Contemporary Performance
As a performance artist inspired by iconic black performers, Chanje has developed her creativity and presented her work nationally and internationally, including at the Southbank, London 2016, The National Arts Festival of South Africa 2016, and the Harare International Festival of Arts, Zimbabwe 2017. Solo theatre productions to date are ‘Blue Black Sister’ 2009 (Royal Exchange Theatre), ‘Amsterdam’ 2014 (Contact Theatre Commission), Superposition 2017 (The Lowry commission) and Plant Fetish (Home Mcr commission) 2019 ‘Celestial Bisexual’ (Superbia Queer Arts) 2023 .
Aerial Arts
Chanje was a spoken word artist for 10 years. However as a person with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, one of her major symptoms is disassociation, whereby she feels mentally disconnected from her body. She knew she needed to use her body as an artist and she could not do this as a spoken word artist.
To forge this connection she received professional development funding from ACE to for extensive private training, both one to one and group training in ballet technique and contemporary dance. Chanje also trained in pole and aerial arts at Airborne Studios and GFF Dance as well as having been trained in Benji Reids ‘Breaking Cycles’ Hip hop theatre courses. She has done a creative fellowship with Manchester International Festival learning in physical theatre with Frantic Assembly. When making work she questions: ‘What do I need to heal? what do I need to transform?’ She uses aerial arts because she can defy gravity and be out of this world.
Multi Media Performance
In 2023 I curated ‘Bisexual Baddies’, which was a triple bill of Queer women solo artists. My solo performance work was ‘Celestial Bisexual’ a multi-media performance combining large cosmic imagery taken by Nasa projected into the space and on my body, combined with dance, movement and out of this world poetic descriptions of bisexual identity.
Audience Feedback:
‘Exhilarating, voluptuous, astonishing, lascivious, titillating, applauding, Incapacitating,
ostentatious, notorious. 10/10’
‘Congratulations, juicy, acrobatic, cosmic, deep.’
Gravity Defying:
Chanje is interested in using live art performance that can shift consciousness and uses art as activism. One area she is interested is female empowerment. As women’s bodies are often exploited, cheapened and commodified in the digital age, Chanje wants to use aerial arts and digital projection technology to show a different representation of women, that we are celestial bodies as magnificent as any cosmic nebula?
