Bridging Horizons: Embodied Cultural Knowledge Through the Development and Presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance
Michael William Lucas Courtney (RAS Mikey C)
Doctorate of Philosophy Irish World Academy of Music and Dance University of Limerick Supervisor Dr. Catherine E. Foley Submitted to the University of Limerick November 2017
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2 Bridging Horizons: Embodied Cultural Knowledge Through the Development and Presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance Michael William Lucas Courtney (RAS Mikey C)
Abstract
This practice-led research explores Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept and as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange. By using artistic practice as the primary method of investigation the author analyses the development and presentation of two major Ethio- Modern Dance choreographic works, የቡና ዓለም YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015) and Common Threads (2016).
This thesis is comprised of five chapters in which the research is situated. It includes qualitative research and illuminates the methodologies, theoretical underpinnings, and conceptual understandings of the author’s artistic practice. Ethio-Modern Dance, a concept put forth by the author, is an exploration into the promotion of embodied Ethiopian and other world dance cultures. It is presented through the lens of a Western urban contemporary dance artist and lifist, the latter stemming from the author’s philosophy on valued aesthetics referred to as Lifism. Other theoretical concepts explored in this thesis are embodiment, ‘the self’, metaphor, the soma, and ritual.
This thesis is accompanied by audio/visual recordings of the author’s two major Ethio- Modern Dance choreographic works, which are analysed in separate chapters in relation to the central research questions of the investigation: What is my understanding of Ethio- Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio- Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? This research employs various methods of investigation including, but not limited to, artistic practice, forms of autoethnographic writing, personal journaling, narrative enquiry, literature review, and internet-based resources in order to compile qualitative data that will assist in the analysis of the two major choreographed works. The analysis of these choreographed works also examines the abovementioned concepts and their roles within in the creative processes and performances of these works.
This thesis incorporates the perspectives of the various participants in order to illustrate their embodied cultural knowledge as well as the impact of these bodies of choreographic works on the dance communities in which they were presented. As a result of this practice-led research and choreographic analysis, the author gains a deeper sense of himself as an artist and lifsit, and also refines his understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance as a concept while exemplifing ways in which it can be used as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange. This thesis is the foundation of the author’s ongoing investigation into his embodied understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance as a concept and illustrates the important contribution this research makes to the field of arts practice-led studies.
i Declaration
I hereby declare that the following thesis is my own original material. Prior to this submission, none of the materials have been used for publication, degrees, and/or awards from a university or Third Level Institution. The University of Limerick Ethics Committee, has granted the permission for me to conduct the research herein, and all informants named have given their consent.
Doctoral Candidate: Michael William Lucas Courtney (RAS Mikey C)
Signed: ______
Date: ______
Course Director: Dr. Helen Phelan
Signed: ______
Date: ______
Supervisor: Dr. Catherine E. Foley
Signed: ______
Date: ______
ii Acknowledgements
To mention all those who have had an impact on this PhD journey would be an on-going process, but I would like to name a few:
I must first Give Thanks to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, as without HIM as the foundation of my faith, I would not be on the path that has been put before me. I would like to thank my mother for her continuous support and encouragement with my choices to pursue this path. My father for being a part of my life. My wife and children for being the primary motivation for my post-graduate pursuits and for making the sacrifices for me to reach this point of completion. To my brothers and sisters for their love and strength.
I would also like to thank my University of Limerick Irish World Academy family, especially my course director Dr. Helen Phelan, supervisor Dr. Catherine Foley, Dr. Sandra Joyce, and Dr. Niall Keegan for all your support, guidance and assistance over the past five years. I appreciate you for keeping me on task and for giving me the platform to share and learn with ‘ye’ all. You all make me proud to call Limerick home. I am forever grateful for my extended friends and family in the US, Ethiopia, and Ireland you all have inspired me and influenced the life’s purpose I pursue.
