More than 700 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade attended the free school-day performance “Ingoma Nshya: The Women Drummers of Rwanda,” which showcased the ensemble’s skilled drumming technique and told the story of its establishment as the first collective of female drummers in Rwanda. The high-energy performance ended with members of Ingoma Nshya inviting students onstage to dance.
Students from the following schools were in attendance: Gilbert Linkous Elementary, Floyd County High School, Martinsville Middle School, Blue Mountain School, Blacksburg New School, Auburn Middle School, Christiansburg Elementary School, and New River Valley Montessori. A group of senior adults from Virginia Tech’s Engagement Center for Creative Aging also attended.
Pre- and post-performance discussions
Immediately following the performance, Katese engaged with the audience in a discussion about the production’s development and impact. She shared her thoughts about the legacy she’s leaving her children through her work to preserve the stories of people’s lives and discussed how women have evolved into leaders post-genocide.
“As a woman, I feel we give birth, so we know how to grow life…we grow people,” Katese said. “So, I feel like in the role of building a country, because after the genocide the population was made up of 74 percent of women, immediately after the genocide, so they have to take leader roles, they have to bring back life.”
Professional development for Virginia Tech staff
Virginia Tech staff participating in Culture and Context Through the Arts, a diversity education program jointly facilitated by the Moss Arts Center and Office for Inclusion and Diversity, attended the matinee performance and participated in a post-event group conversation about intercultural understanding.
During the post-performance discussion, participants shared reflections inspired by the performance, including a comparison of the way Rwandan women assumed positions of leadership when men were disproportionately killed in the genocide, to U.S. women taking on new societal roles during World War II and thoughts about when and how a country decides to intervene in geopolitical conflicts.
Culture and Context Through the Arts is a professional development course that incorporates attendance at a live, in-person performance and a moderated follow-up discussion to increase openness and sensitivity to cultures different from the participant’s own. The program intends to increase awareness of a participant’s own culture and worldview, while offering confidence and flexibility in approaching situations that are culturally unfamiliar.
Engaging with Virginia Tech faculty
Nearly 30 years since the genocide in Rwanda, questions remain about the performativity of perpetrators’ violations and what survivors are left with, culturally and personally. In a free pre-performance talk, “The Rwandan Genocide and Macabresque,” Edward Weisband, author and Edward S. Diggs Endowed Professorial Chair in the Department of Political Science, reflected on the question of how life must be lived in the presence of absence.
The center often features guest essays written by Virginia Tech faculty and staff in its performance programs to deepen the audience’s experience. The “The Book of Life” program included a piece written by Onwubiko Agozino, a Virginia Tech professor of sociology and scholar-activist whose work focuses on people of African descent and other marginalized groups. Agozino emphasizes race, class, and gender issues in his work that extends well beyond the classroom. In his powerful essay, Agozino explored the themes of the performance through the lens of his own experiences growing up during the genocidal Nigeria-Biafra War, which took 3.2 million lives between 1967-70.
“The Book of Life” performance and associated engagement activities were supported in part by the Deborah L. Brown Center for the Arts Excellence Fund.