Create Your Space!' Locating Contemporary Dance in Ouagadougou

Bibliographic Data

ID2102937
AuthorsNadine Sieveking (0000-0003-0501-2978, Leipzig University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume84
Issue1
Pages55-77
Publication date2014-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfrica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972013000661
OpenAlexW2035796643
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited13

Since the turn of the century contemporary dance has been gaining momentum as a pan-African artistic movement in which a new generation of performers is engaging. In contrast to more popular forms of 'traditional' or 'modern' performance genres, this new movement has evolved within the cosmopolitan urban elite and is driven by processes of professionalization that lead to the creation of new, border-crossing artistic spaces. These spaces are characterized by new boundaries and inequalities, related to various modes of distinction reflecting the shifting grounds of social status - gendered, generational, knowledge-based and economic. Taking an artistic 'capacity-building' project targeting female dancers in West Africa as an entry point, the article analyses how the practice of contemporary dance in Ouagadougou leads to the emergence of a translocal social space embedded in a dense network of transnational relations and connected to global art worlds. It is argued that the unequal power relations characterizing the professional art world of contemporary dance reflect the tensions and contradictions of local urban societies in the making and at the same time contribute to a reconfiguration of urban spaces where new forms of rooted cosmopolitanism can be invented

Aesthetics · Art · Contemporary dance · Cosmopolitanism · Dance · Elite · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Professionalization · Social science · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Visual arts · African Studies and Ethnography · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Gender Studies · Law · North African History and Literature

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