Dance Circles: Movement, Morality and Self-fashioning in Urban Senegal

252 Pages·2013·2.312 MB·English

by  Helene Neveu Kringelbach

Dance Circles
DANCE AND PERFORMANCE STUDIES
General Editors:
Helen Wulff, Stockholm University and Jonathan Skinner, Queen’s University, Belfast
Advisory Board:
Alexandra Carter, Marion Kant, Tim Scholl
In all cultures, and across time, people have danced. Mesmerizing performers and
spectators alike, dance creates spaces for meaningful expressions that are held back in
daily life. Grounded in ethnography, this series explores dance and bodily movement
in cultural contexts at the juncture of history, ritual and performance, including
musical, in an interconnected world.
Volume 1
Dancing at the Crossroads: Memory and Mobility in Ireland
Helena Wulff
Volume 2
Embodied Communities: Dance Traditions and Change in Java
Felicia Hughes-Freeland
Volume 3
Turning the Tune: Traditional Music, Tourism and Change in an Irish Village
Adam Kaul
Volume 4
Dancing Cultures: Globalization, Tourism and Identity in the Anthropology of Dance
Edited by Hélène Neveu Kringelbach and Jonathan Skinner
Volume 5
Dance Circles: Movement, Morality and Self-Fashioning in Urban Senegal
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach
Dance Circles
Movement, Morality and Self-Fashioning in
Urban Senegal
q
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2013 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2013 Hélène Neveu Kringelbach
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Neveu Kringelbach, Hélène, 1969-
Dance circles: movement, morality and self-fashioning in urban Senegal / Hélène
Neveu Kringelbach. -- First edition.
pages cm. -- (Dance and performance studies; volume 5)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-78238-147-1 (hardback: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-78238-148-8
(institutional ebook)
1. Dance--Senegal. 2. Dance companies--Senegal. 3. Performing arts--Senegal.
4. Senegal--Social policy. 5. Senegal--Social life and customs. I. Title.
GV1710.S46N49 2013
793.319663--dc23
2013020236
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper.
ISBN: 978-1-78238-147-1 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-78238-148-8 (institutional ebook)
To my mother, Léone Neveu, and to the memory of Gina Burrows,
who loved a good dance

Contents
List of Figures qx
List of Abbreviations xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: The Shifting Faces of Dance 1
Opening: Kaay Fecc, the ‘festival of all dances’ 2
Moving bodies, self-making and agency 5
Dance and morality 7
The open-endedness of ‘popular culture’ 9
The performance of nationalism and regionalism 10
‘Dance’ and ‘performance’ 11
Anthropology and dance in Africa 13
Writing ‘dance’ in Africa 15
Fieldwork embodied 19
Dance circles in an African city 25
1 Cosmopolitan Performing Arts in Twentieth-Century Senegal 28
Women and griots: echoes of past dance circles 29
Musical theatre between colonial schools and European stages 32
Choreographing the nation 37
The 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts 43
Neo-traditional performance and popular theatre 46
Making Pan-Africanism through dance training 49
Informalization and appropriation 53
Conclusion 57
2 A City across Waters 60
Urban expansion and the formation of middle classes 62
Lebu symbolic power 63
A growing divide 65
Shadows of the Casamance 66
Griots, géwël, artists 69
Conclusion 75
viii ■ Dance Circles
3 Drums, Sand and Persons 77
Style and skill in the dance circle 80
Sabar and the making of persons 83
Afeeru jigéen: from girls to women 86
Perfecting the art of suggestion: married women dancing 89
Invisible men and intermediary categories 91
Conclusion 94
4 Images of a Mobile Youth 98
From cosmopolitan dance crazes to Wolof mbalax 99
Music videos and TV competitions 103
Choreographed masculinities: wrestling and ‘lion game’ 106
Popular dances and Islam 109
Conclusion 116
5 The Politics of Neo-Traditional Performance 121
Bakalama from Thionck Essyl 123
Kañaalen in life and on stage 127
Jola-ness embodied 130
Performative flexibility and generational change 133
Transnational connections 137
Money matters and the social organization of dance troupes 138
The commodification of tradition 142
Conclusion 145
6 Senegalese ‘Contemporary Dance’ and Global Arts Circuits 147
‘African contemporary dance’: African innovation or European
invention? 149
French-funded events and the Senegalese performing world 154
Black bodies on stage and choreographic agency 158
New techniques of transmission 162
Making new selves in the choreographic process 171
Conclusion 175
7 Contemporary Trajectories 178
The contemporary uses of ‘tradition’ 178
The burden of engagement 182
La 5e Dimension 185
Dreams of mobility 189
Bujuman 194
The social lives of performances 199
Cross-cultural collaborations 201
Conclusion 204
Contents ■ ix
8 Movement, Imagination and Self-Fashioning 207
Dance and imagination 209
Professional performance and ‘caste’ 211
Moralities across gender and generation 213
Choreographic artists and the global order 215
Bibliography 217
Index 231
Figures
I.1 Soumbédioune, the Lebu fish market, seen from Fann Hock, 2002q 21
I.2 View of Dakar from Fann Hock in 2002 22
I.3 Views of one of Pikine’s districts in 2003 23
I.4 Dakar and the Cap Vert Peninsula, with main fieldwork sites indicated 24
1.1 An advert for the Ballets Africains published in the New York Times on
1 February 1959 37
1.2 Ousmane Noël Cissé in front of the National Theatre in Dakar, April
2011 40
2.1 Senegal 67
3.1 Three photographs of a tànnibéer in Fann Hock, April 2003 81
5.1 Casamançais wedding in Dakar, January 2004 128
5.2 Bakalama dancers in an ‘animation’ (short piece without a narrative),
Dakar, April 2003 135
6.1 Simone Gomis after a rehearsal with La 5e Dimension Company,
Tubaab Jallaw, July 2002 169
6.2 Fatou Cissé performing Gacirah Diagne’s ‘picc mi’ at the Kaay Fecc
festival, Dakar, May 2003 174
7.1 Front page of the Eau b nite programme for the Lyon Dance Biennale,
September 2006 192
7.2 Bujuman rehearsal, Tubaab Jallaw, July 2002 195
7.3 Bujuman performed at Kaay Fecc festival, Institut Français, Dakar, June
2003 200