RICE UNIVERSITY The African American Dancing Body: A Site for Religious Experience through Dance

By

Shani Diouf

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

Master of Arts

APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE

Claire Fanger Associate Professor Co-Director of MA Studies

Elias Bongmba

Professor of Religion, Harry & Hazel Chavanne Chair in Christian Theology, Department Chair

Niki Clements Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Assistant Professor of Religion, Allison Sarofim Assistant Professor of Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities, Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Religion

HOUSTON, TEXAS April 2021

Abstract

African American religious dance is not a topic previously explored in detail beyond dance that has historically existed in the church within the confines of Christianity. However the African American religious experience is not limited to Christianity and is inclusive of various religious practices extending beyond the church and thus required deeper exploration of what constitutes an African American religious experience, especially as it relates to dance. In an effort to explore this, careful exploration of the Ring Shout was necessary as a tool in discussing the evolution of the African American religious dances. Using the Ring Shout as a lens for viewing subsequent dances of the diaspora within my thesis, I acknowledge it as the first

African American Religious dance with special emphasis being placed on its purpose and function as a form of communal action and way of achieving oneness by the practitioners, ultimately laying the foundation for subsequent dances. I also include interviews that I conducted with dance practitioners of different dance genres about their perceived notions and personal experiences of what makes a dance religious. I ultimately arrive at a definition of

African American religious dance that is neither aligned with Christianity or any other specific religion but is instead representative of the communal identity of being Black in America and a visual movement manifestation of the wrestling of what that engenders. I ultimately assert that

African American religious dance can be both inclusive of secular dance and a religious experience simultaneously.

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Acknowledgments

I am immensely grateful for this opportunity to confront questions both academic and personal that I have been wrestling with for some time within the confines of my thesis here at

Rice University. I am grateful for each and every professor that I have had the opportunity to study with in the Department of Religion. I have been challenged academically in ways that I did not imagine and for that I am grateful. I would like to thank the members of my committee;

Professor Elias Bongmba thank you for meeting with me and never hesitating to answer my questions and for always having recommendations for me, and even allowing me to borrow books from your personal collection. Professor Niki Clements I so appreciate you creating space within the 19th Century History & Methods Course for me to consistently explore how the topics may relate to dance. Professor Claire Fanger thank you for listening and becoming genuinely interested in my research in an effort to assist me and for constantly challenging me with questions and feedback. I am forever grateful.

I would also like to thank Professors who while not on my committee have contributed to my learning and research in immeasurable ways; Professor Nicole Waligora - Davis whose course in the English Department - Blackness - introduced me to many previously unexplored authors ultimately assisting me in constructing a solid framework for my thesis and Professor

Tony N. Brown in the Department of Sociology who introduced me to the concept of Black

Sociological thought.

I also give special thanks to the dance practitioners who, understanding the importance of my research, allowed me to interview them and answered each question that I had in detail and with patience. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends who have supported me

3 by listening to me talk through much of the content, praying with and for me, and when needed giving me space to sit with my work. I am forever grateful.

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Table of Contents Introduction. Setting the Stage ...... 6 Defining African American Religious Dance ...... 11 Chapter 1: Ring Shout: Embodied Aesthetics: Reaching Back and Moving Forward ...... 18 1.1 Contributing Interview: Tamara Williams ...... 24 Chapter 2: Reimagining Performance in the Context of Performative Death and Suffering .... 33 2.1 The Performative in North America ...... 33 2.2 Embodied Aesthetics in West Africa ...... 40 2.3 Contributing Interview - Germaine Acogny ...... 43 2.4 Contributing Interview – Gideon Alorwoyie...... 49 Chapter 3: Musical Influence ...... 52 3.1 Contributing Interview – Ricco D. Vance ...... 54 Chapter 4: Experiencing Religion in the Body ...... 57 4.1 Contributing Interview – Chris Thomas...... 63 4.2 Hip-Hop Choreography and Religious Experience ...... 71 Conclusion ...... 73

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Table of Figures

Figure 1. Students at The University of North Carolina Charlotte performing William's choreography of the Ring Shout ...... 32 Figure 2. Thomas dancing in the Cypher at The Red Bull Dance Your Style Event ...... 70

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Introduction. Setting the Stage

Honoring both African and European needs, enslaved Africans found ways to shift weight from heels to toes, to insides and outer edges of the feet, moving the feet in various directions, turning toes and knees in and out, sliding, gliding, shuffling, stomping the feet-without ever crossing them or lifting them from the ground. On top of this they articulated the torso and limbs in counter rhythms and different directions, adding syncopations and improvised movements throughout the body. Thus, they were not breaking white Protestant rules-not dancing in a European sense! What they were doing, in an exquisite example of acculturation, was inventing a new dance form!

-Brenda Dixon Gottshchild, The Black Dancing Body: a Geography from Coon to Cool

What is African American religious dance? While terms like Black dance or African

American dance have been used in academic discussion for some time, much of the conversation around African American religious dance focuses on dance in churches or performed in a Christian context, referencing both the historical dance called the Ring Shout, a dance performed by enslaved Africans moving in a counterclockwise circle, or the Shout, a contemporary development of the Ring Shout that does not take place in a circle in the same way the Ring Shout does but is still associated with religion through church settings.

Consideration of the Ring Shout – which I will further examine in Chapter 2 -- is necessary here, not only because it was the earliest form of African American religious dance,1 but also for understanding what constitutes an African American religious experience. Both the Shout and the Ring Shout are referenced as “religious” in the context of Christianity, but a broader perspective is necessary since the African American religious experience is not limited to

1 Barbara S. Glass, African American Dance: An Illustrated History, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc 2012), 32

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Christianity. Can secular dance in the African American community serve the same purpose as the Ring Shout?

My undertaking has both academic and personal implications for me and is in part centered around researching the importance of the Ring Shout specifically for several noted connections to the religious influence in contemporary dances that I have observed in my practice as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher in diverse performance spaces throughout the diaspora.

My thesis, while focusing a significant amount of attention on Saidiyah Hartman’s

Scenes of Subjection to aid in my investigation into why and how African American performance was affected by enslavement, also draws in part on historical recollections of experiences of the enslaved and historical and contemporary reflections on the Ring Shout, the first African

American religious dance. However I am especially interested in the way contemporary African and African American dancers view their own techniques and experiences. Thus in part I draw on interviews with dancers which were meant to elicit reflections on their relation to dance experiences, their sense of their own dancing as it has merged with religious experience, and their sense of the importance of dance in African American culture.

While I will be writing more about the definition of “African American religious dance” throughout this thesis, and will return to this topic many times, for the moment it is enough to suggest that when I use the word “religious” I follow Anthony Pinn, who defines African

American religion as the “quest for complex subjectivity, a desire or feeling for more life

8 meaning.” The “religious” in this sense, per Pinn, is not limited to any particular religious tradition, and is thus useful for my purpose here.2

My thesis argues that the categorization of African American religious dance should not be exclusive to dances in the religious sense or dances that exist within the church since African

American religiosity is strongly embedded in perception of and attention to body, identity, and an embodied experience of moving, in ways that defy dehumanizing depictions of what it means to be African American. I further assert that African American religious dance even within a secular dance genre can be a religious experience fully capable of progressing to a state of trance or progression.

My argument is partly based in my reading of Saidiyah Hartman’s book Scenes of

Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. It is of particular interest because of Hartman’s careful analysis of racial subjugation and its effect on recreation and performance during slavery as well as in the present. Her detailed investigation into the forms of terror and resistance that simultaneously and exuberantly coexisted within various performances of “merriment” by the enslaved helps to construct a baseline understanding of historical as well as contemporary African American religious performance in terms of the duality that exists within it.

It is crucial to understand that the body is the site that holds memory and experiences trauma, and that memory and that trauma become articulated through performance in the

African American community. Additionally, it is important to understand how identity and

2 Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: the Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 173.

9 community, play a role in the aesthetics of African American dance. Hartman’s analysis of issues surrounding the intersection of commodification, control, fungibility, terror, and enjoyment gives special attention to the fact that the enslaved was both a subject and an expendable object to be controlled. Hartman depicts the way the enslaved was made to be afraid but still required to perform merriment, an aspect of freedom. The duality of intention and emotions produced by the stress of this arrangement is evoked in the movements of

African American dances since the Ring Shout, and has, in a sense, become a defining characteristic of African American performance culture, which I will explore further.

By drawing attention to the various atrocities committed against the enslaved as well as focusing on those who witnessed the acts as a form of pleasure and enjoyment, she offers a different perspective to the understanding of performance. Hartman looks carefully at the diverse roles of those witnessing the suffering of the enslaved, as well as the experience of the enslaved being forced to perform in what she refers to as the “pageantry of the coffle” at the slave auction.3 Much effort was made to disguise the horror and sadness that accompanied the auction, including slaveholders enforcing the enslaved to perform happiness by singing, dancing, and “stepping it up lively on the auction block.”4

An understanding of what Hartman refers to as “Innocent Amusements”5 is imperative in the task of defining African American religious experience, especially as it correlates to dance. By “innocent amusements,” Hartman refers to the theatricality of the slave trade.

3 Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, 1st edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).23 4 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 23 5 “Innocent Amusements: The Stage of Sufferance” is the title of chapter 1 in Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection.

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These were forced performances “intended to shroud the violence of the market and deny the sorrow of those sold and their families.”6 Hartman gives the example of William Wells Brown whose job was to prepare the slaves held in the pen for inspection and sale. He explains that before they were exhibited for sale they were dressed and made to dance, jump, and play cards in an effort to make them look cheerful and happy. He noted that he “often set them to dancing when their cheeks were wet with tears.”7 This tactic was often employed by the slaveholders in an “effort to cultivate docile and dutiful slaves,” by promoting what was labeled as the slaves “‘natural gaiety,’” and typically engaging them in forms of music and dance.

Hartman also cites, as one example of many, Solomon Northrup’s narrative of being “spurred by an occasional sharp touch of the lash” as he extracted from his violin “a marvelous quick stepping tune” to which the enslaved were encouraged by the master to dance by the goading of the same lash.8 Such “amusements” were intended to foster a picture of the enslaved as contented, but as she notes, “the contented slave appeared only after he had been whipped into subjection.”9 Hartman’s description of the performance space of the enslaved in such circumstances as the “stage of sufferance” captures how the stage, which we might think of as a site for artistic expression, was simultaneously for the enslaved a site of suffering – though artistic expression may have had a place as well.

Through these ongoing coerced performances of merriment in America, the way African

American performance looked, sounded, and existed underwent a change and African

6 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 36 7 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 37 8 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 43. 9 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 43.

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American dance began to become what it continues in part to be – an artistic expression encompassing the ongoing spiritual and historical communal trauma described in Hartman’s book and experienced daily. From my perspective as a dancer, her observations raised questions such as: What happens to the dance when it is forced? How is the dance affected when terror, fungibility, and enjoyment are all superimposed onto it? Can it continue to function in the same way as it previously did? To what extent does it look the same? and if not, how has it changed? I contend, that while African American dance maintained elements of its primary root in African dance, white preoccupation with enforced merriment along with the trauma of the slave trade ultimately laid the foundation for African American religious dance in the sense I mean to lay out.

Defining African American Religious Dance

Before offering a definition of African American religious dance, we have to look at how religious dance in general has been defined by earlier scholars. While some authors have created categories for understanding religious dance, those categories ultimately serve as broad classifications containing specific cultural traditions of dance. For example Harriet Lihs, dance scholar, author, and professor of dance, categorized religious dance by four types.10 The first is dances of imitation, which refers to dances that depict the imitation of animals based on the belief that these animals are messengers from the spirit world. These dances were

10 Harriet R. Lihs, Appreciating Dance: A Guide to the World’s Liveliest Art (Princeton Book Company Pub., 2009).12- 14

12 performed in an effort to honor and embody the characteristics that the animal possesses. The second category, medicine dances, refers to dances performed by shamans, priests, or priestesses and intended to deliver healing or remove evil from those afflicted. The third category is commemorative dances, which are dances that observe or memorialize important events or milestones in the year or in a person’s life.

Finally, dances for spiritual connection are classified as dances that are spontaneous expressions of gratitude and are essentially dances that are performed in effort to reach a more spiritual plane. Performers often experience a possession or a trance like state with dances in this category. These categories are widely accepted and used in the universal dialogue of religious dances.