Finally, a special thanks to all who have assisted me in various ways throughout this journey, those who have believed in me and my mission to bridge cultural gaps through movement. I appreciate your support and though I may have not mentioned you by name, you are not forgotten.
With Honors and Respect Live, Love, and Give Thanks
iii Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………i Declaration……………………………………………………………...... ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………...iv List of Figures…………………………………………………………...vii USB……………………………………………………………………...... ix List of Appendices……………………………………………………...... x Introduction………………………………………………………………xi Chapter One……………………………………………………………….1 Arts Practice Research, Methods, and Situating the Self………………1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………….1 Part One: Methodologies and Theoretical Underpinnings………………….2 Research Rationale………………………………………………………2 Research Questions and Objectives…………………………………...... 3 Arts Practice Research………………………………………………...... 4 Practice as Research Challenges……………………………………...... 6 The Practice of Visual and Written Documentation…………………….8 The Performance Practice Paradigm…………………………………...10 Valued Aesthetic……………………………………………………….11 Part Two: Situating the Self………………………………………………….12 My Foundation………………………………………………………....12 Youthful Daze………………………………………………………….13 “Hit me with Music”…………………………………………………...16 An Artist Emerges……………………………………………………...18 Building Artistic Awareness…………………………………………....21 ‘Piloboland’…………………………………………………………….23 Finding my Home and Honing My Craft……………………………....25 My Return to Academia……………………………………………...... 27 Overview of Chapters………………………………………………….28 Chapter Two…………………………………………………………...... 30 Contextual and Theoretical Development…………………………...... 30 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..30 Conceptual Overview………………………………………………………...30 Embodiment: Theory, Concept, and Metaphor……………………………32 Theoretical Perspectives on the Concept of Embodiment…………...... 32 Metaphorical Concept……………………………………………….....37
iv Embodied Metaphor………………………………………………….39 Ritual Metaphor……………………………………………………....41 Somatic Self: Body, Mind, Spirit……………………………………..42 Embodied Cultural Identity………………………………………………...47 Ethio-Modern Dance: The Two Side of the Coin………………………….53 Chapter Summary…………………………………………………………...54
Chapter Three…………………………………………………………..56 Performance One: የቡና ዓለም YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World…….....56 Introduction………………………………………………………………….57 The Reason…………………………………………………………………...54 From Kaffa to Café: A Concept of Coffee……………………………….....59 The Legend of Kaldi……………………………………………………….....61 Embodied Ritual Elements………………………………………………….62 In the Midst…………………………………………………………………..67 Narrative in the Creative Process…………………………………………..69 An Addis (New) Community Connection…………………………………..72 Embodied Interpretations…………………………………………………..74 Reflections of Performer Participants……………………………………..75 The Stumbles and the Building Blocks…………………………………….78 The Impact of YeBuna Alem………………………………………………..81 The Emic and Etic Documentation………………………………………...84 Chapter Summary…………………………………………………………..85 Chapter Four…………………………………………………………...87 Performance Two: Common Threads………………………………....87 Introduction………………………………………………………………….88 Ethiopia: The Backstory………………………………………………….....89 The Reasons………………………………………………………………….89 Inspiration in the Creative Process………………………………………...91 One Tribe: Embodied Ritual Culture……………………………………....92 Dark Trade: Embodied Narrative…………………………………………..98 Pulse: A Cross-Cultural Connection……………………………………...106 Other Cultural Influences and Performer Participant Collaborations...109 The Community Engagement and Participant Responses……………....112 Chapter Summary………………………………………………………….117 Chapter Five…………………………………………………………...119 Final Reflections and Conclusions…………………………………....119 Introduction………………………………………………………………....119 Methodological Effectiveness………………………………………………119
