Choreographies of African Identities traces interconnected interpretative frameworks around and about the National Ballet of Senegal. Using the metaphor of a dancing circle Castaldi's arguments cover the full spectrum of performance, from production to circulation and reception. Castaldi first situates the reader in a North American theater, focusing on the relationship between dancers and audiences as that between black performers and white spectators. She then examines the work of the National Ballet in relation to Léopold Sédar Senghor's Négritude ideology and cultural politics. Finally, the author addresses the circulation of dances in the streets, discotheques, and courtyards of Dakar, drawing attention to women dancers' occupation of the urban landscape.

This fascinating and well researched study explores the meaning generated by `Africa' and `Blackness' throughout the century. Using literary texts, autobiography, ethnography, and historical documents, African Identities discusses how ideas of Africa as an origin, as a cultural whole, or as a complicated political problematic, emerge as signifiers for analysis of modernity, nationhood and racial difference. Kanneh provides detailed readings of a range of literary texts, including novels by: * Toni Morrison * Alice Walker * Gloria Naylor * Ngugi Wa Thiong'o * Chinua Achebe * and V.S. Naipaul. For anyone interested in literature, history, anthropology, political writing, feminist or cultural analysis, this book opens up new areas of thought across disciplines.

This innovative text provides a range of articles covering choreographic enquiry, investigation into the creative process, and traditional understandings of dance making. Contemporary Choreography features contributions by practitioners and researchers from Europe, America, Africa, Australasia and the Asia-Pacific region, investigating the field in six broad domains: • Conceptual and philosophic concerns • Educational settings • Communities • Changing aesthetics • Intercultural choreography • Choreography’s relationships with other disciplines By capturing the essence and progress of choreography in the twenty-first century this reader supports and encourages rigorous thinking and research for future generations of dance practitioners and scholars.

Cutting across countries, genres, and time periods, this volume explores topics ranging from hip hop’s influence on Maasai identity in current day Tanzania to jazz in Bulawayo during the interwar years, using music to tell a larger story about the cultures and societies of Africa.

The choreographies of Bill T. Jones, Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, Zab Maboungou, David Dorfman, Marie Chouinard, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and others, have helped establish dance as a crucial discourse of the 90s. These dancers, Ann Cooper Albright argues, are asking the audience to see the body as a source of cultural identity — a physical presence that moves with and through its gendered, racial, and social meanings. Through her articulate and nuanced analysis of contemporary choreography, Albright shows how the dancing body shifts conventions of representation and provides a critical example of the dialectical relationship between cultures and the bodies that inhabit them. As a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, Albright turns to the material experience of bodies, not just the body as a figure or metaphor, to understand how cultural representation becomes embedded in the body. In arguing for the intelligence of bodies, Choreographing Difference is itself a testimonial, giving voice to some important political, moral, and artistic questions of our time. Ebook Edition Note: All images have been redacted.

'Choreographies of 21st Century Wars' addresses the interface between choreography and war in this century. The book challenges concepts of choreography as solely a structuring mechanism and an aesthetics of politics that is exclusively resistant. Instead, in the context of 21st-century war, it calls for a rethinking of choreography that incorporates the disorder and dispersion of power away from nation-states, which is central to this century. The collection is composed of an introduction and sixteen essays by individual authors who work across a number of disciplines through field notes, case studies, participant observations, and photographs, as well as essays reflecting on war issues and their relationship to choreographic practices.