Okwui Okpokwasili is an Igbo-Nigerian American artist, performer, choreographer, and writer. Her multidisciplinary performances draw on practices of body duration, a reflection of how black and brown bodies must hold multiple possibilities and conditions that are both confining and liberating. She describes her work as being at "the intersection of theatre, dance, and the installation." Several of her works relate to historical events in Nigeria.

Photo by Reece T. Williams

LYRICS:

"Do Not Let Go"

I want to know

Who stands beside me

When I tell you

this house is in ruins.

total collapse

is looming.

The storm is surging

The walls are caving in.

The rude river runs cars through what remains of our home.

And now up come the bones

Blood is the mortar

The breath of ghosts you will not name.

Don’t you see

 the storm that has left our house in ruins

has been brewing

 since the first settler stepped foot on this land,

set longhouses ablaze

Since they sold the first one enslaved

And dared to say

they lived in the home of the free,

when they spilled innocent blood and they called it liberty.

the wrath of the storm

Are the cries of those children

Whose blood echoes of

the beaten and the broken

The lost and forgotten

So their

Fingers are bloody with digging

Their eyes are sore with looking

For the buried

The cries of the children

Whose blood is still spilling

Whose bones are still being broken

I want to know

Can we build a new home?

A home that feels like being nestled in the breasts of my mother,

her head my first roof

a loving canopy shielding my face

Our new home should grow as far as our outstretched arms can reach,

holding onto each other,

and if I let go,

 if you let go,

 home comes tumbling down.

Do not let go.

Do not let go.

I want to know

Will you

Welcome the storm?

Will you

Praise the bones

wrested

from the wreckage

And build anew?