Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T07:44:04.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

CHOREOGRAPHIC PERFORMANCE, GENERATIONS AND THE ART OF LIFE IN POST-COLONIAL DAKAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2014

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article looks at three generations of choreographic performers in urban Senegal to examine the creative ways in which people develop their bodily skills, not only for the pleasure of innovation, but also to ‘make their way into the world’. In so doing, they produce new social spaces and engage with a multiplicity of existing ones. I suggest that this multiple engagement characterizes contemporary urban Africa, where social mobility is conceived of as multiplying the possibilities of building a decent life in spite of economic hardship. In West Africa, this is in continuity with a long history of social mobility achieved through travel and the acquisition of new skills. Through a multiple engagement with different genres, performers also experiment with new ways of producing choreographic work. At every juncture, the social spaces thus produced either intensify or reduce the connections with global spaces already laid out by previous generations.

Résumé

Cet article s'appuie sur les trajectoires de trois générations d'artistes chorégraphiques en milieu urbain sénégalais pour examiner les stratégies créatives par le biais desquelles les jeunes développent leurs compétences corporelles. Ces stratégies sont mises en œuvre, non seulement pour le plaisir de l'innovation, mais aussi se ‘frayer un chemin vers le monde’. Ces artistes produisent alors de nouveaux espaces sociaux, tout en se branchant sur de multiples espaces existants. Cet article suggère que ce type d'engagement multiple est caractéristique de l'Afrique urbaine contemporaine, où la mobilité sociale se conçoit en termes d'une multiplication des opportunités en dépit des difficultés économiques. En Afrique de l'Ouest, ce type de stratégie représente une continuité avec une longue histoire de mobilité sociale réalisée par le voyage et l'acquisition de nouvelles compétences. D'autre part, à travers leur engagement avec un large répertoire de genres, les danseurs expérimentent avec de nouveaux modes de production chorégraphique. A chaque période charnière, les espaces sociaux ainsi produits intensifient ou réduisent les connexions avec des espaces mondiaux déjà établies par les générations précédentes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 36 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abbink, J. and van Kessel, I. (2005) Vanguards or Vandals: youth politics and conflict in Africa. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Benga, A. N. (2002) ‘Dakar et ses tempos: significations et enjeux de la musique urbaine moderne (1960–années 1990)’ in Diop, M. C. (ed.), Le Sénégal Contemporain. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Carling, J. (2002) ‘Migration in the age of involuntary immobility: theoretical reflections and Cape Verdean experiences’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28 (1): 5–42.Google Scholar
Castaldi, F. (2006) Choreographies of African Identities: négritude, dance, and the National Ballet of Senegal. Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Christiansen, C., Utas, M. and Vigh, H. E. (2006) Navigating Youth, Generating Adulthood: social becoming in an African context. Stockholm: Elanders Gotab AB.Google Scholar
Dance, Umbrella (2009) ‘A brief encounter with … Kaolack (Senegal) – J'Accuse’. <http://www.danceumbrella.co.uk/jaccuse>, accessed 11 July 2013., accessed 11 July 2013.' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Dance,+Umbrella+(2009)+‘A+brief+encounter+with+…+Kaolack+(Senegal)+–+J'Accuse’.+,+accessed+11+July+2013.>Google Scholar
Diop, A.-B. (1981) La Société Wolof: systèmes d'inégalité et de domination. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Drewal, M. T. (1991) ‘The state of research on performance in Africa’, African Studies Review 34 (3): 1–64.Google Scholar
Durham, D. (2000) ‘Youth and the social imagination in Africa: introduction to Parts 1 and 2’, Anthropological Quarterly 73 (3): 113–20.Google Scholar
Gore, G. (2001) ‘Present texts, past voices: the formation of contemporary representations of West African dances’, Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, T. (1999) Griots and Griottes. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Harney, E. (1996) ‘“Les chers enfants” sans papa’, Oxford Art Journal 19 (1): 42–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harney, E. (2004) In Senghor's Shadow: art, politics and the avant-garde in Senegal, 1960–1995. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Honwana, A. and De Boeck, F. (2005) Makers and Breakers: children and youth in postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Irvine, J. T. (1989) ‘When talk isn't cheap: language and political economy’, American Ethnologist 16 (2): 248–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jonsson, G. (2011) ‘Non-migrant, sedentary, immobile, or “left behind”? Reflections on the absence of migration’, International Migration Institute Working Paper No. 39, <http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/pdfs/imi-working-papers>, accessed 31 October 2013.,+accessed+31+October+2013.>Google Scholar
Lefebvre, H. (1974) La Production de l'Espace. Paris: Anthropos.Google Scholar
Massey, D. B. (1991) ‘A global sense of place’, Marxism Today (June): 24–9.Google Scholar
Massey, D. B. (1994) Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Mbembe, A. (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Neveu Kringelbach, H. (2013) Dance Circles: movement, morality and self–fashioning in urban Senegal. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Reynolds Whyte, S., Alber, E. and van der Geest, S. (2008) ‘Generational connections and conflicts in Africa: an introduction’, in Alber, E., van der Geest, S. and Reynolds Whyte, S. (eds), Generations in Africa. Berlin: LIT Verlag.Google Scholar
Schumann, A. (2012) ‘A generation of orphans: the socio-economic crisis in Côte d'Ivoire as seen through popular music’, Africa, 82 (4): 535–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simone, A. (1998) ‘Urban social fields in Africa’, Social Text 56: 71–89.Google Scholar
Snipe, T. D. (1998) Arts and Politics in Senegal, 1960–1996. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Sylla, A. (1994 [1978]) La Philosophie Morale des Wolof. Dakar: IFAN.Google Scholar
Tamari, T. (1997) Les Castes de l'Afrique Occidentale. Nanterre: Société d'Ethnologie.Google Scholar
Vigh, H. E. (2006) Navigating Terrains of War: youth and soldiering in Guinea-Bissau. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Weiss, B. (2009) Street Dreams and Hip Hop Barbershops: global fantasy in urban Tanzania. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
White, B. (2002) ‘Congolese rumba and other cosmopolitanisms’, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 42 (168): 663–86.Google Scholar
Wright, B. (1989) ‘The power of articulation’ in Arens, W. and Karp, I. (eds), Creativity of Power: cosmology and action in African societies. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Wulff, H. (1998) Ballet across Borders: career and culture in the world of dancers. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar