I’ve spent many happy hours at the Ringling International Arts Festival this week — literally hours, since none of the performances in the fest lasts more than 60 minutes. Two of the happiest — and the last two I’m reviewing for CL — were the hours I spent yesterday with the Zimbabwean group Nobuntu, and the dance duo of Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass in a show entitled, aptly enough, Happy Hour. Both reprise today (Nobuntu at 2, Happy Hour at 5) and I highly recommend that you hightail it to Sarasota to catch both on this, the festival’s final day.
The five women of Nobuntu perform in a genre — imbube, or a cappella choral singing punctuated by dance — that until their 2011 debut had been traditionally dominated in Southern Africa by men, most famously Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Since then, Nobuntu has broken through big-time, touring Europe, releasing two CDs, making a #1 music video and winning the title of Outstanding Imbube Group in an awards program inaugurated this year in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city.
Their appearance at RIAF marks another milestone: It’s the group’s US debut. Director of Programming Dwight Currie told me the singers were “really thrilled” to be making their first American tour, and their joy in being here was palpable. But joy seems central to Nobuntu’s existence: it’s present in their glorious singing, their expressive dancing, even in their dress — plaids, stripes, florals in colors as exuberant as their vocals. Their songs, some traditional, some original, celebrate marriage, healing and the distinctive clink of the Mbira, a traditional Zimbabwean instrument.
Yet there’s room for anguish, too. Heather Dube, a masterful presence who also plays percussion for the group, howls with sorrow in a song about a woman scorned because she cannot bear children. Imbube singing was born out of the South African independence movement, and the women of Nobuntu bravely address the oppression faced by women in present-day Africa, making forceful statements in songs like Zanele Manhenga’s “Woza Ngane,” which addresses domestic violence.
But the mood that most imbued the Historic Asolo Theater was one of mutual embrace. In Manhenga’s song “Impi,” the women sang gratefully of being able to travel places they’d never been. In the “Nobuntu Click Song,” Dube tried valiantly to teach the audience how to emulate the clicking sounds in the Zimbabwean language of Ndebele, and smiled wryly when our efforts didn’t quite, um, click.
Distances of many varieties may have stood between this Western audience and these African singers, but last night it felt as if we were closing the gap.
It’s a good rule to follow when you’re braving happy hour at a bar, and an even better one to follow with Monica Bill Barnes & Co.’s Happy Hour:
Arrive early.
Get yourselves to the Circus Museum Backyard well before the 5 p.m. start time, order a drink, find yourself a table, and join the fun. It’s your Florida-fied office party, after all, complete with inflatable palm tree, crepe streamers, snack bowls, karaoke contest and cheezy emcee. Free cocktails and maybe even cake may ensue, depending on what the emcee gets out of you.
But then the real fun begins. Two nervous-looking fellows in suit and tie sidle in, uncomfortable but determined to make a score with a lady or two in this party they’re crashing. They’re Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass, acute observers of male mating behaviors, which they translate into a wonderfully absurd and wondrously rigorous series of dance moves to a score dear to any bro’s heart, from John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” to Air Supply’s “I’m All Out of Love,” with a devastating detour into Judy Garland’s breakneck version of “Come Rain or Come Shine.”
They make all the right (or wrong) moves — the winks, the lapel pulls, the fist pumps, the chest bumps — and push them to invigorating extremes. And if they dare to pick out a potential date from the audience, and you’re that date, just roll with it: You won’t want to disappoint these suitors.
At once hilarious and poignant, this is a Happy Hour the office will be talking about for years.
