NTU

Ache-filled elegies, knuckle-dragging beats, and ethereal electronics comprise Ntu’s singular brand of R&B, rock, and soul: where the visceral meets the cerebral. The antidisciplinary artist, born to South African immigrants, mastered a range of dance styles while growing up in Virginia. Over a decade’s worth of rigorous performance training honed Ntu’s live experience into a transcendent amalgam of song, dance, theater, and visual splendor unmatched in the contemporary pop landscape. In reverence of the ecological and the Black subject’s dissolution into it, Ntu’s world is poetic and animate, replete with sensual matter.

Transcript

My name is NTU and I'm based in Brooklyn, New York. My style of movement is really informed by contemporary dance and hip hop dance. You know when you train in dance, for a while and you're told, this is first and like, this is first. And, you know, there's this, there's this focus on just getting the technique down. Then there's also like "Yeah, there's grea"t, it's great that there's that foundation, but then you also need to learn that all that stuff is also made up, you know, and also comes from a very, like, European like, you know, kind of background. Every, every type of movement that you want to incorporate like a piece or in some kind of presentation is just that, that movement needs to be intentional, needs to communicate what you want to communicate, emotionally, or in terms of a story.

What I appreciated from my studio is that hip hop was taught by black people at that studio, and it was taught by black people who like just you know hip hop was a part of their life. So for me that relationship is really about another type of way that I can interact with the world, and it's another way I can interact with music and it's another way I can interact with people. Another way I can interact with myself and you know express myself.

I think like I have, like, moments of liberation literally went on like a moment on stage, where I'm like dancing and I'm like... caught it! Or like singing... caught it! Or I'm like producing a song... caught it! or talking with my friends. I think one thing that's been important for me is like, representing in my works, this idea of like, you know, I believe in this, this idea or this space, or the sound that I'm creating that I'm sharing, and I believe in this so much and I care about it so much, and I care so much that you're engaging with it. and I hope that allows people to equally care about their own investment.

Yeah, I think there's so much about finding the truth about the world is just investing oneself in it outside of the way that society or government or anything like that is organized.