In an interview with The New York Times, choreographer and performer Nora Chipaumire said, “I love to make the audience work! And why shouldn’t they? I’m asking you to smell, to hear, to feel, to become complicit.” Here, we invited her to expand on how she views her relationship with audiences. “The audience is the criminal partner in this whole theatrical event,” Chipaumire says. “I’m interested in the distance between myself and the audience, and reducing that distance so that we are actually in conversation.”
Supported by a Center Advancement grant, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presented Chipaumire’s portrait of myself as my father in the fall of 2016 as part of Creative Africa, an exhibition and performance series centered on connecting historic and contemporary African art through public programs and audience development initiatives. Watch Chipaumire on art and advocacy.>
