Misnomer: Reflections on a Dance Performance

2019

This paper takes a look at the concept of dance history and historiography. I engage with several problematic terms like the universalization or globalisation of most or all Eurocentric historical accounts of certain dance styles, and their existing periods that have served as paradigms or cannons that define a generalised history of dance in or across the world. For the purpose of this study, I also include the field of dance anthropology with its relation to dance as they are both predominantly written and researched Euro-American Scholars. Why do most dance historians not talk about African dances, on the other hand, why are dance anthropologists fascinated be these exotic African dances that dance historians neglect? Who teaches dance history/anthropology in Europe, who are its students and what its major texts are? I also examine the possible challenges historians are likely to face when they attempt to write about African dance or movement practices by looking at why myths, legends and oral literature often associated with Africa as a continent make it a victim of the western kaleidoscope, dance history and historiography. Are both fields of study meant to whet the appetite of the European scholarship and consumer capitalism? If so, this paper makes an attempt to decolonise dance anthropology/history African dance or movement practices I will make reference to some selected African dance styles, a reflexive account of my own personal choreographic experience and also make specific reference to Bata dance from Nigeria.

Academic and intellectual discourses are still riddled with dualism. African dances are no stranger to this polarity. African dance, homogenizing as it sounds, has been widely applied to define, characterize, theorize, claim, and brand a miscellany of dances from different cultures in Uganda. In this talk, I will deconstruct “African dance” as an imaginary concept, which derives homage in western ethnocentrism. It is the concern of this presentation to reveal dance from Africa for what they are: varied, culturally specific, demographically contextualized, and geographically confined. In inverting this conventionally embraced concept, I lean on Edward Said’s theory of orientalism to advance the view that fabricating artistic homogeneity about African dances is not only intellectually and academically problematic, but it also raised questions about representation and appropriation of dance forms from Africa.

ABSTRACT African dance performances have been popularized globally as a result of its initiators’ need for global identity. This has encouraged African dancers and choreographers to create work that address social, cultural and political issues peculiar to the African continent. However, so many debates have arisen to redefine contemporary dance and contemporary African dance. The latter, with a core reference to Africa depicts a dance with its roots and plot structure in Africa. This paper tends to make reflections on the contemporary African dance, especially in Nigeria and its impact on the contemporary Nigerian society who are beginning to understand this new language in the performing arts. It will analyse opinions from the two factions in dance, that is, the ‘distortionist’, who is the contemporary dancer/choreographer or the preserver of culture who is the indigenous dancer/choreographer. Keywords: Contemporary African Dance, Choreographers, Acceptance, Challenges, Growing Trend

Africology, 2018

Journal of African Cultural Studies

The wife whose turn it is that evening, bring her along. No, bring your favourite wife! But that's not sharia't,. No sharia't in the nightclub! This suggestive exchange takes place between Malian eminences grises who, in the 1960s, were members of 'Las Vegas', one of Bamako's many dance societies, as they contemplate a reunion now that they are all in their 60s rather than in the '60s. Back then, scores of young people of Bamako had been photographed by their contemporary Malick Sidibé in their groovy decolonial glory, with thoughts of sharia't seemingly far from their minds. Now those very people were starting their get-together with namaaz, though in a trice the memory of their youth made them break out from the prayer mat to a mean pachanga. The scene is captured in Dolce Vita Africana (Spender 2008), a documentary film on Sidibé's work and times. 1 While his photographic oeuvre shines the spotlight on the camera's role in decolonising an African country, the documentary underlines its collaboration with the dance floor to fashion the euphoric subject of decolonisation, but also that euphoria's afterlife, and dance's ability momentarily to turn back the clock. These themesdance as embodied memory and nostalgia, dance as challenge to linear temporality, dance as a collective social actshape this special issue on dance and decolonisation in Africa. As editors, we drew inspiration from many sources: classic novels that weave music and dance into their evocations of community life, written on the eve or aftermath of decolonisation, for example Camara Laye's L'Enfant Noir (1953), Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat (1967); a new generation which returns to those foundational moments through critical nostalgiasuch as Tunisian filmmaker Moufida Tlatli's depiction of belly dance in The Silences of the Palace (Samt el qusur, 1994); singer-songwriter Paulo Flores's revival of the Angolan dance-music genre semba; and scholarly works that have illuminated such mobilisations of dance and music within the frame of

