Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Multidisciplinary masterworks in Brooklyn: William Kentridge’s SIBYL and nora chipaumire‘s DAMBUDZO

• By drediman
• October 13, 2025
• No Comments

This past week in Brooklyn, I had the great opportunity to catch a pair of multidisciplinary masterworks, courtesy of two boundary pushing performing arts festivals — one brand new, the other an established presenter of adventurous new work. As always, read on for my thoughts on these two pieces of extraordinary theatrical imagination from the minds of two genuine geniuses.

SIBYL
Powerhouse: International

One of the inaugural presentations by Powerhouse: International — a brand new performing arts festival in the relatively remote Brooklyn neighborhood of Gowanas — is the anticipated New York premiere of William Kentridge’s two-part multidisciplinary opera Sibyl (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). The event commences with The Moment Has Gone, a short prayer-like film featuring Kentridge’s familiar techniques — honed to perfection over the years by the celebrated South African artist — namely his distinctively handmade stop-motion film methods and the incorporation of animation and sculpture. Accompanied by live music — the superb Kyle Shepherd on piano and a chorus of five men — the 20-minute film exquisitely contemplates the past vis-à-vis the act of artistic creation, namely the multidisciplinary opera that forms the latter half of the evening. Indeed, The Moment Has Gone makes for a thematically thoughtful companion piece to Waiting for the Sibyl, a loose operatic retelling of a Greek myth about Cumaean Sibyl, the prophetess from whom mortals sought to predict their futures. The piece was originally commissioned by the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in Italy and first performed in 2019. Since the pandemic, the piece — a 40-minute meditation on the human desire to need to know what is to come — has gained more substantive meaning, particularly as it relates to the paramount importance of living in the present. In essence, the fantastical pageant-like piece is comprised of a series of brief, collage-like tableaus that are packed with surreal imagery, many of which allude to South Africa’s painful, complicated history with apartheid and colonialism. Technically, there’s a lot going on here, as live music, performers (actors, singers, dancers), artful projections, physical sets, and costumes meticulously come together to conjure one mesmerizing vision after another. Like the visual world he’s created, Kentridge’s libretto is essentially a seemingly free-flowing cascade of semi-cryptic phrases that merely suggest rather than prescribe. Throughout, Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd’s music is varied and supremely expressive, using traditional South African musical vocabularies to soulfully evoke the gamut of emotions, from sorrow, to boisterousness, to restlessness, to frustration, to anger, and ultimately to joy.

DAMBUDZO
BAM Next Wave

Over the years, BAM’s iconic annual Next Wave festival has been instrumental in developing and promoting the careers of some of our most notable avant-garde artists. Kicking off the 2025 edition of the festival last week at Roulette were two performances of nora chipaumire’s Dambudzo (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED). More happening than performance, the interdisciplinary work presents itself as a form of shabini, informal Zimbabwean get togethers that takes place in private residences, providing like-minded guests a safe space to bond and imagine possibilities of revolution in the face of encroaching political oppression. Melding elements of immersive dance, roughly drawn film, fearless performance art, theatrical confessional, handcrafted art installation, and intimate music concert, the two-hour piece can be a bit in-your-face and overwhelming to all take in. But once you resign yourself to the fact that, at any given moment, it’s impossible to process everything that’s simultaneously transpiring around you — it’s best that you simply fully engage with the invitation presented in front of you — there’s a certain thrill in surrendering to the intoxicatingly unpredictable environment and let it take you where it will. It’s as if you’re at a party taking place at the end of the world. Indeed, chipaumire truly does an uncanny job of creating paranoia that there’s real danger outside the walls of the safe haven of the shabini (i.e., Roulette). What Dambudzo particularly does so brilliantly is bring an indelible social aspect and an authentic sense of hospitality to the experience, fostering a true sense of community and camaraderie that’s largely missing from other so-called works of immersive theater. As an audience member, you have real agency over how you engage with the world around you — there are frequent opportunities to play a round of soccer and/or “get down” with the performers and your fellow participants — which yields to a party-like vibe that feels completely organic and uniquely reactive to the particular audience at hand. For the show’s unofficial mascot, chipaumire and her brash and abrasive cast boldly appropriate the Rhodesian ridgebacks — ferocious dogs bred specifically to terrorize Africans during Zimbabwe’s colonial times — including the shrill whistles and terrifying barks that accompany their prowling hunts.