Talking Black Dance: Inside Out
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CONVERSATIONS ACROSS THE FIELD OF DANCE STUDIES Talking Black Dance: Inside Out OutsideSociety of Dance InHistory Scholars 2016 | Volume XXXVI Table of Contents A Word from the Guest Editors ................................................4 The Mis-Education of the Global Hip-Hop Community: Reflections of Two Dance Teachers: Teaching and In Conversation with Duane Lee Holland | Learning Baakasimba Dance- In and Out of Africa | Tanya Calamoneri.............................................................................42 Jill Pribyl & Ibanda Grace Flavia.......................................................86 TALKING BLACK DANCE: INSIDE OUT .................6 Mackenson Israel Blanchard on Hip-Hop Dance Choreographing the Individual: Andréya Ouamba’s Talking Black Dance | in Haiti | Mario LaMothe ...............................................................46 Contemporary (African) Dance Approach | Thomas F. DeFrantz & Takiyah Nur Amin ...........................................8 “Recipe for Elevation” | Dionne C. Griffiths ..............................52 Amy Swanson...................................................................................93 Legacy, Evolution and Transcendence When Dance Voices Protest | Dancing Dakar, 2011-2013 | Keith Hennessy ..........................98 In “The Magic of Katherine Dunham” | Gregory King and Ellen Chenoweth .................................................53 Whiteness Revisited: Reflections of a White Mother | Joshua Legg & April Berry ................................................................12 Esther Baker-Tarpaga.....................................................................106 Embodied Knowledge: TALKING BLACK DANCE: OUTSIDE IN ..............62 Contributors ............................................................................... 111 Katherine Dunham Modeling the Retrieval and News “Inside/Outside/In” | Transformation of African Ritual Dance | SDHS Awards ................................................................................ 114 Neith S. Sankofa ..............................................................................16 Takiyah Nur Amin & Thomas F. DeFrantz ........................................64 Pivot, Pivot, Run, and Jump: the Choreography of SDHS Publications ......................................................................... 115 Junkanoo and Carnival as Theoretical Frameworks: A Basketball as Art and Sport | Maura Keefe ...........................65 Pedagogical Narrative | A’keitha Carey ...................................19 Noir? Forthcoming Conferences ............................................................. 116 Decolonizing Alliances: The Terms of World Dance in Choreographies of Blackness by Sonya David Roussève/ REALITY’s Saudade | Lindfors | Hanna Järvinen .............................................................70 Alessandra Williams .........................................................................26 Congregating on Denzel: Niv Acosta’s Deconstruction “Passing Out” | Mark Broomfield .................................................32 of Black Masculinity | Doran George .......................................76 Getting Down with Social Uplift: The Meaning of Dynamic Traditions in Kimberly Miguel Mullen’s Cover photograph: Dancing For Justice, December 13, 2014, the Waltz to African-American Southern Debutantes | Yemanja, Mother of the Deep | Elyan Hill ...................................81 Philadelphia PA, courtesy of Aidan Un. Avis Hatcher Puzzo ..........................................................................34 PAGE 2 2016 | Volume XXXVI www.sdhs.org PAGE 3 A Word from the Guest Editors Dear Reader, This special edition of Conversations Across the Field of Dance founding members of CADD are Thomas F. DeFrantz, Takiyah Nur field. In some ways, we’ve imagined poles of attraction around those of Studies grows from exchanges inspired by the Collegium for African Amin, Raquel Monroe, Andrea E. Woods Valdés, Makeda Thomas, us “born into” modes of Black dance practice who continue to work as Diaspora Dance (CADD) conference Dancing the African Diaspora: C. Kemal Nance, Jasmine Johnson, John Perpener, Carl Paris, Ava artists and researchers, and those of us who “discover” Black dance Theories of Black Performance held at Duke University February LaVonne Vinesett, Shireen Dickson, and Will Rawls. at some point to realize its prodigious capacities, and then go on to 7–9, 2014. That event grew from a meeting convened in April 2012, document and relate that information to others. Our separation along The 2014 conference has already produced a special issue of The when the founding members of CADD— then called the African Dance these axes is entirely speculative, and