There is always been a need to bring balance between those who are privileged and those who are oppressed by another’s privilege. Our global society runs deep with people who have made their success off the hard working backs of other people. As a choreographers, one of our missions should be to educate and uplift those who have been dehumanized through systemic oppression. One medium used to educate the oppressed is dance. Traditional African dance forms provides a foundation for creative inquiry that allows for the development of choreography focused on social change. This presentation will focus on the creation of a piece entitled “NAGNOU FECC – The Men Must Dance.” Nagnou Fecc is the Wolof words for "Men Dance". This choreography served as an artistic protest to the increased and rampant assault on the African American male identity. Dr. John Henrik Clark states that "The role of history is to tell a people where they have been, what they've been, where they are and what they are, but most importantly, the role of history (properly learned) tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be." Nagnou Fecc was also a "call-to-arms" for all men willing to put in the work, which stands as a moment in time where differences are put aside all those things that society, religion and ignorance has used to separate men of the African Diaspora.

Africa, 1966

Opening ParagraphWith the exception of such pioneering efforts as Evans-Pritchard's structural functional analysis of the Azande beer dance, which appeared in this journal in 1928, African dance has rarely been the focus of research. Thirty-eight years after that article appeared I can write, as Evans-Pritchard did then, that African dance is usually given a place quite unworthy of its social importance. The typical report on African dance is either a limited, vague description without reference to context, or a discussion of the context of a dance without explicit reference to its function, style, and structure.

Critical Stages , 2024

We have entered a period of high scientific and technological advancements that is shrinking the world and upturning long-held beliefs and ideologies about our culture. Seeing these changes, one is coerced now to ask, "how African is Africa?" or "how traditional is tradition?" These drastic changes on the tripod of complexities, contradictions and chaos have formed the basis of Zygmunt Bauman's use of the term "liquid" and Ziauddin Sardar's "postnormal" to qualify the present epoch which indicates a drastic shift from solid cultural structures to more flexible structures. The indigenous performatives of the African culture are implicated in this change: Can the concepts of African dance serve these postnormal times? Are the canons of postnormality threatening indigenous dances towards extinction, and if so, what ideological and philosophical approach can be injected into the indigenous dances to secure sustainability? The researchers rely on critical theory and observe that if indigenous dances are to survive beyond this millennium, there is a need to rethink the concept, context and content of African dance since the aesthetic, functional and ideological platforms that birthed the pure forms are changing, if not completely eroded. Indigenous dance choreographers as a matter of urgency must begin to engage African dance creations from the points of critical syncretism which allows the choreographer to be flexible enough to align indigenous dances to the realities of contemporary society. The researchers recommend certain areas critical to this transition.

2019

A border can be perceived as a boundary. Whether it is ideological, visual, or emotional, the border emphasizes a division. Some borders unforgivingly prohibit passage to the other side, relegating, in the case of ideology or praxis, two phenomena to retain their separateness. Fortunately, time and again, Africana dance, ideology, and praxis has proven to be comparable to a bulldozer crushing a wall with regard to the ineffectiveness of restriction on this dance form. Africana dance cannot be constrained. The Africana dance form Hip Hop, and the culture that accompanies it, is a case in point. Hip-hop dance has become a global phenomenon, or a boundary crusher. Its practice can be witnessed on the internet in Africa, Europe, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, and its birthplace, the United States. Hip-hop emerged as a result of the experiences of people of African descent in America. However, the narratives that it conveys cannot be contained within the borders of America because they are familiar to people of African descent in all areas of the globe. Borders have historically been a nonfactor with regard to the proliferation, application, and praxis of Africana dance specifically, and Africana performance arts in general.

Notwithstanding Africa's palpable backwardness, paranoia and hesitation in its relations with developed nations in the context of global homogenization in diverse political, economic and cultural spheres, the world however inevitably continues to gravitate from a mono-centric world-system to a poly-centric world-space. In other words, we now speak of cultures rather than culture in the sense of a conglomerate. Given this context, one discernable feature of contemporary dances in Nigeria is that they are no longer constrained by ethnic and national boundaries, or that there is a proliferating dynamics of trans-boundary cultural and material formations. Therefore dances of disparate Nigerian cultures and even beyond have begun to come together across the diverse ethnic configurations. This paper explores cultural syncretization and hybridization in dances in Nigeria as a result of interactions and influences from within and without. The paper shares the view that the " local " is a space in motion and not a silent victim of the " global. " It submits that this development is a positive sign, which could transcend culture, in Africa's interaction on the global stage.