It is useful to have broad categories in which to place religious dances; however, these categories do not really help to define “religious dance” as such for two reasons. 1. They do not attempt to delineate the personal or sociocultural reason for the performance of such dances,

Surely the intent of the dancer, as well as the experience of the dance as religious, must be at the heart of defining religious dances as such. 2. They do not attempt to delineate the local religious and cultural implications and expectations of the dance - including communal perception of the body or ways of accessing and communing with the divine that are socially agreed upon within that local religious culture. This means that the definition of what makes a specific movement or dance religious will vary depending on the environment in which it exists as well as the people who are performing the movement and how those people view the body.

In essence, each society decides for itself first if dance can be used in the service of religion and if so, what then that religious dance or movement will be. To qualify as religious in the sense I

13 wish to use here, the dance ultimately is a quest for complex subjectivity. Through the dance the practitioners wrestle against efforts to dehumanize them.11The dance is therefore also a response to the identity of being black in America. This dance, this experience, is “the recognition of and response to the elemental feeling for complex subjectivity and the accompanying transformation of consciousness that allows for the historically manifest battle against the terror of fixed identity.”12

Factors constituting religious dance or movement will also involve many distinctions not present for theatrical dance: distinctions about who is designated to perform the dance (e.g. whether it is performed by a certain gender or age group); about the occasions on which the dance is performed (when crops are failing, after a death or birth); about what is worn during the dance; about the music or song that accompanies the movement; and, finally, about what the purpose or objective of the dance is. Religious dances are created by a community to achieve a specified necessary goal. Unlike theatrical dances, they don’t typically exist on a stage, are communal in nature, and are not for the primary purpose of entertainment. They typically include several nuances of motion that are communally understood. This can look like body language, movements of the body that communicate a message understood by the overall community, but is not necessarily transparent to outsiders.

Dance naturally functions in conjunction with other arts in the service of religion. This means a religious dance may include accompanying songs, musical instruments, and

11 Anthony B. Pinn, “Black Bodies in Pain and Ecstasy: Terror, Subjectivity, and the Nature of Black Religion,” Nova Religio 7, no. 1 (January 2003): pp. 76-89, https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2003.7.1.76, 76. 12 Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: the Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 175.

14 costumes.13 Each community has a collective idea of what is acceptable in relation to specific practices associated with their idea of the divine. The community collectively defines what is appropriate. When it comes to movement of the body there is great variability between religious practices depending on the local culture. This means that religious dance is defined not specifically by the dogma associated with the religion, but by the community in which it exists. This community creation and belonging is evident in the Ring Shout.

In an effort to categorize or define religious dance in the African American community, the Ring Shout is often acknowledged as the first African American religious dance. Its distinctively African movement components survived the Middle Passage and continued in

North America, retaining many aesthetics of religious dances in West African culture; such movements evoked past communal relationships and helped to bind communities of displaced

Africans in the new world.14 Those same aesthetics and movement components were modified to respond to enslavement. The act of moving around in a counterclockwise circle was sacred and familiar to all enslaved ethnic groups in North America. However each group had the opportunity to bring their own unique contributions to the Ring Shout. In this way the Ring

Shout allowed a variety of expressions of individual identity to manifest.15 The Ring Shout was a dance that emerged out of a need to process the trauma inflicted by the atrocious institution of slavery.

13 Anne-Marie (Anjali) Gaston and Tony Gaston, “Dance as a Way of Being Religious,” The Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts (2014) 1 14 Barbara Glass’ African Derived Movement Characteristics in detail in the following chapter 15 Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin': the Old African American Hoodoo System (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 46.

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Modern day representations of the Ring Shout can be seen in many African American churches where the dance does not take place in a counter-clockwise circle; but the fundamental elements of the Ring Shout are still present including percussive accompaniment, shuffling of the feet, shouting, and the possibility of “catching the spirit” or possession.

According to Sterling Stuckey,

[E]ven when black Christians experienced possession, it was mainly in that same circular context where the degree of emotional fervor and the intensity of convulsions- and the particulars of dance that finally give way to them-were also African. Especially in the traditions of Africans in America, passions are unleashed that are to some extent called forth and polarized by oppression.16

In other words, Stuckey asserts that while the Shout maintains elements of West African culture, the oppression that is experienced by African Americans contributes to fervor of the dance and are an integral part of it as well.

However in my expansive definition of African American religious dance, it is possible to include other secular dances that do not originate in the context of a church or religious ceremony . The dance Revelations, choreographed by the late Alvin Ailey in 1960, is one such dance. Ailey was an African American dancer, choreographer, activist and founder of Alvin Ailey

American Dance Theatre (AAADT). He was born in 1931 in Rogers, Texas and used his experiences of growing up in the South to create powerful dances performed by his dance company. Ailey called his choreography in Revelations part of his blood memories, referring to his cultural memories including his family and church. Thomas De Frantz said that Revelations was “designed to suggest a chronological spectrum of Black religious music from the sorrow

16 Sterling Stuckey, “Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America”(New York, Oxford University Press, 2014) 62

16 songs to gospel rock,”17 and that it was a mapping of “rural southern spirituality onto the concert dance stage.”18 DeFrantz goes on to contend that the dance movements which are set to spirituals allowed Ailey to suggest a political collaboration between his performance and the music’s historical legacy. The choreography is intricately connected to the vocal arrangements amplifying the production of the spirituals.19

The use of spirituals, coupled with distinct African derived dance characteristics, call to memory the experience of slavery as well as the Shout. However, the movement, while similar, is also distinctly different than the Shout. The choreography in Revelations is based on modern dance vocabulary, in contrast to the Shout which tends to pull from West African movement.

The movement in Revelations is a style of dancing that consists of syncopated rhythms, undulation, and repetition and is signified as a means of calling forth or catching the spirit. The dramatic movements in Revelations imply mind and spirit release and act as a metaphor for human longing for aspirations beyond what exists.20 I do not suggest that Revelations should be considered an African American religious dance because of the movement vocabulary, musical accompaniment, or costumes; rather, it is an African American religious dance because of the intention, purpose, or function of the dance. The movements effortlessly and naturally articulate the history of a people originating in African while simultaneously expressing the experience of being black in America including everything that experience engenders. It is also a dance that counters the oppression and trauma associated with the experience of being black

17 Thomas F. DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2006). 3 18 DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations, 3 19 DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations, 14 20 Brenda Dixon Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 260

17 in America; essentially it is a quest for complex subjectivity while synchronously exhibiting hope in the salvation of God.

It is my assertion that African American religious dance can therefore be defined as dance that addresses and ameliorates the condition of being African American. It is dance that explores ancestral memories through movement, and redresses and affirms the pained and objectified body. It is a vehicle providing hope and a way of accessing and communing with the divine. It is not bound by dogma or a specific religious practice but is instead confined to a communal experience of what it means to be a Black person in America. It can be performed by anyone, not only African Americans; however those executing the movement do need to have an intimate understanding of the meaning behind the movement to successfully perform the dances. As Brenda Dixon Gottschild said “…spirit shows up wherever and whenever sublime dancing occurs…”21 Additionally, as we can see in Revelations African American religious dance does not have to be restricted to a specified genre of movement. It may manifest as different styles not limited to African diasporic movement but inclusive of all movement that addresses the condition of being a Black person in America. Adding non- traditional secular dance styles to the conversation about African American religious dance is imperative since the basis of what defines this category is not codified based on genre alone.

21 Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body, 262

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Chapter 1: Ring Shout: Embodied Aesthetics: Reaching Back and Moving Forward

The enslaved body was the vessel that held the memories of more peaceful times in

Africa as well as the site that nurtured the future possibilities. It was the site of need, desire, and pleasure. The body was also the site of violence and trauma. It existed as a vessel of communication, a bridge between the living and the dead. Of particular significance is an understanding of the complicated issues impressed upon the body because of institution of slavery and the abuse associated with it. This abuse made a lasting mark on the Black dancing body and the way it existed in performance. Because the enslaved body was simultaneously a subject and an object --stolen from one environment to be treated as a fungible commodity in another -- they had to reinvent for themselves what a religious experience was and the primary focus was on ways of redressing the body, the site of trauma. As Anthony Pinn put it:

…religious experience, when viewed in light of the black body and its struggle against

the social system, entails a stylized movement against warped depictions of African

identity, against limitations on being.22

One of the ways that the enslaved practiced redressing of the body was through praise meetings in which the enslaved could sing, dance, and pray. These could be considered one of the most direct expressions of redressing and attending to the pained and traumatized body.

22 Anthony B. Pinn, “Black Bodies in Pain and Ecstasy: Terror, Subjectivity, and the Nature of Black Religion,” Nova Religio 7, no. 1 (January 2003): pp. 76-89, https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2003.7.1.76, 83.

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Using what was available to them, the enslaved Africans in the Americas created a movement practice that honored their traditions and practices while including newly introduced ones.

Thus, the first visual, embodied representation through religious dance of the condition of being African American was the Ring Shout. Careful examination of the Ring Shout gives insight into the intricate relationship between African American religious dance and the African

American experience. While practitioners tried to adhere to the Christian rules regarding dance, the dance includes a number of what Barbara Glass terms “African derived dance characteristics” such as call and response, polyrhythm, percussion, orientation to the earth, and improvisation.

These “African derived dance characteristics” are outlined in her book, African American

Dance: An Illustrated History as follows:23 Orientation to the earth can be understood as movement of the body that is closer to the ground. This style of moving is opposite to the

European way of moving which typically has an orientation upward as seen in ballet. Glass also speaks of improvisation which can be understood as creativity, innovation, and spontaneity in

African derived movement forms. She also mentions the importance of community. The concept of community refers to a specific group’s culture and way of living. Many villages employ a communal philosophy but more importantly, the term “community” speaks to the way dance and performance exists. In a communal performance environment, the performer is not separate from the audience. The audience often times has knowledge of the songs, dances, and meaning associated with the performance. The audience will also take part in the performances as well and often times can be called into the performance to dance or

23 Glass, African American Dance. 13

20 participate in varying ways. Another characteristic that Glass describes is polyrhythm which refers to the layered percussive patterns that are part of the musical accompaniment.

A typical rhythm may consist of a master drum patterns that are part of the musical accompaniment. These master drum patterns will communicate messages to the performers, but there will also be several supporting drum patterns, each one playing an individual accompanying rhythm that supports the master drum patterns. Additionally, there may be a bell played, keeping the time much like a metronome would. Competition is also another important characteristic in African derived movement. This competitiveness does not exist in a negative way but rather serves to reinforce the characteristics of community and of call and response - another characteristic referring to the call of a song or dance movement and the repetition that follows when the dancers or singers respond with a movement or song as well.

These African derived dance characteristics are present in various ways in African American dance.

Enslaved Africans retained these African derived dance characteristics in their bodies.

The coerced performances, “stepping it up lively,”24 as well as the secret praise meetings including the Ring Shout, included these movement characteristics since this was their natural way of dancing. However while African derived dance characteristics were present in the performance of the movement, the enslaved also embodied a new way of moving informed by trauma, violence, pain, and memories of ancestral traditions.25 Dance was used as a tool of survival and activism, as well as a way to experience and manifest aspects of their true

24 A phrase reiterated passim in Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, e.g. pp 23, 36, 37. 25 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 72

21 individual and communal identities, as well as counter the narrative that they were replaceable objects.26 Albert Raboteau in his book Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the

Antebellum South likened the Ring Shout to a two- way bridge connecting the core of West

African religions-possession by the gods – to the core of evangelical Protestantism.27

African aesthetics within the confines of coerced or forced performance also created possibilities for subversion of the enslaved state. Dance became a form of slave agency and the

Ring Shout was slave agency in practice, providing a vehicle of communal action. Sterling

Stuckey referred to the Ring Shout as “the key to understanding the means by which they achieved oneness in America.”28 His use of the word oneness refers to the sense of community that was created within and through the practice of the Ring Shout. The enslaved believed they could not serve God properly without stealing away to the woods to pray the way they wanted.

The dance was a form of redressing the pained body and regaining a sense of control over it which created a new way of moving and a new form and function of the dances previously executed.

