Atanásio Nyusi carries the anti-colonial history of Mozambique in the movements of his body. To watch the legendary Nyusi dance Mapiko even makes the elders take pause. This politically rebellious masked art form, indigenous to the Makonde people, stopped during the country's 10-year-long War of Independence against the Portuguese. Now, after decades of displacement, it is revived as a celebration of freedom for the millions of people who have returned. As they fight to rebuild their families and remember the ancestral rhythms of their land, Nyusi seeks to restore and reinvigorate the collective memory by preserving this embodied archive through teaching and performance. But when he is gone, who will become the next generation's guardian of history? Where each movement reveals a story and every story holds a lesson, The Sound of Masks travels through time and space to connect past to present and the future to now. Nataleah Hunter-Young
Co-presented with The Dance Current