It is the coldest night of the year so far; Brooklyn is wracked with piercing winds, and as curtain time approaches, a crowd padded in layers of down presses toward the entrance of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fishman Space. Inside the theater — a “black box” with seating on three sides — it is Africa. The first performance of “adaku, part 1: the road opens” has already begun. Described in press materials as exploring “the fraught relationship between ancestors, future generations, and the role of ritual,” the 75-minute show grapples with all of these, as well as the ominous thrum of climate change, of the disasters looming ahead that press hardest on the consciousness of the young.
A collaboration among writer-performer Okwui Okpokwasili, director-designer Peter Born, and their cast and crew, “adaku” leaves us in the dark for a very long time, while a clump composed of seven people, barefoot, wearing simple sleeveless tops and gorgeous, layered, petal-like split skirts (by James Gibbel) moves around the edge of a circle inscribed in white on the dark floor. Their feet pound in unison, a complex rhythm, taking the dancers forward and rearranging their positions in the cluster. Most of them have very dark skin; it’s difficult to discern their age or gender, but we hear them chanting and notice flute and percussion in Born’s sound score. (The cast includes Okpokwasili, a head taller than the others and bone-thin, and Audrey Hailes, AJ Wilmore, mayfield brooks, McKenzie Frye, Stacy Lynn Smith, and Samita Sinha.)
A pair of what look like black stools in the middle of the circle slowly rise into the air and are revealed to be down-spot lamps. A couple of performers break out of the group to build and manipulate what appears to be fire. A tall oblique beam at the back of the space lights up via a long fluorescent tube; a red oval on one side glows, serving as a screen for the projection of waves. The high back wall of the space is covered with rumpled silver foil, perhaps a representation of water, looming alongside the little settlement. The dancers slow their stamping and sing together in a kind of petitioning chorus, asking for clarity, asking the way on a journey. They listen as the tall one (Okpokwasili as Oga Madam, a mother figure who is clearly in crisis) details a nightmare.
First she rallies her squad, in a call-and-response pattern. She speaks and she sings: “When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t move. I was bound in a shroud, soaked and bloody and cold. I started fighting my way out of it and this shroud unraveled, becoming a river of blood, dragging me into the darkness of the bush. And as my eyes started to adjust, I looked down. What I was on, was not sand, was not soil, it was the sharp edges of broken bones. And these bones were the bones of children.”
Her nightmare ramifies; she attributes her mental distress to a carved figure, a fertility god she’s commissioned from a nearby artisan: “Carve for me a figure that can hold my gratitude for all of the seeds that I will plant and the fruit I will harvest!” Instead, she claims, she has been cursed.
Oga Madam’s daughter is charged with retrieving the figure, which has been returned to its maker. The two elders throw accusations at each other while the younger woman sets about solving the problem, learning to make new “carvings that open the road.” She journeys to “Aunty,” the carver, to ask that the troublesome sculpture be destroyed. Psychology and magic, art and compassion mingle in their conversations; in addition to all of her other skills, the MacArthur-winning Okpokwasili is a formidable analyst of the human condition.
Meanwhile, the silver paper on the wall surges down and forward until it covers the whole space, representing water that breaks loose and floods the entire community, swallowing the intrepid, diplomatic daughter. The women (if that is what they are — the narrative implies that even in this ancient African society people might alter their gender and orientation, and this theater piece leans into a possible future) engage in a ritual of mourning, keening and screaming. We are surrounded by a deep, rumbling sound. Is this the apocalypse?
Listen to these songs, absorb these rhythms. Okpokwasili (the Bronx-born child of immigrants from Nigeria) and her ensemble are the next generation, and they will lead us old white fossils — who’ve been flailing in the public space for half a century — into the peril and promise of the unfolding millennium. ❖
Elizabeth Zimmer has written about dance, theater, and books for the Village Voice and other publications since 1983. She runs writing workshops for students and professionals across the country, has studied many forms of dance, and has taught in the Hollins University MFA dance program.
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