As part of her research for “Portrait of Myself as My Father,” the Zimbabwe-born choreographer Nora Chipaumire learned to box, or at least picked up a few tips.
In the new work, presented by Montclair State University’s Peak Performances series, she explores African masculinity and the black male body with a boxing ring as her stage and the Senegalese performer Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye, better known as Kaolack, as her opponent.
Their relationship, while tangled — and further complicated by a third performer, Shamar Wayne Watt — is not just about winning or losing.
A magnetic dancer and audacious thinker, Ms. Chipaumire is less interested in binaries than in the spectra along which we negotiate identity. Adding to this complex look at heritage, gender, language, religion and power, Ms. Chipaumire offers a new film, “Afro Promo #1: Kinglady,” created at Montclair State. (April 14- 17, Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair, N.J.;peakperfs.org.)
