"so colorful, so exuberant...compelling"

July 31, 2002 performance reviewed by Jocelyn McGrath

Shadow’s Child is a narrative piece in which modern dance is combined with singing, speaking, drums, puppetry, jump rope, traditional African dance and street dance. It is the result of collaboration between The Urban Bush Women, Artistic Director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique, directed by David Abilio. The warmth and power of the communication using these varied forms of expression is impressive. Shadow’s Child moves so smoothly between the separate spheres of high art, street dance, and folk art that the boundaries dissolve. The story is the thing.

The dance tells the story of Xiomara, a young girl from Mozambique, who travels with her parents to live in Tallahassee, Florida. In her new home she is different and excluded. One day she is teasingly led to the forest and abandoned. She wanders lost until she finds and befriends another outcast, a girl named Blue, who plays in the forest because she has the disease Porphyria and must stay out of the sun. There the two girls discover the spirits of the forest and are led on a magical tour. When it is time to go home the girls part, but on her way home Blue is trapped by some vines. Xiomara gains a place in her new community when she searches for and finds Blue, becoming a heroine.

For children this is an archetypal tale of separation, hardship, assistance from supernatural powers, and then a successful test of bravery. For adults, too, there is the powerful archetypal message that whereever one goes one can always go back to the forest, to the source of strength and understanding, to our original home of primal wisdom.

The slice of Mozambican culture we receive at the beginning of the show is also compelling for both children and adults. The women are so colorful, and the dancing is so exuberant, and when daddy gets home they all dance some more. Xiomara is surrounded by a living culture, and it is clear that in this picture she is loved and supported by the community and by the spiritual connection they feel through their dance and music.

One of the effects of performing children’s games on stage back-to-back with high cultural accomplishment is that it puts kids and their activities in the continuum of artistic motion. So, for the children there is an artistic path that leads to the adult world. For the adults, there is a refreshing sense that all the tools for artistic expression that we had as children are still ours if we decide to “play.” This is a radical notion in a culture that adamantly separates out the artistic doers from the non-artistic watchers.

In it’s most basic form, the skill and timing required for the traditional Mozambican jump rope style isn’t different from the skill and timing required in the dancing or the drumming. In judging people and in judging forms of artistic expression, the common theme seems to be the same - there is an essential similarity and compatibility.