Dr Katrina Hazzard – Donald in her book Mojo Workin’ The Old African American Hoodoo

System describes what she calls Hoodoo as “the folk, spiritual controlling, and healing tradition originating among and practiced primarily, but not extensively, by captive African Americans and their descendants primarily in the southern United States.”29 Her definition of Hoodoo encompasses traditional west and central African practices merged into life in the Americas.

26 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 21 27 Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004), 73. 28 Stuckey, Slave Culture, 11 29 Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’ The Old African American Hoodoo System (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 2

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She goes on to specify that hoodoo religion “involved spirit possession, ancestor reverence, water immersion, herbal medicine, sacred music, circle dancing, and shaman priests who functioned in a variety of roles, including that of leader in religious activity such as role model in the sacred ritual of the Ring Shout.”30 Hazzard-Donald’s definition of hoodoo religion as being created by African Americans and connected to west and central Africa emphasizes the importance of sacred music and dance in the form of the Ring Shout to the religion which she defines for the purpose of her study as “a coherent personal or institutionalized system of spiritual belief and practice.”31 The assertion that African Americans created a new religion based on their previous religion including the specific practices outlined within that religion has implications for many contemporary music and dance influences in the African American community.

The Ring Shout has had an immense effect on African American religious practices.

According to Art Rosenbaum, the Ring Shout has been maintained as a continuous tradition in the Bolden community in Coastal Georgia since slavery.32 He describes the performance tradition he witnessed there as involving “An impressive fusion of call-and-response singing, polyrhythmic percussion, and expressive and formalized dancelike movements.”33 Some of these elements have also been retained in the contemporary religious dance derived from it, the Shout, that is found in many southern churches today. The Shout, however, is not associated with movement in a counterclockwise circle typical of the Ring Shout. Once the

30 Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’, 3 31 Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’, 3 32 Art Rosenbaum et al., Shout Because You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2013). 1 33 Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free, 1.

23 dance was moved into the church the space did not accommodate moving in a circle. W.E.B.

Dubois when speaking of the Shout said,

Finally, the Frenzy or Shouting, when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the silent rapt countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad abandon of physical fervor,-the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro and wild waving arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision and the trance.34

As this description shows, the Shout allowed the enslaved to move in ways that defied

Protestant and Puritan restrictions on dancing. The dance gave the body permission to be a vessel of communication with God, to move in communion with the divine, countering the

Christian characterization of the body as tainted by sin, an obstacle to be overcome in order to receive the benefits of heaven. Beginning in 1740 due to the Great Awakening, many African

Americans were “lifted to new heights of religious excitement” and converted to Christianity by

Baptist and Methodist preachers.35 As the enslaved were introduced to and forced to practice

Christianity, they began a syncretic process of combining themes of freedom, salvation, and transcendence that could be found in many biblical stories with elements of their previous traditional practices including communal perception of the body, and synthesizing those notions within the Christian practice. While they did not allow their culture to die completely, it was unavoidable that changes occurred in the African American religious experience. Barbara

Glass noted how “the dance became part of the new religion, adapting itself so effectively that

34 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (OUP Oxford, 2007). 129 35 Albert J. Raboteau. Slave Religion : the “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South / Albert J. Raboteau. Updated edition. Oxford ;: Oxford University Press, 2004.

24 it was no longer even recognized as dance.”36 She goes on to state, “dance was considered sinful. The ring shout however, was not considered dance by the church nor by secular society as long as the feet were not crossed or lifted from the floor.”37 The Ring Shout was a practice that borrowed from the qualities of dance and performance in Africa but it also attended to the needs of the enslaved body on the plantation. It was therapy and prayer hidden in religious dance, the first African American religious dance. As Rosenbaum has already indicated, this dance has survived and is still practiced in some places. One of the people currently keeping the tradition of the Ring Shout alive is Tamara Williams.

1.1 Contributing Interview: Tamara Williams

Professor Tamara LaDonna Williams also known as (Ifákẹmí Ṣàngóbámkẹ́ Moṣebọlátán)́ , interviewed for the purpose of this thesis is an integral voice to add to the dialogue. Since 2015 she has been Assistant Professor of Dance at The University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her contributions to the dance community extend beyond academia and reach into the local community as well. She teaches to college students at UNC Charlotte and she also teaches several community workshops open to all ages and levels titled “African American Ring Shout” which is a rare dance class offering, especially considering the history and nature of the dance historically occurring on plantations in the south and practiced by the enslaved in the same location where she was born and raised. She has also created field trips for her students at the university where they have visited the plantations in Charlotte and Beauford. As she explained

36 Glass. African American Dance, 40 37 Glass. African American Dance, 40

25

“Charlotte is interesting, because it has a rich history, but it also has a direct relation to my research.”38

Born and raised in Augusta Georgia, Williams recalls going to Spring Grove Baptist

Church with her grandmother in South Carolina when she was very young. The church was also her great grandmother’s church as well and while the church has since relocated, it has been in existence for over 100 years. Williams grew up Baptist and explains that she was fascinated by the stories in the Bible. She remembers always having questions about ancestors and nature that she felt were not answered within the church and so eventually she stopped regularly attending church. In college she began reading and researching religion and while she obtained a B.F.A. in dance from Florida State she also actually minored in religion and theology which allowed her to further probe and investigate some of the questions that she had.39 After graduating from Florida State she moved to New York to pursue a career as a professional dancer where she danced with companies such as Alpha Omega and Urban Bush Women’s apprentice company. This is when she also took time to focus on and gain an understanding of

West African dances. Williams explains that she became “interested in dancing movements that were inspired by African diaspora culture.”40

It was in New York that she went to a Babalawo, or high priest, for a cowrie shell reading after having issues with housing and being directed to him for help. The reading is a traditional way of foretelling events in a person’s life. After her reading she began connecting with the

38 Ssalvato. “Tamara Williams.” https://coaa.uncc.edu/spotlights/tamara-williams, February 4, 2021. https://coaa.uncc.edu/spotlights/tamara-williams. 39 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020. 40 Lea Bekele. Tamara Williams' Upcoming African Dance Showcase Honors Enslaved Ancestors, https://qcnerve.com/tamara-williams-african-dance-showcase/. (accessed February 16, 2021).

26

Santeria and Lukumi Orisa community in New York. This led to her traveling to Brazil where she had more experiences with Orisa ceremonies. The term Orisa was designated by the Yoruba exclusively referring to the divinities.41 When the term is applied to a person “it carries the connotation that he derives his authority to rule from the divinities and ultimately from the

Diety…”42 Williams, when speaking specifically about the process of Orisa ‘mounting’ people, calls it a “prayer, offering, or a meditation” and stresses that it is deeply tied to the spiritual practice. She continues to explain that In Yoruba culture “everything has a spirit, including dance“; she continues:

The drum has a spirit, the sound has a spirit, the body has a spirit. So, it’s deeper than just dancing for pleasure or dancing for entertainment. It’s really to call on Spirits or to heal the body. So for that reason I don’t call it, in a religious setting, dance.43

Thus she believes that the dance that occurs in the process of being mounted is a prayer of the body.

While doing a genealogical search of her ancestors she went as far back as 1823 and was able to connect her family to churches in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. She began to wonder why the old cultural performances coming from Africa were not as present in the

United States as they are clearly present in the other places that she has visited in the diaspora.

While visiting the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston as part of her research, she saw something on one of the walls about the Ring Shout and on the same wall she saw something about candomblé in Brazil which prompted her to do further research. She then made

41 Emanuel B. Idowu, Olódùmarè God in Yoruba Belief (London: Longmans, 1966), 59. 42 Idowo. Olódùmarè God in Yoruba Belief, 61 43 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.

27 connections to what she saw people doing at her 92 year-old grandmothers church when she was young and observed dances in a circle on a wooden floor in the basement at the church.

She thus defines the Ring Shout as an ancestral dance as opposed to a Christian dance.

Williams traveled from Charleston to Beauford to Savannah where she visited plantations and asked to see records and books. She acknowledged that her appointment at the University of

North Carolina gave her access that she may not have otherwise had. She observed drawings of people moving in circles which she believes was drawings of the Ring Shout. She also visited praise houses in Charleston such as The Moving Star Hall Praise House. All of these experiences helped her to put some of the historical pieces together. She had been observing dance since she was around the age of four in her church in what she calls the back woods of South Carolina where there was always food being served while people danced in circles. She spoke of her grandmother’s church, distinctly recalling the importance of the wooden floors and how integral they were to the elders. The elders felt the wood floor was their connection to the rhythm. Williams confirms that the ring shout is still thriving in this area particularly with The

Moving Star Hall Praise House which has been there since early 1900’s. The Ring Shout has been passed down from generation to generation within this group where they still practice it on wooden floors with sticks. She explains that Pastor Jackie Jefferson at The Moving Star Hall

Praise House told her that the Ring Shout is improvisational - meaning that it is not choreographed or set movement and that it is a dance that you can add your own style or movements to.

Williams has witnessed people being mounted, or possessed, in her travels to several places including Trinidad, Jamaica, Brazil, and Nigeria. She describes it as a spontaneous

28 occurrence but also one that usually occurs when a certain incantation or song is sung. She has also witnessed a person who is currently mounted by an Orisa holding or hugging a different person, causing the other person to become mounted, essentially transferring possession from one person to the next.

Williams has been Initiated into Ifa and the cult of Sango, making her a child of Sango.

She is an Ifa practitioner, a Iyanifa which she explains as one who cares for Ifa- which also means that people may consult her for guidance and assurance about their future.44 The title

“Iya” is a term of endearment for a woman who is respected. Essentially, she is a priestess and explains that as a priestess she is required to aid those who may come to her for help. She clarifies that her responsibility as a Iyanifa and Oni Sango (priestess of Sango) is one where she

“utilizes dance as a form of educating people and sharing and honoring and giving respect to the Orisa.”45 Her title as Iyanifa or priestess along with her teaching and artistic practices have provided avenues for her to create better understanding of the connections between different movement and religious practices within the diaspora.

She reveals that she has encountered a fear in the Christian community regarding anything associated with Voodoo. Her work attempts to disperse of some of the fears that people may have. Besides teaching workshops about the Ring Shout, she also teaches workshops titled “Movement Inspired by Orisa.” Williams says “I do still go to church from time to time when I’m in Georgia…only because I’m expected to by my family.”46 Despite the fact that she has experienced a conversion and now identifies as an Ifa practitioner, she does

44 E. Bolaji Idowu B.D. Ph.D, Olódùmaré God in Yoruba Belief (London: Longmans, 1966) 77-78 45 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020. 46 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.

29 explain that listening to the Black hymns and the Black choirs in the Baptist church touch her heart and spirit deeply. Aside from that, she has completely aligned herself with Ifa since her conversion.

Williams also practices candomblé since her husband and drummer is Brazilian. Not all dance that she has witnessed in the varying religious environments is considered a prayer to her. She explains that Samba is a dance that occurs when women want to show their beauty or show who they are. In these moments of women dancing Samba to show their beauty, she does not acknowledge the dances that happen as a prayer. However she explains that there are infinite numbers of movements that happen in these “movement prayers” irrespective of the location, and that the movements are specific and codified so that you can determine which

Orisa are being represented by the gestures and movements of the arms and legs. Therefore, the knowledge of the movements associated with each Orisa is communal; the meaning of the movements can be identified by the overall community, meaning that these movements essentially comprise a vernacular language. She discussed the idea of the sacred as universal and noted that evocations of the sacred can sometimes be used in secular environments depending on the performers and audience. She also associates the idea of prayer with the moment before a person is mounted when they are dancing and honoring the Orisa.

Williams has experienced being mounted herself and explains that this has occurred in different places. She has experienced becoming possessed at home, during religious ceremonies where chanting has occurred, and also in a dance class which was brought about by the playing of a spiritual instrument being used within the class. Williams asserts that the

30 repetition of sound helps the Orisa to “arrive” and the mounting to happen. She compares this to the phenomenon that historically happened within the Ring Shout:

Ring Shout when it was practiced before in the 17-1800’s was the same thing. It was ancestral dance. It was not this Christian dance that you see performed today but it was this ancestral dance in which this repetition of movement in the circle brought about the spirit of the ancestor. So in an African American Baptist Church, when we say that someone catches the Holy Ghost that used to be someone catching an ancestral spirit. It then became the Holy Ghost after the Second Great Awakening and all of these rules were put into place about it actually being illegal to honor this African ancestral energy- with languages and songs and all of these things and drum all being outlawed so then it became the Holy Ghost instead of ancestors.47

Williams’ observations reiterate that African American religious dance explores ancestral memories through movement with an intricate connection to the musical accompaniment.