we intend to suggest a variety Black Scholar titled Black Moves: New Research in Black Dance Research Group—convened in Durham, sponsored by SLIPPAGE: of approaches to curating literary work concerned with performance. Studies (46.1, 2016) edited by DeFrantz and Tara Aisha Willis. The Performance|Culture|Technology, to discuss current research projects essays gathered here in this Conversations issue include adaptations Our thanks to SDHS Editorial Board and especially Sarah Davies and share ambitions for developing a group of scholars working in of other presentations from the 2014 conference, augmented by Cordova for her prodding and oversight. Sanja Andus L’Hotellier the areas of African diaspora dance. We envisioned a space where contributions made in response to a call for participation issued on provided expert editorial guidance, aided by Rebecca Rossen, our work in corporeality studies, Black Dance, sexualities and dance, our behalf by SDHS. We note the rich diversity of materials included SDHS Editorial Board Chair. Dasha Chapman has worked with dance historiography, dance and healing, dance and pedagogy, the here: ethnography and interview; movement description and cultural us on the details with vigor and care. Sally Kornbluth, Provost of businesses of dance, and an array of other related topics could benefit analyses; poetry and phenomenological assessments of dance Duke University, has supported this project, as has SLIPPAGE: from our collective engagement. activism. The contributors come from a variety of relationships to Performance|Culture|Technology, directed by Thomas F. DeFrantz. The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance began the next year, dance scholarship. Some are artists first, some are researchers; some Black Dance: AXE! conceived as an egalitarian community of scholars and artists are senior faculty, while others are junior faculty, working as adjunct Thomas F. DeFrantz & Takiyah Nur Amin committed to exploring, promoting, and engaging African diaspora faculty, or in post-doc positions. We have allowed the wide variety of dance as a resource and method of aesthetic identity. Through approaches and experience to lead the essays forward; they shimmer conferences, roundtables, publications, and public events, we aim to with unexpected heterogeneity and creative impulse. facilitate interdisciplinary inquiry that captures the variety of topics, As editors, we have separated the pieces into two parts: Black Dance: approaches, and methods that might constitute Black Dance Studies. Inside Out and Black Dance: Outside In. We mean for these sections A diverse gathering of dance scholars and community members, to suggest different sorts of primary relationship to Black dance as a CADD produced a second conference February 19–21, 2016. The PAGE 4 2016 | Volume XXXVI www.sdhs.org PAGE 5 Talking Black Dance: Inside Out PAGE 6 2016 | Volume XXXVI www.sdhs.org PAGE 7 CADD 2014. Photo by Alec Himwich. Talking Black Dance we privilege our own sense of professionalism, community, aesthetics, and beautiful surprise! This reality breathes life into me when I am performance and scholarship without explanation or apology. For so navigating challenges in and to my work. I am animated and enlivened Thomas F. DeFrantz & Takiyah Nur Amin many in the field who may be the only one on their university campus most by the possibility that the work we are doing in CADD and with doing this work, CADD is a safe, warm, rigorous, critical space to do our publication projects will ensure that the dance studies of the future TD: Let’s talk Black Dance. I was trained at a time when we said more reliable information from different communities about dance our work. will look and be very different than the white-dominated content I know “African American dance” to be particular, polite, and progressive, so and its circulations, we can understand those geographically-specific African American forms in relation to dancing in other places: the many of us had to master to get to where we are professionally today. we thought. But now, in the 21st century, Black dance is back. Why do TD: Well, this might be one wage—or cost—of the peculiar economies Caribbean, on the continent, in Scandinavia. BLACK asserts these you think, and what sorts of language do you use to describe dances of social disavowal that leads to our need for these Black spaces. None TD: That makes sense: the world of dance studies can feel white- affinities and simultaneously moves the US out of the center of the of the diaspora? of our lives as Black people comes without a high price that we pay dominated—because it actually is—until we figure out how to flip that discussion. Even as we create sites of research within the United daily; maybe CADD suggests a different economy of Black thought