World-Making

Abstract This chapter examines how Nigerian and South African contemporary dance artists portray complex, expansive visions of Black motherhood as acts of resistance and creation. Through works by Mamela Nyamza, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Dada Masilo, it explores how motherhood embodies Indigenous epistemologies, interdependence, and survivance. These performances challenge Western notions of family, revealing intersections of queerness, patriarchy, and colonization, and highlighting how personal narratives speak to collective historical trauma. Nyamza’s Hatched embodies a queer African domesticity; Okpokwasili’s Poor People’s TV Room contorts time and maternal grief; and Dada Masilo’s Giselle confronts maternal abuse. Finally, the chapter underscores how these choreographies create transformative worlds that reflect cosmologies of African motherhood.