Wanjiru Kamuyu

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SATIRE ABOUT BEING AN IMMIGRANT

Wanjiru Kamuyu brings to life emotional stories of immigration through blending different dance styles with painful memories.

In her solo work An Immigrant’s Story, Wanjiru Kamuyu explores an immigrant’s place and sense of belonging. She takes us on a personal journey with intimate stories of finding herself uprooted, being different to others and trying desperately to find her place. 

Alone on stage, surrounded by 35 black chairs, Kamuyu tells us through her words and dance about the objectification, exotification and racism she has encountered on her travels around the globe. She reflects upon the privilege of the white cis male, the complexity of being a foreigner and how asphyxiating prejudice and cultural biases can be.

Like a crucible, she combines African, European and American influences in her work. Her nomadic body is an ever-changing map, stylised as something both assimilated and stigmatised: there is a satirical undertone to the performance that is compelling in its straightforwardness.

PRESS reviews

“The surprising traveler.”
Philippe Noisette | Les Inrocks | Dance Review

“‘An Immigrant’s Story’, a story of humanity, vibrant and disturbing… If there was a reason to stand up and say how a singular form deeply moves, one would find themselves evoking performer and conceptual designer, Wanjiru Kamuyu, and the embodiment of her project. (…)
Rendering present the propensity to despise the migrant, a subclass of humankind, she escapes the stage, a circumscribed performance space, to rush into the stands thus including the audience in her caustic interrogation. Who is this ‘We’ who speaks with sufficiency, offering a presumed universal ‘History’? (…) How can one not be won over by the intelligent foresight projected with so much conviction and sincerity?”
Yves Kafka | La Revue du Spectacle | Dance Critic