She goes on to assert that mounting or possession can happen on a concert stage, as was the case with Germaine Acogny’s experience (which will be explored in the next chapter) of unintentionally entering into a trance initiated by the drummer.

She describes the physical manifestation of the moment of catching the spirit or being mounted as looking like a split second or moment of receiving. This includes the person dancing in a way that shows bouncing of the knees and repetitious movements of the body. Williams’ stresses that there is specific movement in the body that happens across cultures of what she calls Black and Brown people historically brought from certain nations of peoples of Africa. In

West African dance, Ring Shout, and The Shout she notes similarities such as scooting of the feet on the floor that she has observed in all of these movements, as well as a vertical bounce

47 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.

31 or swing in the body. These movements happen naturally, including certain bodily gestures, movements like catching something with the hand, and noticeable changes in the face as well.

Williams sees the ring shout in the same way that she sees Orisa dances. She believes that it is a way of upholding community, a place of legacy, a place of solitude. For that reason she believes that tap and jazz comes from Ring shout, catching the holy ghost comes from Ring

Shout, and that it is a way of connecting to history and identity. She continues to assert that

“Shouting” is cleansing and healing and she believes the ring shout inevitably leads to shouting and being mounted or possession. Her assertions strongly propound the idea that the Ring

Shout led to the creation of secular African American dance forms such as tap and jazz, which she believes can also function in the same way as the Ring Shout, since they all embody the same qualities of sound and movement that she ultimately acknowledged within the Ring

Shout.

32

Figure 1. Students at The University of North Carolina Charlotte performing William's choreography of the Ring Shout

33

Chapter 2: Reimagining Performance in the Context of Performative Death and Suffering

2.1 The Performative in North America

A proper examination of dance and its relationship to the African American community including the church requires careful exploration of the dancers’ perceptions of the act of performing. It is important to have a fundamental understanding of what a performance is.

What makes an act or display a performance? Where does it happen? And what is the audience’s role in this process? I have already introduced some of Hartman’s observations looking at performance historically from the viewpoints both of agents and observers among the enslaved in Scenes of Subjection, but it is important also to understand how motion and performance are experienced by African Americans in current settings too. Performance can be understood as the execution of an action, something accomplished, the fulfillment of a claim, promise, or request. It can also be defined as a public presentation or exhibition.48 The atrocities experienced during the transatlantic slave trade created an environment where terror and trauma were embedded in every experience including dancing, singing, and celebratory gatherings – a fact that fundamentally changed the experience of singing and dancing for enslaved Africans and subsequently for African Americans.

As noted earlier, coerced performance was a regular occurrence for the enslaved.

Hartman argues that forcing the enslaved to show merriment was a form of plantation

48 “Definition of PERFORMANCE,” accessed November 15, 2020, https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/performance.

34 management, a tool to disguise the violence and horror associated with the institution of slavery. In truth, since violence and coercion pervaded almost every aspect of life for the enslaved, it should be no surprise that it pervaded performance as well. Hartman’s term

“performing blackness”49 refers to various modes of performances that reinforce racial meaning. She asserts that forms of performance enjoined upon the enslaved are expected to be enactments of white dominance and power; but the performative, even conforming to the desire for enactment of white dominance, could also become a tactic of resistance.

Choreographed by the performers and layered with jollity, the performances were enactments of social struggle and contained contending articulations of racial meaning.50

Still the concept of performance requires deeper investigation. I see as performative also the act of murdering someone in the presence of others to establish and reinforce a hierarchy of dominance. White slaveowners hanging enslaved Africans from trees and allowing those bodies to hang there for extended periods of time was analogous to an exhibition, a site- specific performance. The action of public execution could also be considered a performance; within this context death, too, could be viewed as performative, a required expression of subjugation. In this way the act of dying became performative during enslavement.

Punishment also became performative.

The description Frederick Douglass gives after he witnessed Aunt Hester’s beating by

Colonel Lloyd gives insight into the reasons why she was beaten and the degree to which she was beaten. However, in the description careful attention is also given to the setting and venue

49 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. 57 50 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. 57

35 where the action occurred: in the kitchen. The description also details how Aunt Hester was forced to dress (her costume), and the fact that she was stripped down to bare skin exposing her neck, shoulders, and waist. Her hands were tied. The stool for her to stand on and the cow skin used to beat her with could all be considered props in this performance. Finally, her shrieks and screams accompanied by Colonel Lloyd’s words while beating her were the sound score. This was undoubtedly performative punishment. It was an action and fulfillment of a promise to punish Aunt Hester for disobeying his commands. The performance reinforced the social hierarchy so that others would not follow Aunt Hester’s actions of disobedience.51

Performative death is not exclusive to occurrences on plantations during slavery. One of the most widely known contemporary examples, witnessed by many across the world thanks to the now famous video captured by a bystander, was the death of George Floyd. On May 25,

2020 George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed after Minneapolis police officer Derek

Chauvin kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for at least 8 minutes and 15 seconds.52 The police came to the scene after a convenience store employee called 911 to report that Mr. Floyd had purchased cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.

Seventeen minutes after the first squad car arrived at the scene, Mr. Floyd was pinned under three police officers, unconscious and showing no signs of life. All of the officers involved were fired and Mr. Chauvin was charged with murder and is now being tried after a worldwide outcry for justice. Mr. Floyd’s death can be likened to Aunt Hester’s beating which was

51 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Simon & Brown, 2013). 5-6 52 Evan Hill et al., “How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody,” The New York Times (The New York Times, June 1, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html.

36 performative punishment: those watching the officer with his knee embedded into George

Floyd’s neck until he stopped breathing were similarly watching a performative act of punishment which ended as an execution. This performative act of punishing him was put on display for everyone to see, initially to those who were gathered around watching and subsequently to the entire world as the video was shared. Such performance is a familiar scene for so many African Americans. It is a scene that is held as a memory in the body, remembering those such as Breonna Taylor, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice,

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and so many other names from previous generations. These performances of punishment and execution are intended to reinforce the pre-existing social order that still does not recognize Blacks as humans.

In the antebellum South, the fact that the physical body of the enslaved was regarded as a fungible commodity was another factor delimiting the enslaved to a position outside human boundaries. By enslavement, a person is transformed from a human subject to a replaceable object: their body is the extension of a master’s body; their time is the extension of the master’s time. The autobiography of James Bradley illustrates the complexities of being considered a commodity. As he worked to earn his freedom, effectively he had to turn his one body into two and one day into two.

Mr. Bradley was born in Africa; he remembers being taken from his mother’s arms between the ages of two and three and afterwards being sold to ‘Mr. Bradley’ in South Carolina from whom he received his name. He was set on buying his own freedom but it was difficult with all his waking hours spent on unpaid labor. So, for a long time, instead of sleeping a full night, he stayed awake half the night and made collars for horses out of plaited husks and sold

37 them for 50 cents each. After years of careful sleep deprivation, he eventually secured his freedom by paying his owner the wages he would have made if he had been working .53 Mr.

Bradley’s account is useful because it shows the extent to which the enslaved was viewed and treated as an object even in the process of negotiating and eventually securing his freedom.

The process involved a doubling of self: borrowing the body and the time that was supposed to have belonged to the master to create a space for subjectivity. As Hartman puts it,

the fungibility of the commodity makes the captive body an abstract and empty vessel vulnerable to the projection of the others’ feelings, ideas, desires, and values; and, as property, the disposed body of the enslaved is the surrogate for the master’s body since it guarantees his disembodied universality and acts as the sign of his power and dominion. Thus, while the beaten and mutilated body presumably establishes the brute materiality of existence, the materiality of suffering regularly eludes (re)cognition by virtue of the body’s being replaced by other signs of value, as well as other bodies.54

Since the body is the instrument used in the service of dance, another’s ownership of the body adds a critical layer to the sense of any performative movement. In other words, the enslaved were actively working while being beaten, and experiencing a myriad of human emotions including pain. They were also consistently observing that they are being replaced by other bodies, other people, as objects are. What becomes of religious dance in this setting?

What does the community collectively decide it needs to serve the purpose of religious dance?

One response was the act of stealing away, which was when the enslaved slipped away to meet in secret, making time apart to attend praise meetings, quilting parties, and other dances which allowed time with lovers and family on neighboring plantations. But the idea of

“stealing” delineated the ways in which the enslaved had to view themselves as property and possession- as though they were literally “stealing” themselves from the slaveowners to

53 John W. Blassingame, Slave Testimony (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 686-690. 54 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. 21

38 celebrate and pray in ways that were essential for their community. Many felt that they could not accurately pray or praise God without stealing away to secret praise meetings.55

It was during these times of stealing away that the enslaved created their own religious dance. The religious dance performed by the enslaved during these private meetings was the

Ring Shout. In contrast to the body viewed as a defiled, replaceable, object, the Ring Shout made the body a vehicle of divine communication with God.56 The Ring Shout was a collective creation by the community of the enslaved and as previously explained this community defined what religious dance meant specifically for them.

On the plantation, the body was also the site of sexual violence in which the enslaved woman was relegated to willful submission. “The slave woman not only suffered the responsibility for her sexual abuse but also was blameworthy because of her purported ability to render the powerful weak.”57

Even those like Fanny Kemble, who eloquently described the "simple horror and misery" that slave women regularly experienced, were able to callously exclaim, when confronted with the inescapable normativity of rape and the "string of detestable details" that comprised the life of enslaved women, after yet another woman, Sophy, shared her experience of violation: ‘Ah! but don't you know--did nobody ever teach any of you that it is a sin to live with men who are not your husbands?!' Sophy, appropriately and vehemently, responded, "Oh, yes, missis, we know-we know all about ‘dat well enough; but we do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from the whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? He have strength to make me.'58

Thus the female Black enslaved body was consistently defined in terms of available sexuality, and misunderstood in the same sense. The enslaved were considered to be savage and unable to control their sexual desires, and because the enslaved body was considered an object

55 Hartman. Scenes of Subjection. 66 56 Hartman. Scenes of Subjection. 67 57 Hartman. Scenes of Subjection. 87 58 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. 87.

39 belonging to the enslaver, issues of consent were entangled in complications of property and law. The normal human right to give consent was eradicated by the requirement that the slave at all times be available for subjection to the will of another. Slaves were not covered by common law and the rape of a slave woman was not considered a statutory offense. As

Hartman details, the act of raping an enslaved woman or even the attempt to rape an enslaved woman was neither recognized as a transgression or punishable by law, since the enslaved were placed under the regulation of slave codes and were not covered by common law.59

When speaking of what led to Aunt Hester’s beating, Frederick Douglass explains how an enslaved woman might be treated if she chose to go against the desires of her master. He remembered the first time he saw his first master, Captain Anthony, beat his Aunt Hester. She went out one night and was not present when her master “desired her presence,”60 and she had been previously ordered not to go out evenings and not to be found in the company of a certain young man named Ned Roberts. While he didn’t know of his master’s specific reasons,

Douglass alludes to the fact that he may have been trying to keep Aunt Hester from having a relationship with Ned Roberts. Aunt Hester, “a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women,”61 not only disobeyed Captain Anthony by going out one evening, but she was also found with Ned Roberts, which was the primary offence that prompted the beating. We can see the struggle for dominance of the body: Aunt Hester was asserting her right to possession of her own body by choosing who she spent her time with, and Captain

59 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection. 79–80. 60 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. 5 61 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 6

40

Anthony was asserting his right to dominate Aunt Hester’s body by performing an act of performative punishment. The Black body was the site not only of sexual violence but also this battle of dominance. For the enslaved, the act of dancing was a way to communicate with God as well as a way of reasserting and maintaining ownership of their bodies.

2.2 Embodied Aesthetics in West Africa

In order to understand how the enslaved used dance in the service of liberation it is imperative to understand how dance functioned in West African culture. Omofolabo Soyinka

Ajayi identifies three main factors to be assessed in understanding the significance of dance in religious worship (past and present) in Africa: the cultural concept of the sacred, the intrinsic qualities of dance, and the people’s attitude towards the body.62 In relation to the intrinsic qualities of dance Ajayi suggests that Africans generally view dance as both a sign and vehicle of communication. While the movement is capable of conveying an idea or action, it is at the same time the bringing into being of that action or idea. Because of this, communication is possible in various ways through dance. Finally, she suggests that the people’s attitude towards the body, which is the dancer’s primary tool, is significant to the African religious experience.

