KIAZI: For Siama, I follow Pop’s perspective. I want her to find something that she’s super passionate about from an academic standpoint and then dedicate her life to that. She already likes to dance, so hopefully I’m jumpstarting and continue to pour into that. I wanted to be able to look at my daughter and be like, yeah, she’s doing her thing. I want to give them the gift of knowledge of self and culture. MUISI-KONGO: My desire at this stage is to center our efforts in passing the torch to our replacements. For my own son, nieces, nephews, and our community chil-
hung out on the plane and acted like we were getting drunk off of soda. Fall asleep, wake up, order all-you- can-drink soda. Up until that point, and even after, peo- ple would communicate via letter but Pops would buy the boom boxes and sit down and talk and have us tell messages to our grandparents and all of the family there. They would do the same. He would send those tapes. Kind of like long voice notes. So coming into that trip, even though I was six, she was seven, we had a really good sense of who our family was. We had a lot of stories about our grandparents and uncles. When we saw people, it was like, “remember this story?” That’s him. Remember this one? Boom, that’s him. The one who got the whoo- pin’ when he was 40. That’s him. KIAZI: [The next time I went was] 2006. I would have gone earlier. I was pushing him to go. When our grand- father passed in 2001, I was pushing to go and he was like, no, stay in school. Then I got into an overseas pro- gram in Tanzania. All right, I got my money. I’m going to Congo after. I’m buying my ticket. If you want to come
who I am in my Congolese identity. Knowing the arts and the culture helps me understand myself and my peo- ple better. This is who I am. This is where my family is from. This is why things are this way. You can look at yourself and understand your journey a little bit better. MUISI-KONGO: Traditional music and dance. Yeah, it’s a ritual, it’s an activity, it’s a skill. Most of all, it’s a portal. We can get into the politics of do you have to be born somewhere, to be ‘of’ somewhere? I wasn’t born in the Congo, but what’s very real is blood memory. What’s very real is that these are spiritual practices. So you absolutely tap into an ancient knowing that connects you to God and spirit and to all those who came before. I absolutely believe that being a practitioner of these traditions gives you that gateway that you can plug into at any given point. I’m very much a Congolese African American. Yet, all roads lead back to the same place. I was born and raised in the U.S. I’m deeply rooted. I’m connected. And I have different ways that I can tap into that connection. The dance is a very potent way where
NKEIRUKA ORUCHE is a cultural organizer, multimedia creative of Igbo de- scent, who specializes in Afro-Urban culture and its intersections with social issues. She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a social justice and music educa- tion organization, and founder and executive artistic director of Afro Urban Society, an incubator and presenter of Pan Afro-Urban arts, culture, and social discourse. In 2022, she created and directed ‘Mixtape of the Dead & Gone #1’– Ahamefula’, a shit-just-got-real dance-theater piece about life, death, and what the fuck comes next. She is a 2022 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, a Kikwetu Honors Awardee, a 2018 NYFA Immigrant Artist Fellow, YBCA 100 Honoree, and recipient of awards from Creative Work Fund, MAP Fund, New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, California Arts Council, among others.
dren. I want to see with my own eyes these traditions in the hands of those trusted and trained to carry them for- ward. I want to see the impact they will have on the world. KIAZI: I try not to regret. I like to think before I move. But, people pass- ing, you can’t really control that. So there’s a sense of dang, I wish they could be here because, this little one, she’s pretty groovy. MUISI-KONGO: I really wish my par- ents were here to see their extension. I would’ve loved to witness their rela- tionships with their grandchildren as they grow. My mom passed away when Matsoua was about 4. I keep his mem- ory of her fresh by talking about her often. I also tell him stories about his Nka nka (grandpa). There will always be a longing for their physical presence, but they are present in other ways. On Home KIAZI: Congo for me is home because Pops raised us always saying, this is not your home. You have a huge fam- ily. We have land. Referencing this far off place that he eventually took us. Our mamas were African American and they found home in the culture. That’s why I can identify with Congo being home. MUISI-KONGO: Home for me is in my body first. Wherever I go, I am already there. Home is also where my Ancestors have put down roots… East Palo Alto, Oakland, Bassfield, Augusta and the Congo.
I can have this direct conversation, not contingent upon birthplace but rather birthright.
MY HEART IS IN CONGO. IT'S WHERE I IDENTIFY, WHERE I FEEL AS A PERSON, MY HEALING, MY GROWTH THE WAY I LOOK AT SPIRITUALITY IS THROUGH THAT LENS.
KIAZI: Not everybody from back home is super duper into traditional
with me, you can come. Fast forward, the accident hap- pened. We all didn’t actually make it back as a collective until 2006. MUISI-KONGO: He went in ‘83, in ‘88. He went to bury our grandfather in 2001. He wasn’t able to go when our grandmother passed in ‘98.
beliefs, or the traditional art forms. A lot of folks will even be so much more into Western ways, whether it’s worship music to the point where they know shit about stuff that’s going on here that you don’t even know because you’re just like, I’m not following it like that. I think being outside of the country is definitely a way to stay connected. It’s easy to lose your identity in a place where it’s like putting a drop of sugar in a huge thing of coffee. You won’t taste the sweetness. If you don’t hold on to the little you got you can get lost in the sauce. On life ‘after’ Malonga. Hopes, Dreams, Regrets KIAZI: Pops was the glue that connected everybody. With his transition shit shifts. We are evolving and finding new ways to connect as we grow. With me being a new dad, and Muisi with Matsoua, we’re connecting on parenting. We are seeing each other as adults, siblings, artists and parents. The artistic connection is always there. But as we walk into this new phase of our lives, there are new branches growing on this tree and we have to be mindful of how to tend them together. MUISI-KONGO: The hope is always to be able to pass these traditions on. Trying to balance the roles of parent and cultural caretaker, amongst other things, makes me reflect on how effective our dad was in everything that he was holding.
KIAZI: There was a civil war.
APRIL 21–30, 2023
On Cultural Identity & Connection KIAZI: I got a lot of questions around being of African descent here in America. You might come to school in something that’s a little different, an African print shirt. So I got teased a lot at first. In third grade I went to pub- lic school and [kids] made a story up about me being a young African boy prodigy who would go around the world giving speeches. MUISI-KONGO: There were a lot of different ways that he tried to connect us to our actual family in addition to how the arts connected us to the fact that we were from Congo and that was ingrained. KIAZI: My heart is in Congo. It’s where I identify, where I feel as a person, my healing, my growth, the way I look at spirituality is through that lens. I’m pretty solid on
ALL DANCE ALL FREE ALL WEEK
PHOTO BY KEGAN MARLING (l-r, clockwise) Photo courtesy of Upswing Aerial Dance, HeART with LINES Photo by Victor Talledos, BASE Residency Artists Photos courtesy of PUSH Dance Company.
28
in dance SPRING 2023 28
SPRING 2023 in dance 29
In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
unify strengthen amplify unify strengthen amplify
44 Gough Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94103 www.dancersgroup.org
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker