The emergence of contemporary dance in Africa. A history ofDanse l'Afrique danse!biennale

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2173134
AutoresAltaïr Despres (CESSP – European Center of Sociology and Political Science, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France)
Ano2019
Volume31
Fascículo3
Páginas334-351
Data de publicação2019-09-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13696815.2016.1268951
OpenAlexW2567189182
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas14

This essay focuses on the history of the Danse l’Afrique danse! biennale. Created by the French Cultural Cooperation in 1995, this festival is now considered the most important pan-African contemporary dance event. It constitutes a privileged site through which to examine the development of such a choreographic discipline on the African continent, from both political and artistic perspectives. Based on an analysis of the French Ministry of Cooperation’s records, in-depth interviews with professionals and artists involved in the festival and the ethnography of two festival editions, this paper reveals how Western institutions have left their mark on the production of African contemporary dance. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the ‘field’, I argue that, to conquer the international market, dancers have to connect the dominant and legitimate aesthetic currents of the field of contemporary dance that were created in the West with the staging of an urban African identity, in order to distinguish themselves in this very competitive art field. The effect of this, I show, is that African dancers were at times the anonymous instruments of the renewal of French contemporary dance

Aesthetics · Art · Concert dance · Contemporary dance · Dance · Ethnography · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · African Studies and Ethnography · Anthropology · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Identity, and Health