Nora won a 2007 Bessie Performer Award for her performances during Urban Bush Women's Joyce season. In Dance Magazine's May 2008 issue, Eva Yaa Asantewaa writes, "Nora Chipaumire is a lioness--a regal, iconic presence hailed for her performances with Urban Bush Women as well as her own solo creations." The article continues to comment on Nora's law school degree and her decision to switch to contemporary dance so that she can take charge of how Africans are seen. Nora says, "Art can be transformative, reach a higher place in humanity without being dogmatic...for Africans, dance is a fundamental, democratic way to communicate."
There are moments in our lives , there are moments in our days, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Sign-posts on the way to what may be. Sign-posts toward greater knowledge. -Robert Henri
It occurred to me some time ago that among many of my art and academic friends, the success and viability of one's work is now measured in proportion to the accumulation of frequent flyer miles. The more we travel for work, the more we are called upon to provide institutions in other parts of the country and the world with our presence and services; the more we give into the logic of nomadism, one could say, as pressured by a mobilized capitalist economy, the more we are made to feel wanted, needed, validated, and relevant. It seems our very sense of self-worth is predicated more and more on our suffering through the of always traversing through elsewheres. Whether we enjoy it or not, we are culturally and economically rewarded for enduring the "wrong" place. It seems we're out of place all too often.
But what is a "wrong" place? How does one recognize it as such, as opposed to a "right" place? What do we really mean by these qualifying adjectives? Is being in the wrong place the same thing as being out of place? And what are the effects of such mis/displacements for art, subjectivity, and locational identities? In light of the intensified mobilization of bodies, information, images, and commodities on the one hand, and the greater and greater homogenization and standardization of places on the other (which, by the way, facilitates the smooth, unimpeded mobilization and circulation of these bodies, information, images, and commodities), I continue to wonder about the impact, both positive and negative, of the spatial and temporal experiences that such conditions engender not only in terms of cultural practice but more basically for our psyches, our sense of self, our sense of well-being, our sense of belonging to a place and a culture.
I think often and deeply about women and work, about what it means to have the luxury of time-time spent collecting one's thoughts, time to work undisturbed. This time is space for contemplation and reverie. It enhances our capacity to create. Work for women artists is never just the moment when we write, or do other art, like painting, photography, paste-up, or mixed media. In the fullest sense, it is also the time spent in contemplation and preparation. This solitary space is sometimes a place where dreams and visions enter and sometimes a place where nothing happens. Yet it is as necessary to active work as water is to growing things.
There are moments in our lives, there are moments in our days, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Signposts on the way to what may be. Signposts toward greater knowledge.
