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| | Issue #20.45 :: 11/07/2007 - 11/13/2007 | Dancing the Music of Nina Simone
| BY RON AIKEN
| If you haven’t heard of Nina Simone, shame on you and your family.
Unfortunately, you’re probably in a majority these days if you’re under 30, as the one-time megastar — a Julliard-trained classical pianist whose incredible breathy, alto-range voice, heavy on tremolo, earned her the title of the “High Priestess of Soul” — bowed-out of the music scene following the failure of the civil rights movement (her words) and became an expatriate until her death in southern France in 2003.
Fortunately for you, Simone’s influence is experiencing a resurgence these days as more and more people go back to discover and appreciate her enormous body of work — more than 40 live and studio albums — and one such person is Vibrations Dance Company artistic director Terrance Henderson.
A huge fan of Simone, the 29-year-old Henderson has created a program that is both a celebration of Simone’s work and an exercise in taking her genius and extending it creatively for dance in the production Ninacity (pronounced “nine-acity”), which will be performed the coming two Saturdays, first at the Patriot Hall Performing Arts Center in Sumter on Nov. 10 and then here in Columbia on Nov. 17 at the Lower Richland High School Theatre.
“[Nina Simone’s] music has been a really big inspiration to me as an artist for a long time,” Henderson says. “I’m inspired both by her music and by her life, what it stood for. There’s just so much more behind her work than the music itself. More than just honoring the music with a collection of songs, because there’s so much there to work with I wanted to let it inspire me to create.”
What Henderson came up with is a performance in three acts. The first, called “Café Nina,” is a narrative ballet set in a nightclub.
“It focuses on her jazz and blues work and takes place in an interior jazz club setting,” Henderson says. “You meet a singer, a couple, a guy trying to find a date, all those different elements you’d encounter to the backdrop of songs like ‘I Put a Spell on You,’ ‘I Love you Porgy’ and ‘Love me or Leave Me.’”
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Deborah Chan in Ninacity.
Photo by Ron Rose |
The second act is entitled “Purple Fields of Soul” and takes the audience through the tumultuous sounds of the 1960s.
“With that piece we’re moving into the civil rights era, the rise of soul music in songs like ‘Ain’t Got No/I Got Life’ and ‘If I Can’t Have You.’”
Finally, the piece concludes with “Ninacity,” which focuses on the celebration of a woman in control of her universe and explores issues of identity and self-image. It also includes a section called “A Man’s World,” which looks at the same issues in relation to African-American males.
“There are so many themes to her life, and being militant about her ideas and not holding her tongue was part of that and comes through in the show,” Henderson says.
“What I love, too, about this is that we’ve had so many racial and prejudicial issues back in the spotlight here all over again, making her particularly relevant and timely for our time.”
Vibrations’ founder and executive director Evie Belton agrees, adding that she hopes the piece helps more people appreciate Simone.
“I think a lot of our young people now don’t know who Nina Simone is,” Belton says. “With so much of her lyrics addressing issues that are still with us … hopefully, we can help change that.”
The Nov. 10 performance at the Patriot Hall Performing Arts Center in Sumter and the Nov. 17 performance at the Lower Richland High School Theatre in Columbia both start at 7:30 p.m.
Cost is $15 for general admission and $10 for students and members of the South Carolina Multicultural Arts Commission. To purchase tickets, call 361-5262. | |
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