am terribly excited and petrified at the same time. I hope this is the beginning of long and beautiful relationship with Leicester.
Tell us a bit about the piece – how you made it, what music you use.
NORA: 100 % POP is an attempt to go inside the brain of popular art creativity in order to understand what makes popular art, popular, what makes it work, what makes it so desirable and yet so easily discarded! I am looking at POP as a poor person’s high art and therefore holding a real potential for mass education. The eighties gave us so much audio plus visual imagery, which were innovative and massively influential. Grace Jones stands out as singular: a personality, a celebrity.
Is this your first show in the UK and what do you think audiences will most enjoy about it?
NORA: This will be my very first performance appearance in Leicester and only my second in the UK. My work has been seen more in Africa than the UK; but I think the British public will enjoy the innovations and updating of popular songs familiar to them such as Private Life, My Jamaican Guy. I believe the stealing of melodies and introduction of new ways to read and groove to popular tunes will be memorable.
What is it about the legendary Grace Jones that inspired you to make this piece?
NORA: Grace Jones’s Dare remains magnificent and significant to me. To me Grace Jones means freedom; she’s untethered to culture, gender, age and race. She’s free in her expression, in fashion, song, and it’s her being free that is so inspiring to me.
And have you met her?
NORA: I have not met Grace Jones. I hope never to meet her. I think meeting one’s heroes is not a good idea! My favourite Grace Song is ‘Pull up To the Bumper’.
We are super excited for this event and hope many of you will be able to join us! Get your tickets now at
http://www.serendipity-uk.com/events/ldif18-launch-nora-chipaumire/