My Dress Plays the Lingering Tones

Supporting Role

Diane Shooman

How to create artworks on dance that convey the singular ephemerality of movement instead of static poses? For the Galántha lobby and the Pas-de-Deux showcases, the artist Alphonse Ndagijimana reaches for wood, oil paint and textiles to lend dancing dresses a shared place on center stage. Dance movement evaporates as soon as it materializes; perhaps that's why many heroines of Romantic ballet are spirits who cannot be embraced. Dance, the most physical of all art forms, is just such a spirit: intoxicating, perceptible, but impossible to hold. The dancer's dress lingers longer, a sensitive partner, cut from fine cloth.

Figuratively, Ndagijimana's works are inspired by Katherine Dunham (1909–2016), a US-American dancer, anthropologist, choreographer, civil rights activist and author dedicated largely to Caribbean dance who developed her own distinctive style. Her dynamics are imagined in these works with every brush stroke, stitch and fold.
 


  



 




A special thanks to the artist's father, the master tailor Munyabarame Mathias.