v Emerged Conceptual Understandings……………………………………...122 ‘YeBuna Alem’ Reflections…………………………………………..122 ‘Common Threads’ Reflections……………………………………...124 Performer Process and Audience Product Interpretations……………….126 Final Discoveries……………………………………………………………..128 Conclusions………………………………………………………………...... 131 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….133 Published Written Resources………………………………………..133 Unpublished Written Resources…………………………………….144 Internet Resources…………………………………………………...144 Personal Email & Social Media Correspondence………………….144 Appendix I………………………………………………………………145 Glossary of Terms…………………………………………………………....145 Appendix II…………………………………………………………...... 146 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Letter to the Artists………………………146 Appendix III……………………………………………………………147 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Performer Questionnaire………………...147 Appendix IV……………………………………………………………148 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Audience Questionnaire………………….148 Appendix V……………………………………………………………..149 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Program Notes…………………………....149 Appendix VI…………………………………………………………....150 Common Threads: General Participant Questionnaire…………………..150 Appendix VII…………………………………………………………..151 Common Threads: Performer Questionnaire……………………………..151 Appendix VIII………………………………………………………....152 Common Threads: Negash Abdu Questionnaire………………………….152 Appendix IX…………………………………………………………...153 Common Threads: Program Notes………………………………………...153 Appendix X…………………………………………………………….154 University of Limerick Ethical Consent Forms…………………………..154 Appendix XI……………………………………………………………155 Letters of Support…………………………………………………………..155
vi List of Figures
(Figure 1) The Courtney Family (1975) (Figure 2) Me on Luke’s lap with his oldest son Dwayne (1980) (Figure 3) 9th grade Johnny Law on the far left and myself in the middle of the Boys Choir at Robert E. Lee High School (1992) (Figure 4) Rouse-Ringo and I in performance photo of Carriage (1997) (Figure 5) F.I.V.E. Co-founders Sanders, Spaulding, and Myself (2003) (Figure 6) Dreams? I-Journey (2001) performance photo UARTS Drake Theatre (Figure 7) Pilobolus Dance Theatre Tsu-Ku-Tsu (2002) Jaworski, Kent, and Myself (Figure 8) Pilobolus Dance Theatre Gnomen (2002) O. Cook, M. Fucik, M.Kent, Myself (Figure 9) 2nd Reggae by the Nile Concert (2010) [I am to the far left and was a co-producer and performer] (Figure 10) Abeba, Myself, Tivon and Ya’al (2011) (Figure 11) Andinet International School, Addis Ababa - with my Grade 1 class (2010) (Figure 12) My Contemporary Dance class at Eallaz Dance Studio in Addis Ababa, I am in the blue pants and Falle in the light blue top (2009) (Figure 13) Ethio-Modern Dance Workshop at University of Limerick (2013) (Figure 14) Promotional flyer YeBuna Alem (2015) (Figure 15) Painting of Traditional Ethiopian Buna Ceremony (artist unknown) (Figure 16) Painting of Kaldi with the goats (artist unknown) (Figure 17) Mid-Performance image of Myself in YeBuna Alem (2015) (Figure 18) Pre-show image of performance space for YeBuna Alem (2015) in Tower Theatre, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick (Figure 19) The three travelers (Rodrigez, Dawson, Fontanella and myself in YeBuna Alem (2015) (Figure 20) Post-performance image of buna Ceremony participants (Figure 21) Promotional Flyer for Common Threads (2016) designed by: Dagmawi Mesfin (Figure 22) Photo of One Tribe performers during Common Threads (2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh (Figure 23) Performers of One Tribe in shebsheba inspired movement (Common Threads 2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh
vii (Figure 24) Dark Trade performers with owner of YEFIKIR owner/designer at costume fitting for Common Threads (2016) (Figure 25) Sherman, Myself and Grimes in a pre-production photo at Ethiopian National Theatre Common Threads (2016) (Figure 26) Abdu receiving his award Common Threads (2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh (Figure 27) Abdu presented the award to Getachew Common Threads (2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh (Figure 28) Encore full-cast (Common Threads 2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh
viii USB
Performances
Performance One- የቡና ዓለም YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World https://youtu.be/LRveDhYJUMg
Performance Two- Common Threads https://youtu.be/Mw8IF6oZtvY
Promotional Adverts
Common Threads https://youtu.be/ouKNADkEuV4 https://youtu.be/Ibe1Gg7ldkQ
ix List of Appendices
Appendix I………………………………………………………………145 Glossary of Terms…………………………………………………………....145 Appendix II…………………………………………………………...... 146 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Letter to the Artists………………………146 Appendix III……………………………………………………………147 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Performer Questionnaire………………...147 Appendix IV……………………………………………………………148 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Audience Questionnaire………………….148 Appendix V……………………………………………………………..149 YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World: Program Notes…………………………....149 Appendix VI…………………………………………………………....150 Common Threads: General Participant Questionnaire…………………..150 Appendix VII…………………………………………………………..151 Common Threads: Performer Questionnaire……………………………..151 Appendix VIII………………………………………………………....152 Common Threads: Negash Abdu Questionnaire………………………….152 Appendix IX…………………………………………………………...153 Common Threads: Program Notes………………………………………...153 Appendix X…………………………………………………………….154 University of Limerick Ethical Consent Forms…………………………..154 Appendix XI……………………………………………………………155 Letters of Support…………………………………………………………..155