It is not inappropriate to use the body in the glorification of God or in channeling other divine manifestations. Ajayi explains that there is no conflict between the sacred and the secular body in people’s perception. Each is considered distinct and each complements the other in the glorification of God. There is therefore no conflict when the body used in secular matters is

62 Kariamu Welsh-Asante and Omofolabo Soyinka Ajayi, “In Contest: The Dynamics of African Religious Dances,” in African Dance: an Artistic, Historical, and Philosophical Inquiry (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996), pp. 183-201, 184.

41 used later in sacred rituals; the conflict that may exist between the mortification and purification of the flesh, which is generally present in monotheistic religions, but is non-existent in polytheistic cultures who have constructed an extended understanding of the sacred.63

One of the dances that I studied while researching dance in Ghana West Africa as a

Fulbright Scholar is a dance called Bamaya. This particular dance is from the Dagomba people of

Northern Ghana. The Dagamba have been Muslim since the 1600’s when Muhammad Zangina

(Yaa Zangina) ruled as the king of the Dagomba. He was the first to become Muslim and the first to become circumcised; and he also built a mosque in Sabari, Northern Ghana.64 Bamaya was created during a time of great famine and severe drought. It was believed that the

Tingbana, land gods, were angry because of a defilement of a virgin in the bush and as a result a spell was placed on the land; as a result until it was cleansed the land would remain barren.65

All of the customary sacrifices to bring rain were done to no avail. Because of the belief that the Tingbana responded promptly to the requests of women, the young men in the village dressed as women and danced. Their vigorous dancing caused the Tingbana to be touched by the plight of the women and correspondingly sent down a heavy rainfall. Afterwards when they reported the occurrences to the chief, they exclaimed Naa Baa Ma Ya Za which literally translates as “chief the valleys are wet.”66

While performing Bamaya, the men dress as women, including wearing makeup, bras, skirts or dresses, and fashioning a hat that has jewelry attached giving the impression of

63 Welsh-Asante and Ajayi, “In Contest: The Dynamics of African Religious Dances,” 186. 64 Ivor Wilks, “A Note on the Early Spread of Islam in Dagomba,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 8 (1965): pp. 87-98, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.rice.edu/stable/41403570, 88. 65 Ben Obido Ayettey, “The Baamaya Dance Suite, a Tale of Dagbamba,” Institute of African Studies Research Review 24, no. 2 (2008): 61–74. 66 Ayettey. The Bamaya Dance Suite.

42 earrings. The dance says a great deal about communal ideology concerning dance being used for religious purposes: we see a flexible and multiple notion of gender, and a very embodied relation to the gods. The fact that a woman was wronged was treated very seriously by the gods and as a result the entire community was affected. We can also see the dynamic of cross dressing at play within the culture as well as narrative dance, recalling a challenging time in history. Bamaya has since become a social dance, but it has not ceased to witness a set of expansive and essentially polytheistic ideas about gender and the sacred that coexist with the different religious commitments of the dancers themselves. The form and function of the dance is more important than the religious affiliations of the dancers. It nevertheless serves the community binding effect, as well as the desire for meaning and the push for fullness characteristic of religious activities.

As we can see with Bamaya, religious dance remains accepted where there is an expanded cultural understanding that the sacred body can be inclusive of the secular body, that there is no necessary discord between the two. While they are disparate, they complement each other in the exaltation of God.67 The secular is a part of the sacred and not exclusive of the sacred, so that uses of the body which might elsewhere be considered secular find a respected place in the dances of Africans and those of the African diaspora.68 In other words, the body is not solely viewed as possessing carnal or sensual functions only being made pure through the act of prayer; the body can vacillate between secular and sacred functions without imposing negative connotations on the movements associated with those functions. The

67 Omofolabo Soyinka Ajayi, “African Dance.”184 68 Omofolabo Soyinka Ajayi., African Dance. 186

43 following interviews are with practitioners Germaine Acogny and Gideon Alorwoyie from

Senegal and Ghana respectively and serve to show the embodied aesthetics previously discussed in defining African American religious dance- a vehicle of accessing and communing with the divine, as well as a way of exploring ancestral memory through movement, and the musical influence on the movement as well.

2.3 Contributing Interview - Germaine Acogny

Germaine Acogny or Mama Germaine (as she is affectionately referred to by many in the worldwide community of dancers, since she is considered the mother of contemporary

African dance), has played an integral role in the development and growth of contemporary dance in Africa. She was born Germaine Coly in 1944 in a small village in Benin. After her mother’s death, her father remarried to a Senegalese woman which is how she became

Germaine Acogny.69 She studied in Paris at Simon Siegel’s school from 1962-1965 which was under the direction of Ms. Marguerite Lamotte. There she received a diploma of physical education and harmonious gymnastics.70 After seeing talent in her, Maurice Béjart and Léopold

Sédar Senghor asked her to be the artistic director of Mudra Afrique which they created. Mudra

Afrique, founded in 1977 in Dakar Senegal, was a Pan African school supported by UNESCO and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.71 The focus of the school was on providing students from

69 Germaine Acogny, Danse Africaine = Afrikanischer Tanz = = African Dance (Weingarten: Weingarten, 1994), 9. 70 Germaine Acogny. “PDF.” Toubab Diallou: Germaine Acogny, n.d. Biography/Resume 71 This foundation created in 1956 was included in the last will and testament of Armenian philanthropist Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian with the main purpose of improving quality and life through art, charity, science, and education.

44 different countries a full- time course spanning three years. Mudra Afrique school was successful for two successive sessions. However the third cohort did not have an opportunity to complete their course because the school lacked the necessary financial support.72 At the school dance was taught in three categories; Classical, Modern Dance, and African Dance. Each day began with ballet exercises at the bar with the philosophy that “ballet classes provide a comprehensive physical training that demands concentrated effort and great stamina from all the body. It also provides a basis out of which a variety of other styles can be developed.”73

Acogny believes in the ideology of Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. She quoted him as saying, “Beyond the establishment of any inventory of Black African Dance steps and movements, MUDRA AFRIQUE must absorb the steps and the values of other dance forms in order to generate a new kind of Black African Dance that can be understood and appreciated by people of all cultures.”74 Senghor is noted as one of the founders of Négritude along with poet Aimé Césaire from Martinique and poet and politician Léon Damas from French Guiana.75

Négritude was a term coined by Aimé Cesaire in the journal founded by all three called

L’Étudiant noir in 1934-1935. The concept of Négritude was a framework of critical cultural theory that constituted a response, an act of rebellion, against the history of French colonialism and racism. Senghor, the first president of Senegal, is quoted as defining Négritude as, “simply, the values of civilization of the Black world taken in their entirety.”76 The term nègre (Black, negro) was used in defiance of its heritage by the founders against white supremacists who

72 Germaine Acogny, Danse Africaine = Afrikanischer Tanz = = African Dance (Weingarten: Weingarten, 1994). 73 Acogny,Danse Africaine 74 Acogny,Danse Africaine 75 Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, Ca: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018). 76 “Léopold Senghor,” African Arts 35, no. 2 (January 2002): pp. 1-7, https://doi.org/10.1162/afar.2002.35.2.1.

45 typically used the word as a slur. Senghor maintained a practice of presenting the arts in

Senegal. He believed “that the dignity of a nation and its people depend on a contribution to universal civilization through the arts.”77 In essence Senghor believed that Africa’s greatest contribution to the world was through the arts.

As the director of the school, Acogny received some criticism from purists of Négritude since she believes that a viable way forward for Africa can be obtained absorbing the steps and values of other dance forms in order to generate a new kind of Black African dance.78 Acogny embodied this belief system evident in the range of technique genres that were taught there.

She also continued to embody this belief system after MUDRA AFRIQUE closed. After teaching at Maurice Béjart’s company in Brussels and then returning to teach in Casamance, Senegal, she, along with her husband Helmut Vogt, established a school of their own in Toulouse,

France. Acogny has worked with several notable artists including Peter Gabriel and Jawole

Zollar, and she has also taught at several universities around the world.

In 1995 Acogny established L’École des Sables in Toubab Dialiaw, Senegal. The school has maintained an international reputation as a center for traditional and contemporary African dance. The campus includes an outdoor open-air studio and performance space connecting the dancers with nature which is an important aspect of Acogny’s codified technique, The Acogny

Technique. Many students and choreographers travel from other parts of Africa as well as from

77 Senghor." African Arts. 78 Acogny. Danse Africaine.

46 all over the world to participate in workshops at the school. She was most recently awarded

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by La Biennale di Venezia for 2021.79

She has also received several awards and distinctions including two Bessie Awards; one in 2007 along with Kota Yamazaki for their work which was a fusion of Butoh and traditional and contemporary African Dances and also in 2018 for outstanding performance in the solo

“Mon élu noire-sacre # 2 ( My Chosen Black One: Coronation 2). ”80 In this dance Acogny performs a powerful solo choreographed by Olivier Dubois. This solo is a portion of a series in which Dubois answers the call of Stravinsky’s famous ballet Sacre du Printemps (Rite of Spring).

Dubois created a collection of “Sacre(s) du Printemps” (Rites of Spring). The first piece in the collection premiered in 2012. “It was followed, in December 2014, by ‘Sacre #2’ with the great dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny, Maurice Béjart’s mythical ‘chosen one’ who has never performed the Sacre. It was for this seventy - year - old queen of dance that Olivier

Dubois created this new Sacre, drawing on the depths of her African soul to create a new, compelling vision of the work.”81

Acogny, who identifies as an animist, explains that while she had several religious influences, she was significantly influenced by her paternal grandmother Aloopho, who was a priestess of an animist cult, “the same cult which gave birth to Voodoo in the Americas.”82

Acogny was born on Whitsun day of 1944 on a Sunday83 and when she was born, she received

79 “Biennale Danza 2021: The 2021 Lion Awards for Dance,” La Biennale di Venezia, March 3, 2021, https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/2021-lion-awards-dance. 80 Acogny, Germaine. “PDF.” Toubab Diallou: Germaine Acogny, n.d. Biography/Resume 81 Dubois, Compagnie Olivier. “Mon Elue Noire / Sacre #2.” Olivier Dubois Company, April 3, 2019. https://www.olivierdubois.org/en/spectacle/mon-elue-noire-sacre-2-2/. 82 Germaine Acogny et al., Danse Africaine (Germany: Weingarten, 1994), 5 83 Acogny, Danse Africaine, 17

47 both a Christian and Muslim baptism. When she was young her father converted to Catholicism, which she did not support. Acogny tried to explain to her father that animism is a good thing.84

Acogny’s grandmother refused to be converted to Catholicism believing the animist baptism to be just as valid as the Christian baptism.85 Acogny explains that the “animist religion is based upon the law of equilibrium (goodness is rewarded and wickedness is punished).”86 Her return to the practices of her grandmother may be due in part to the fact that Acogny is believed by her father, as evidenced in her name, to be the reincarnation of her grandmother. On the day she was born a white dove settled on the window sill of her room and returned to the same place every day until she reached the age of one. She was called IYA TOUNDE which in the

Yoruba language means the mother returned.87 Her grandmother, Aloopho passed away four years before she was born and her patron deity was symbolized as a dove so the fact that a dove settled on Acogny’s windowsill on the day of her birth and remained for one year is particularly relevant.

While Acogny doesn’t associate her dance practice with religion or view it as a religious practice, she has incorporated her unique background into her practice as an artist. Her 2019 performance of “Somewhere at the Beginning” co-created and directed by Mikaël Serre is autobiographical: through choreography and spoken word she reckons with her father’s upbringing which was heavily influenced by the effects of colonialism in Senegal causing him to despise his mother’s religion and aim to be as Christian and European as possible. In this work

84 Interview with Germaine Acogny, December 19, 2020. 85 Acogny, Danse Africaine, 15 86 Acogny, Danse Africaine, 15 87 Acogny, Dance Africaine, 17

48

Acogny blames her father for separating her from her heritage.88 This heritage includes the religion that was practiced by her grandmother. Acogny also described an experience she had when she was performing in a show called “Coumba am Ndeye Coumba Amoul Ndeye.” This performance tells the story of a man whose wife passed away. He had a daughter with this wife. After the wife passed away the man married another woman who was very mean and they had a daughter as well. Acogny was playing the role of the step mother and she explains that as the drummer, Doudou Ndiaye Rose, was accompanying her performance he unintentionally played a rhythm associated with a healing ceremony entitled Ndeup which caused Acogny to go into a trance. The rhythm called the god that inhabited her body.89 This is something that she could not control. Her performance transitioned to a religious experience because of the rhythm that was played. While Acogny distinguishes a separation between a practice of religion and her artistic performance, she does acknowledge the effect of music which caused her to have a religious experience of becoming possessed.

