\n<\/p>\n
At 16, Wanjiru Kamuyu, who was born in Kenya to a Kenyan father and an African American mother, moved with her mother to the United States.<\/p>\n
At one point in \u201cA disguised welcome\u2026<\/a>,\u201d the solo dance-theater performance Kamuyu presented this weekend at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens, she recounts her U.S. arrival as a teenager, stressing the pain of the uprooting. She takes on the mocking voice of a Black classmate who expresses gratitude to the trans-Atlantic slave trade for sparing Black Americans the fate of being an \u201cAfrican Booty Scratcher\u201d like Kamuyu.<\/p>\n An expressive mover and a talented mimic, Kamuyu can embody her attacker entertainingly. But it\u2019s unfortunately characteristic of \u201cA disguised welcome \u2026\u201d that rather than digging deeper into the complex relationships between Africans and African Americans, it flashes crude ignorance as provocation, then escapes to another topic.<\/p>\n The work is a version of another solo performance by Kamuyu called \u201cAn Immigrant\u2019s Story<\/a>.\u201d But \u201cA disguised welcome \u2026\u201d is only partly her story as an immigrant, and in glancing on many topics, it grows diffuse.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The performance is strongest when Kamuyu is dancing. It begins in darkness and song, Kamuyu\u2019s clarion voice heralding her arrival. As the lights rise, she arcs a fist to her open mouth. She bounces and quivers, stumbles and spins. Backing away from a side light, she curls her fingers like a cat kneading something with its claws, a gesture that\u2019s both a sensuous drawing-toward and a don\u2019t-get-too-close defense.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a dance of displacement, rich in ambiguity. But at times, Kamuyu\u2019s desire to get a message across pushes her into staginess and caricature. When she asks audience members if they know what it feels like to be othered, the question is merely rhetorical. Instead of reaching out to the people in front of her, she talks back to absent villains of privilege.<\/p>\n Responding to the colonialist sound of a documentary about the Kikuyu chief Wangu wa Makeri<\/a>, Kamuyu asks vital questions about who gets to recount history and who gets to express opinions \u2014 vital questions that are commonplace and elementary. Kamuyu\u2019s tone is bitingly satirical, but the ideas are like chewing gum that has lost its flavor.<\/p>\n In the final section, Kamuyu, who now lives in France, suggests more about the variety of immigrant experiences by jumping among characters and thumbnail testimonies, including that of a white person who feels out of place in Africa and a child of immigrants who believes \u201chome is anywhere.\u201d Here the text isn\u2019t didactic, and Kamuyu, dancing, is less defended. She ends with the facts of where she was born and where she now resides, and her dancing body suggests where she is most at home.<\/p>\n Wanjiru Kamuyu<\/strong><\/p>\n Performed on Friday and Saturday at the Chocolate Factory; chocolatefactorytheater.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n