Acogny’s efforts to combat colonialism through reclaiming the beliefs and practices of her paternal grandmother show up in her artistic work; she harks back to Hartman’s text when she talks about practice:

Practice is not simply a way of naming these efforts but rather a way of thinking about the character of resistance, the precariousness of the assaults waged against domination, the fragmentary character of these efforts and the transient battles won, and the character of a politics without a proper locus.90

88 Brian Seibert, “Review: An African Dance Matriarch Brings Out the Knives,” The New York Times (The New York Times, September 27, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/arts/dance/review-germaine- acogny.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap. 89 Interview with Germaine Acogny, December 19, 2020. 90 Hartman. Scenes of Subjection. 51

49

2.4 Contributing Interview – Gideon Alorwoyie

Gideon Alorwoyie’s sentiments echo the significance of the influence of musical accompaniment on movement, and especially its effect in inducing a religious experience.

Alorwoyie, a tenured professor of African Music and Dance at The University of North Texas was born in the Volta Region of Ghana. He carries the title of Torgbui or paramount chief. His title means that he is responsible for making administrative decisions and also in charge of making rulings on certain judgements in the community where he is a chief in the Volta Region.

Alorwoyie recalls a time when he was young and playing music for his grandfather during ceremonies. One of the priestesses was possessed and during the possession the spirit god came to Alorwoyie through the priestess, held his hand to his mother and father, and told them that the spirit god, the god of vodun wanted to “be with him”91 to which his father did not object. Alorwoyie was reincarnated to Yewe drumming and given the drumstick of his great ancestors who was also a composer when he was five years old and since then he has been doing both composition and traditional drumming. He explains that his uncle who is a spiritualist held a ceremony that allows Alorwoyie to be calm when he plays the drumming so that he doesn’t continuously enter into possession.

Alorwoyie explains that the spirit god can send messages through specific songs or drum calls associated with the spirit god. The moment that the spirit comes you are out of yourself and have no idea of what is going on. After the possession you will return to your normal life,

91 Interview with Gideon Alorwoyie, October 18, 2020.

50 but during the possession, the possessed person will have the ability to speak the language of the spirit god, even if it is a different language than his/her own. During this time you will give the message that the god wants you to deliver.92 He was also initiated as a high priest and god of what he calls the kola nut spirit. Like Acogny he is purposeful in distinguishing between religious practice and his work as an artist (musician). He maintains that his appointment as a professor is completely different than his traditional religious appointments; his professorial appointment is solely based on his ability to teach his technique of playing and composing music. Although his training includes learning and playing in traditional environments that are religious, he makes an intentional distinction between these two types of authority.

When asked about dancing ,that occurred when the captured and enslaved Africans would sneak out and dance becoming possessed during those times, he responded:

they are trying to take our language, our speaking, take our belief, our spiritual gods, and then take our clothes, our beauty away to come and bring us a bible to read and bring us English and take away our own language …because our spiritual gods don’t speak English or French …when you take these things from me how am I going to get it again? This is how the white people were trying to disable us. The whole continent …they took our language, our spiritual powers, all kinds of things that may have occurred… the spirit god can go to someone and the ancestors want them to know that they are still with them.93

In other words Alorwoyie, agrees with Williams in acknowledging possession that occurred during the Ring Shout as a connection to or visitation from their African ancestors.

92 Interview with Gideon Alorwoyie, October 18, 2020. 93 Interview with Gideon Alorwoyie, October 18, 2020

51

Alorwoyie’s sentiments echo this assertion as well which further affirms African American religious dance as being intricately related to ancestral memories as Acogny exemplified in the example of her grandmother and Alorwoyie expressed of the Ring Shout.

52

Chapter 3: Musical Influence

Williams’ experience of watching the Ring Shout as a young child with her grandmother in the basement of their church sheds light on the importance of the music or sound component that accompanies the dancing. The way in which music, speech, song, and sound aid in the progression of the Ring Shout emphasizes the close, intricate, and necessary connection between the music and the dance. Music is such an integral component that historically dance was not considered capable of standing alone or being appreciated as an individual art form.94 While musical accompaniment is not mandatory for a dance experience, the sound that accompanies the movement is very important, whether it’s breath, the sound of feet stomping on the floor, or hands hitting the body. With the absence of the drumming that was normally present in Africa, the instruments used for musical accompaniment changed, but the influence of percussion and polyrhythm remained. The development from west African culture to modern African American culture is not only felt in its influence on musical genres such as Jazz and Hip Hop, but also in African American religious music and dance.

Winton Marsalis in his lecture The Evolution of the Trap Drum Set at Harvard University said that the only thing the enslaved Africans had in common was a basic rhythm and that rhythm was a “lifeline to their personhood.” He went on to add that when it was illegal to play drums, the enslaved used their bodies to create rhythm in what was called pattin’juba or

94 Harriet Lihs, Appreciating Dance A Guide to the World’s Liveliest Art (Trenton: Princeton Book Co,2018), 5

53 hamboning.95 According to Marsalis the field drum evolved into the snare drum for traditional marching bands and the African rhythmic concept merged with a marching band concept to create an American drum style. With further influences from New Orleans attaching a cymbal to the bass drum to accompany the snare as well as others, Marsalis asserts that the drum-set was the first bona fide American musical instrument and that “when the drum set became the rhythmic center of passion in America music an African identity was inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture.”96

As Marsalis details, when drumming was forbidden, the rhythm was embodied by playing the body as an instrument, so native rhythms endured the transatlantic slave trade, subsequently reappearing evoked by new and different instruments. Of particular importance in not only the Ring Shout but also in subsequent African American secular dances is the use of repetition of movement, music, and words, the use of a circle with opportunities for the practitioners to take turns in the circle, percussion or polyrhythm, the possibility of catching the spirit or possession, and a connection to a communally understood concept of the divine.

Pastor and musician Ricco Vance adds to this dialogue the specific techniques needed in playing in the church during the Shout.

95 Wynton Marsalis. “Wynton at Harvard, Chapter 9 The Evolution of the Trap Drum Set.” Wynton at Harvard. Lecture presented at the Wynton at Harvard, n.d. 96 Wynton Marsalis. “Wynton at Harvard, Chapter 9 The Evolution of the Trap Drum Set.” Wynton at Harvard. Lecture presented at the Wynton at Harvard, n.d.

54

3.1 Contributing Interview – Ricco D. Vance

Pastor and minister of music Ricco D. Vance was born and raised in Jackson Mississippi.

He is also currently a high school music educator and director of choral music studies. He started playing piano at a young age and began learning to play the trumpet at the age of 12.

He then proceeded to French horn. He continued to study formally in school playing woodwinds and in the jazz band. He also ear trained in the church. He has played in Jackson state orchestra and was on organ scholarship at Mississippi Valley State as the musician for the gospel choir. He has been a musician for over 30 years. He is a Christian and identifies as

“unashamedly Christian but unapologetically spiritual”97 He specializes in playing in churches and has a wealth of experience playing during contemporary manifestations of the religious dance called the Shout.

He spent over twenty years in the Church of God in Christ and believes that dance in the church helped to heal him personally of meningitis. Although at the time he could not walk due to the sickness, he said instead of speaking in tongues after receiving baptism in the holy spirit he received the urge to dance. All of his experiences in The Church of God in Christ included dancing whenever the Shout “went forth.”98 He eventually began to feel that he had not fully been to church or experienced church if he did not dance.

For many of us, the dance meant victory. If we came with depression, we want to leave relieved. If we came sick, we want to leave healed. The lord meets us there at our point of need and gives us the miracle that we asked for. The dance represented a celebration. For us the shout was like a victory dance.99

97 Interview with Pastor Ricco Vance, November 2, 2020 98 Interview with Pastor Ricco Vance, November 2, 2020 99 Interview with Pastor Ricco Vance, November 2, 2020

55

As a musician he speaks on bringing the Shout in during worship. The tempo should not be too fast and likewise it cannot be too slow. Vance says that he has noticed that as the music moves toward the Shout it takes a shift and you can hear the roar of the crowd along with the roar of the instruments. Playing a certain cadence or a series of progressions will typically lead into a shout, because “it is guaranteed that at least three people will stand and dance.”100 You can also bring the Shout down or stop it. He says that if you cut it off too short then the people in the church will keep on clapping adding that if it is a wooden floor then they will keep stomping and create their own music. So as a musician he details that it is very important to know when to stop the Shout. He says it is like a workout:

when you’re on a treadmill you really should not just stop at the speed of five miles per hour. You want to cool down. Once they get going it is hard to get them to calm down. If you cut it off, then you will just be left there looking like when are they going to stop- they will knock you off the organ and have someone play-or you could keep playin until they are tired of you playing and upset that you are playin too long.101

As a musician there is a learned technique for accompanying the Shout which involves playing the instrument in such a way that you are in tune with the pastor, other musicians, and the congregation, making everyone naturally want to dance. Likewise the music should assist them in calming down afterwards. Pastor Vance gives an interesting example of when he saw an older woman dancing in the church which showed him the ways in which a “person’s dance can bless other folks.”102

An old mother as old as 80’s or 90’s was dancing in her own way and she danced over to a young woman and grabbed her by the hand and danced with her and before you knew it the younger girl started dancing and praising God (Shouting) and when he asked the

100 Interview with Pastor Ricco Vance, November 2, 2020 101 Interview with Pastor Ricco Vance, November 2, 2020 102 Interview with Pastor Ricco Vance, November 2, 2020

56

girl she said ‘well it was something when mother touched me…I just felt the glory of god through her.’

This phenomenon resembles what Williams explained when she saw a person who was

“mounted” go and hug a different person causing the possession to be transferred. The religious experience of dancing can not only invoke possession as noted in the Shout but it can also be transferred to another person as well.

57

Chapter 4: Experiencing Religion in the Body

The body is integral to the experience and practice of religion. Understanding of attitudes toward the body is crucial in grasping the sense of varying religious beliefs regarding the mind, heart, and soul, which all function in relation to and within the body. Hence the body must be acknowledged as central to any discussion of religion, religious practices, and religious dance. William James acknowledges this when he explains that

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one has already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time .103

At the fundamental level, even beliefs and other associated mental phenomena arise and emerge from the body. James further outlines four defining characteristics of a religious experience. The first one he lists is Ineffability, the resistance of an experience to being described with words. The next one is Noetic Quality which refers to a sense of revelatory or superhuman phenomena; an experience that causes one to have insight into depths of truth would not otherwise have access to is noetic. The next characteristic is Transiency which means that the experience would not last long. The final quality that he lists is Passivity, an

104 William James. Varieties of Religious Experience.

58 overall feeling that superior powers are in control. In this state prophetic speech, automatic writing, or mediumistic trance can occur.104

I bring up these characteristics of the religious experience from James because it is clear that it can cover some of the possession trances already described as occurring during dance in the interviews with Tamara Williams and others. However it will gain even more relevance in the reflections that follow from Chris Thomas, a dancer and religious leader. Thomas cross references his experiences with the Shout in the church of his childhood with the Hip Hop dancing he has become involved with since, and makes it clear how “catching the spirit” can be seen in both.

I have witnessed something similar myself. I am reminded of my first trip to Ghana,

West Africa in 2005 where our group under the direction of Dr. Paschale Younge and Dr Zelma

Badu-Younge visited what was called a ‘shrine’ in the volta region. As we were all dancing, one woman became very excited as exhibited in her dancing. She seemed to lose control and required assistance from other people that were there. Everyone stopped and gave her space as she danced and moaned. After some time, she went through a process of coming back to herself. Once she was completely alert, she began to tell what she came out of the experience with. There was a translator there who told us that she had received a revelation and that the word for everyone there was to forget the past and focus on moving forward to the future. It

This possession that I witnessed during the dance obviously carries James’ characteristics-- she was experiencing something too great to put into words; she received a word or knowledge

104 William James. Varieties of Religious Experience.

59 from the experience, it was short lived, and she was not in control of herself but rather under the sway of spirits as she danced.

While James’ qualities of a religious experience are useful, they do not touch on what it means to have an African American religious experience. M. Shawn Copeland, professor of theology and author of African American Religious Experience in the Oxford Handbook of

African American Theology describes one way this might be defined:

African American religious experience refers to conscious responsiveness to the holy or to divinity or to an existential sense of mystery and ultimacy. It emerges from complex religio-cultural terrain, and the study of its formation is problematized by several challenging and interrelated methodological, philosophical, and hermeneutical issues. These issues relate in part to academic studies of African Americans and their culture, the preeminence of the religious, the occurrence of religion and religious experience within the contingencies of history, and the slave trade.105

Like Pinn’s “quest for complex subjectivity,” Copeland’s definition outlines a personal, religious and cultural intersecting response to the divine that is closely intertwined with history. As with

James, her sense of what constitutes religious experience has to do with the ineffable. It is something that will allow the individual to gain revelatory knowledge, and she adds that while the person may prepare for the experience through prayer, fasting, or withdrawal from daily life, the experience ultimately cannot be brought about or turned on and off at will.106 While

Copeland does not list a specific set of definable characteristics, her description of African

American Religious Experience does echo some of the sentiments expressed by James and goes further to situate those experiences in the condition of being African American, which is embedded in a host of social and ethical problems. She mentions slavery but also other issues

105 M. Shawn Copeland, “African American Religious Experience,” The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology, January 2014, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199755653.013.0003. 106 Copeland, African American Religious Experience.

60 relating to African Americans such as healthcare, poverty, rates of incarceration, and unemployment. These issues do not distinctively affect Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or any other specific religion; they are however specific to the diverse African American community.

Here her ideas elide with Anthony Pinn’s, in the concept that African American religious experience extends beyond the formation and practice of Black Christianity.107 It is specific to the situation of being Black in America. As I stated in the introduction, Pinn defines an African

American religious experience as “the recognition of and response to the elemental feeling for complex subjectivity and the accompanying transformation of consciousness that allows for the historically manifest battle against the terror of fixed identity.”108 Dance as a religious experience in the quest for complex subjectivity is movement that wrestles with the identity of what it means to be black in America. In effect the experience of dancing in this way “places black bodies in healthier spaces, with greater range of possibilities.”109 This is evident with break-dancing, a dance form that emerged in the 1970’s in New York in which male members of gangs began to challenge each other to dance rather than to fight.110 I will explore this in more detail in the interview with Chris Thomas.in the African American dance as a religious experience

We have determined that while African American religious dance is not restricted to a certain dogma or religious practice, communal perception of the body is integral in the construction of the movement and the Black body in particular has a specific history and

107 Anthony B. Pinn, Varieties of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 1. 108 Pinn, Terror and Triumph. 175 109 Pinn, Terror and Triumph. 179 110 Lynn Fauley Emery, Black Dance, from 1619 to Today (Pennington, NJ: Princeton Book Company, Publishers, 1972), 357.

61 existence in America. In Scenes of Subjection Hartman speaks of the ravaged, violated, captive body. The occurrence of enslaved Africans being stolen, sold, or bartered as objects at the very onset of existence in America is the starting point for how the Black body is viewed in America today. These captive bodies engaged in wrestling with their identity though the Ring Shout, a dance that W.E.B. Dubois described as stamping, shrieking, and shouting with rushing to and fro and wild waving of the arms. He contended that it was so important that “many generations believed that without this visible manifestation of God there could be no true communion with the Invisible.”111 Essentially, the dance was considered a necessity for religious experience to occur. But what about the movement makes it a necessity? What service does it provide for the people who do it? Does the movement have to mimic the Shout in order for it to be considered African American Religious Dance? How do the movements relate to communal perception of the body?

Because of how the body is collectively understood within the African American social world, African American religious dance must address the body in a way that changes the condition of it. In other words, the experiencer has to walk away from this dance or religious experience feeling different. She has to have new knowledge that she did not previously have.

Ultimately, she has to feel a sense of redress of the body, healing, and freedom.

One of the ways that African American religious dance achieves this vital sense of freedom is through the element of improvisation--through impromptu spontaneous movements that may include fragments of previously danced material interspersed with movements created in the moment that they are performed. Improvisation has been an

111 W.E.B., Du Bois, and Brent Hayes. Edwards. The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford University Press, 2007. 130

62 element of dance for a long time. Danielle Goldman, associated professor of dance at The New

School in New York and author of I Want to be Ready: Improvised Dance as a Practice of

Freedom acknowledged freedom as a perpetual component in conversations about improvisation. In other words, the practice of improvisation, invokes elements of freedom. She goes on to stress the importance of understanding freedom not as a desired endpoint but as something that actively resist constraints.112

While the concept of freedom can be imagined differently depending on the community, she asserts that it shouldn’t be viewed as something that can be achieved once and for all; the quest is ongoing. The act of moving the body and dancing in non - prescribed ways engenders a sense of freedom that is crucial to the African American religious experience, allowing the dancer to embody freedom in ways that also involve discipline and self - control.

The process of problem solving in the process of improvised dancing speaks to what Goldman calls “improvisation’s most significant power as a full-bodied critical engagement with the world, characterized by both flexibility and perpetual readiness.”113

As far back as the first African American religious dance, the Ring Shout, improvisation was present and constant. Tamara Williams noted that the form of structured improvisation that is present in the Shout allows space for liberation, trance, and transcendence through the repetition of movements. She goes on to define trance as any state of awareness or consciousness, other than normal waking consciousness and explains that during trance a person’s physical consciousness leaves the body and mind, and is replaced by the higher

112 Goldman, Danielle. I Want to Be Ready Improvised Dance as a Practice of Freedom. The University of Michigan Press, 2013. 113 Goldman. I Want to Be Ready.

63 consciousness and awareness of either another entity/ energy or a higher consciousness held deeply within oneself.114 The Ring Shout is clearly the site of a recurrent, ongoing, improvisational African American religious experience.

However, this element of improvisation is present in dances that may be considered secular as well. In the following interview, Chris Thomas offers a close look at the occurrence of dances initially perceived as secular improvisational dances existing in the sphere of religion.

4.1 Contributing Interview – Chris Thomas

Hip Hop dancer Chris Thomas was born and raised in Houston and grew up Southern

Baptist, attending Canaan Missionary Baptist Church. He began dancing at the age of eleven and has performed Mime and Drill Team dancing115 in the Baptist church although he says he didn’t feel comfortable while doing it. Although when he started attending church at a young age, he was Southern Baptist, he now identifies as a non-denominational Christian. He feels a point of departure from the beliefs of those in his community, the African American community. Admitting that he does feel they share the commons beliefs that God is God and that Jesus is the son of God - he believes that that is where the conversation splits. He asserts that while the foundation of the Cross is a point of agreement, how you praise, what you say in the service, how the service is ran, the style of music, how you dress, what is respectful and

114 “Tamara Williams: The Dancer,” Citizen, accessed March 15, 2021, http://dancercitizen.org/issue-6/tamara- williams/. 115 Both are regulated forms of praise dance popular in some Black churches. They are not as freely improvisational as the street dancing he prefers. He clarifies below that Mime involves acting out the narrative in movement.

64 what is not respectful, what does the building look like - what does the pastor look like---the details of the experience he says “becomes a debate.”116

Thomas started a non-denominational church in 2009 that started as a practice session for dancers and at the end of the practice session they held Bible study. It was held at the

Barnevelder, a dance studio/theatre located in downtown Houston. As part of the practice dance session, they hired a live DJ and at the end the attendees had the option of staying or leaving when they transitioned into the Bible study. Eventually the following grew so much that they began using the studio and the theatre and continued to grow so much so that they eventually they ran out of space. One of his partners envisioned creating a church which they eventually did. Once the church was created the practice sessions stopped. However the church continued to celebrate the arts by having graffiti artist present painting during the service, and interestingly they allowed Hip Hop, Breaking, and House dancing during praise and worship as well. Thomas explains that they did not restrict the way people dressed at this church. The philosophy was “Be the artist that God created you to be and use your art in a way that pleases God.”117

Thomas says that nothing was traditional. Through this experience, he created a new way to celebrate his God that differed from the way he was taught. It allowed him to feel accepted for being himself, in contrast to his experiences in the Baptist church where he grew up, in which he would not have been allowed to use Hip Hop or Break dance moves. The dance in the traditional Baptist church he attended was primarily Drill Team or Mime dancing in which

116 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021 117 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021

65 all of the movements were re-enactments of the words to the music; dance would involve “the physical representation of what the song is (saying).”118 It is a set structure and he says that they were not open to new ideas. In this Baptist church the Shout is still performed during praise and worship. He first saw his grandmother Shout when he was between the ages of 7-

10. He says that she started screaming and got extremely excited. The ushers tried to calm her down and he didn’t understand what was happening with her so he started crying. He says that it is usually the older women who dance and shout through the aisles.

He feels unaccepted in the church and explains that it is because he is not traditional at all. His hair is dyed blonde and he dresses differently than those who attend his Baptist Church.

He says that he relates more to what he calls Street Dance –an umbrella term that covers a variety of dance styles such as Hip Hop, House, Breaking, Voguing, Waacking, Popping, and

Locking. He contends that Hip Hop is a subculture, a foundational movement consisting not only of particular music and dance style, but also of particular clothing and language reflecting the art. Thomas also asserts that Hip Hop is a structured dance with teachers and vocabulary.

Movements are a blend of styles including traditional African movement as well as Latin dance movements; you can see influences of Cumbia and Salsa. While Hip Hop is a synthetic, it excludes some things; there are funk styles like Poppin’ that didn’t get absorbed into Hip Hop music because they were created before rap. He asserts that in general in Hip Hop the traditional is incorporated with the contemporary to achieve a new blend of movements, but the DNA of the movement is still tied back to Africa.

118 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021

66

Thomas shares that Hip Hop’s influence is world-wide. He has been in Katmandu and saw a Breakin’ crew. For Thomas, Street Dance is an outlet for expression of negative emotions like anger and aggression in a positive manner. He notes it was used strategically to combat gang violence--you would go and battle with the dance as opposed to fighting with hands or weapons. Break Dancing was used to act out images of fighting without the fight taking place.

A loss means you go home and train for the next one, you live another day. Practice could take place all day every day. The youth would go to parties and events representing their crew or dance group, taking pride in what they could do.

Dance is therapeutic for him. It is a means of self-expression without aggression, though he mentions that “when dance isn’t enough, sometimes [aggression] does escalate.”119

Although he agrees that in a lot of religious environments, Street Dance may not be welcome, in his work he brought Jesus into the Hip Hop community. The fact that he could bring a

Christian experience into Hip Hop shows another aspect of the multiplicity of ways that dance can key into a religious experience. It is notable that he does come from a background in which movement was a part of praise in church, thought he felt it was restrictive. He says that his effort to increase the spontaneity and improvisational core of religious dance allowed people to be themselves and experience God in a different way, an alternative to the structured movements of the traditional church in which he grew up.

Thomas says the bottom line is freedom. He believes that different forms of artistic expression, including painting and dance, can exists as praise and worship. He says that there is no freedom in standing when being told when to stand and sitting down when being told to sit

119 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021

67 down while in the church. “Where is the freedom in that?” he asks. He believes that Street

Dance embodies freedom. “It is one of the few dance styles that celebrates you being yourself.

You are encouraged to be original and to be yourself.”120 “Biting” (or stealing others’ dance moves) is taboo in the Hip Hop community. This is in contrast to some traditional dance styles such as Ballet, where movements are rigorously codified and scripted with no room for improvisation, which Thomas calls boring. In Street Dance there is typically a circle, each person goes into the circle to show who they are and where they are from through movement.

Everyone in the circle is waiting to see what you have done with the foundation of the movement. Self-expression through improvisation or freestyle is emphasized and a necessary feature and key element of Street Dance.

Interestingly he identifies a connection between the Shout and Street Dance. He says that typically when the Shout happens the music has caused an emotional high or the pastor said something that sent the congregation on an “emotional roller coaster.121” He explains a time in the praise and worship experience when “the spirit takes over.”122 He says that spirit

“taking over” can happen in a Cypher (a freestyle circle) in the same way the Shout happens in a church. He likens the circle to the congregation. “it’s almost like that’s (the circle) is the congregation and the person in the center is like the pastor.”123 He goes so far as to say there have even been experiences where people call it catching the ghosts in the Cypher. Thomas explains that

120 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021 121 Interview with Thomas 122 Interview with Thomas 123 Interview with Thomas

68

…you reach a level of freedom in your movement, to where it is almost an out of body experience. Like, you’re just like, you’re gone. And the movement is so raw and real and people can feel it. And they shout, they clap their hands. All those things, and I compare that to the church because the person in the center is considered the pastor because he’s communicating through movement to all these people in the circle. The circle is the congregation because we are listening and we’re watching. And we see something we like the same like it’s the same like if a pastor says something you like, you let him know. So you scream, you shout, you jump up, you wave your hands. In the Cypher you scream, you shout, you jump up, you wave your hands. Like all those things, it’s all the same. Like even like call and response. So an MC gets on the microphone and calls: let me hear you say yeah and they respond: yeah. The pastor would call: Can I get an Amen? And they respond: Amen? Thomas questions: What’s the difference? It’s just different worlds and different structures.124

Thomas also makes a comparison to Drill Team which was performed in the Baptist church where he grew up. He compares the Drill Team movements to Poppin’ and Lockin’.

Both types of movement are very precise and are about angles and lines, although the main difference is the structured nature of movements within the church and freedom of movement within the Cypher; the church gives restrictions whereas the Cypher welcomes freedom of expression through movement. Thomas’ explanation of the Cypher resembles some of the early explanations of the Ring Shout by practitioners, who felt that the Ring Shout allowed a level of freedom inaccessible in the Christian church experience.

Thomas has experienced feeling like he is in praise and worship while dancing in the

Cypher. He also watched people in the Cypher who appear to be praising someone or practicing something. He notes that although these situations have occurred, It is not a consistent thing. Thomas says that any artist can experience this phenomenon, or tell you that

“All the cares didn’t have space in your head or in your body at the moment.”125 When asked,

124 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021 125 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021

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Thomas agrees that the religious experience is intricately connected to freedom for African

American people. This means that what constitutes having a religious experience through dance can change. Whatever type of dance provides freedom for the mind and body, shows ancestral reverence, and attends to the condition of being Black in America, constitutes religious experience in that sense. He goes on to pose the following questions:

Why do we dance? Why did we continue dancing after we were stolen? Why do we continue dancing in shackles? Why do we continue dancing after the shackles? Why did we continue dancing through the civil rights movement ? Why are we protesting now in the streets? And there’s drums? And there’s people dancing in Cyphers? We are still dancing.126

He goes on to say that this is what our culture does: we dance. “During the struggle we dance. During the celebration we dance. Through hurt, we dance. Through sorrow, we dance, through happiness and joy, we dance.”127 Where the dance is seen and how its seen in certain structures and certain environments can differ. Thomas says that in the church, dance movements may exist in one way, but you can take the same group of people to a family reunion and they will dance an entirely different way. I enjoy Thomas’ use of the phrase Street

Dance and agree that it encompasses a wide array of dance styles. It is useful particularly because there are new dances that are constantly added to this category. Historically, Hip hop served as a way of articulating and combatting the experience of being Black in America . It is clear from Thomas’s account that it is closely tied to religious experience in this deeper sense.

126 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021 127 Interview with Chris Thomas, January 25, 2021

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Figure 2. Thomas dancing in the Cypher at The Red Bull Dance Your Style Event

71

4.2 Hip-Hop Choreography and Religious Experience

There have been some choreographers who have explored religious topics through the genre of Hip Hop.128 Lorenzo “Rennie Harris” is one such choreographer, recognized as one of

Hip Hop’s leading ambassadors. He was born and raised in an African American community in

North Philadelphia. Inspired by Don “Campbellock” Campbell, known for inventing the Locking dance, Harris began dancing Hip Hop at an early age by practicing and performing in groups that he created.129 He has received three Bessie Awards, the Alvin Ailey Black choreographers award, an honorary doctorate of Fine Arts from Bates College, and a Guggenheim Fellowship among other acknowledgments. Harris believes that we will not overcome racial or ethnic barriers until we know, appreciate, and respect the particular and distinct cultural worlds from which each of us come.130

He has taught workshops in colleges and universities throughout the nation. In 1992 he founded his dance company Rennie Harris Pure Movement based on the belief “that Hip Hop is the most important original expression of a new generation.” Harris characterizes Hip Hop as a contemporary indigenous form, “one that expresses universal themes that extend beyond racial, religious, and economic boundaries, and one that (because of its pan-racial and

128 Hip Hop does not refer to one specific style of dance but rather it is an umbrella term referring to a range of dance styles that were born out of Hip Hop culture. See Imani Kai Johnson. “Hip-Hop Dance.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop, edited by Justin A. Williams, 22–31. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. doi:10.1017/CCO9781139775298.004. 129 Dr. Rennie Harris (Hon), “Rennie Harris RHAW – About”, Rennie Harris Pure Movement, 2011. http://www.rennieharrisrhaw.org/rennie.php. 130 Mark Gonnerman. Aurora Forum Series A Conversation with Rennie Harris on Hip Hop Choreography. Other, n.d. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu6vUXWKlQ8.

72 transnational popularity) can help bridge these division.”131 While he acknowledges the worldwide reach of Hip Hop including its influence and ability to extend beyond racial boundaries, his work seeks to embody past African American traditions while at the same time articulating the voice of the new generation through dance.

In 2003 “Facing Mekka,” a dance choreographed by Harris, premiered at the Joyce

Theatre in New York. This work was described as exploring the global face of Islam through movement, rhythm, sound, and image.132 By choreographing movement that blended Hip Hop with African Dance,133 “Facing Mekka” included African movement aesthetics, such as orientation of the movement to the earth, along with grounded movements and moments where the focus is on undulation of the torso and twisting of the hips. After its premiere, a critic writing for The New York Times suggested that the work seemed to be “devoid of both theological and dramatic specificity.”134 Arguably, however, the desire to correlate a theological theme to a dance with African and Hip Hop aesthetics could be attributed to an incapacity to understand the religious aspects of Hip Hop and what that means for African Americans. The same article goes on to quote Harris in saying “for me ‘Mekka’ means self or dance.”135 This

131 Dr. Rennie Harris (Hon), “Rennie Harris RHAW – About”, Rennie Harris Pure Movement, 2011. http://www.rennieharrisrhaw.org/rennie.php. 132 Bates News. “Hip-Hop Legend Rennie Harris Presents 'Facing Mekka' at Bates Dance Festival.” News. Bates News, January 26, 2017. https://www.bates.edu/news/2004/07/21/facing- mekka/#:~:text=Philadelphia's%20Rennie%20Harris%2C%20one%20of,conceived%20at%20Bates%20in%201998. 133 Anderson, Jack. “Letting Hip-Hop Convey Humanity's Struggle.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 16, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/movies/dance-review-letting-hip-hop-convey-humanity-s- struggle.html. 134 Jack Anderson. “Letting Hip-Hop Convey Humanity's Struggle.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 16, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/movies/dance-review-letting-hip-hop-convey-humanity-s- struggle.html. 135 Anderson, Jack. “Letting Hip-Hop Convey Humanity's Struggle.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 16, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/movies/dance-review-letting-hip-hop-convey-humanity-s- struggle.html.

73 noted dichotomy speaks to the complex and diverse identities of African Americans. While the identities may be diverse, the history of Africans in America is shared. Harris’ assertion that for him, ‘Mekka’ means self or dance affirms the connections between religion and Hip Hop.

The CERCL Writing Collective spoke to these connections in the text Breaking Bread,

Breaking Beats: Churches and Hip – Hop--- A Basic Guide to Key Issues :

When we look at religion and hip-hop through the lens of history, we begin to see how these two cultural expressions are interrelated in spite of how different they appear on the surface. Both of these culturally based creative forms come from and continue to respond to themes such as limited economic conditions, failing educational systems, oppressive political power structures, and societal ideas premised upon African American inferiority.136

The interrelation between religion and Hip Hop stressed here and articulated within Harris’s choreography in “Facing Mekka” illuminates the acknowledgment of and wrestling with identity through dance and can be extended to cover many facets of the culturally creative rhythm, musical, and dance movement that is typical of or emerged from African American culture and social situation.

Conclusion

My interview with Chris Thomas clarifies both the ways Hip Hop in the African American community can be actively religious, and how it historically responds to aspects of the duality that characterizes being Black in America. Harris’s assertion that Mekka meant self, further emphasizes the importance of identity in the religious experience. Because African American

136 The CERCL Writing Collective. "Moments in the History of Black Churches and Hip-Hop." In Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats: Churches and Hip-Hop—A Basic Guide to Key Issues, 1-38. Minneapolis: 1517 Media, 2014. Accessed January 13, 2021. doi:10.2307/j.ctt9m0s9h.4.

74 religion can be understood as a process through which African Americans make sense of or understand their place in the world, a place that is always situated in the reality of imminent danger, as Anthony Pinn notes,137 this process of making meaning of one’s life and place in the world while hoping and striving for a better condition can and has manifest itself in many ways and in varying spaces. The Ring Shout was an initial manifestation of this meaning making, but this thesis has showed may ways in which movement has been an active evolving focal point for

African American religiosity.

Conversations about African American religion will always include movement: movement that occurred during the Middle Passage and movement that is dance. As articulated earlier by M. Shawn Copeland, African American religious experience encompasses a religious and cultural intersectional response to the divine that also intersects with history and involves the process of making sense of one’s place in the world.

Hartman’s text was a necessary tool in my thesis to show the ways that dance was affected by issues that she details within Scenes of Subjection such as commodification, control, fungibility, terror, and enjoyment. While her book does not focus specifically on the body, those issues give special attention to the fact that the enslaved was both a subject and an expendable object to be controlled which directly relate to the body-the primary instrument used in the act of dancing.

Williams’s contemporary manifestations of the Ring Shout with her students at UNC

Charlotte show how this dance, the first African American religious dance, is essentially

137 Anthony B Pinn. Terror and Triumph : the Nature of Black Religion / Anthony B. Pinn. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003.

75 reaching back and retaining historical aesthetics while moving forward and influencing new dance forms as well. Williams also eloquently described the way spirit possession has many similarities throughout the diaspora and the influence of music on spirit possession.

Germaine Acogny echoes Williams’s assertion that music is integral to spirit possession with her experience of becoming possessed unintentionally due to a spiritual rhythm being played by the drummer which evoked the possession. Acogny’s voice is also essential to the thesis since it shows how a performance can transition to a religious experience through possession.

Alorwoyie further reiterates the importance of musical influence in detailing through his interview the ways that certain songs or drum patterns can influence spirit possession but also the connections the music can create to the ancestors since he acknowledges the Ring

Shout as a manifestation of the ancestors communing with the practitioners.

Vance with his expansive experience providing musical accompaniment for the Shout during church services detailed the importance of how you usher people into the Shout with how you play the instruments and likewise the importance of how you calm them down afterwards. However Vance also echoes the sentiments of Williams in that spirit possession can be transferred from one person to another.

Finally Thomas’s voice was crucial since he spoke of his experience with break-dancing as a form of religious worship. His voice shows that a dance traditionally viewed as secular can exist as a religious experience and he also exhibits through his practice a contemporary manifestation of my definition of African American religious dance. As shown in the interview with Chris Thomas, Street Dance can function as an African American religious experience and

76 might even be a core form of it-- one that redresses the pained body, contains ancestral reverence, is an expression of the experience of being Black in America, and is capable of progressing to a state of trance or possession. The relationships he suggests between the

Cypher and the Shout allow us to see how fluid the possible relation can be between religiosity and some African American dance forms historically labeled as secular.

All forms of African American dance have the potential for functioning as a religious experience since they are a contemporary voice of expression for the new generation. Perhaps not all of these dance forms are considered religious dance, but in the realm of African

American religiosity it is difficult to disentangle them based on the movement alone.

77

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