x Introduction
As an African born in the Americas one of my life’s missions is to spread cultural understanding to communities across the globe by sharing my gift of the performing arts. Movement is the language of the body and dance has been a powerful means of non-verbal communication and human expression since the beginning of human existence, providing us with creative narratives about peoples’ origins, identity, experiences, and aspirations (Geertz 1973, Blacking 1983, Öztürk 2011, Bannerman 2014). I have spent the past twenty years cultivating my knowledge of movement and culture, and through my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (U.S.A.) and my Master of Arts degree in Ethnochoreology from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick (Ireland), I have developed a physical and cognitive awareness of ‘movement’ and its importance to our human existence.
My four-year journey through this PhD in Arts Practice Research programme has been an enlightening endeavor of reflection and discovery of how movement metaphorically and physically is my life. With this thesis, I investigate and analyse my own artistic practice in relation to various research methodologies and theoretical concepts which emerged through my creative processes. This has enabled me to broaden my understanding of the choices I make during my creative processes in the development and presentation of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, specifically የቡና ዓለም (YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World) (2015), hereafter referred to as YeBuna Alem, and Common Threads (2016). Each chapter of this written thesis will illuminate my progress in understanding my arts practice research as I attempt to answer my central research questions: What is my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio-Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?
Chapter One introduces arts practice research as a field of study and situates myself as an artist/researcher. This chapter is presented in two parts: Part One provides an overview of
xi the theoretical and methodological frameworks, as well as my rationale for this practice-led research; Part Two uses various forms of auto-ethnographic writing, such as narrative inquiry, and memory recall to illustrate some of the key formative moments that have shaped the urban contemporary performing artist/researcher I am today.
Chapter Two delves further into my conceptual and theoretical investigations through literature review of books, chapters, and articles. I examine embodiment as the central theme of my research and investigate other interrelated concepts that emerged through the creative process and presentation of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. These concepts include, but are not limited to, culture, identity, metaphor, and ritual in performance. I also discuss the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin and relate how each of the two choreographic performances represent both sides of this coin.
Chapters Three and Four consist of my analysis of the creative process and performance of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). In Chapter Three, I examine the embodiment of metaphor and ritual aspects in the performance of YeBuna Alem (2015). I articulate aspects of embodied Ethiopian culture which I promote to the participants of this performance production, which took place at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland on May 26, 2015. Chapter Four analyses my role as artistic director for the showcase of choreographic works in Common Threads (2016). In this performance production, I use movement as a conduit for cultural exchange in the contemporary performance setting of the Ethiopian National Theatre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on July 2, 2016.
Chapter Five is comprised of my conclusions for this written thesis. I discuss the effectiveness of my choice of methodologies as well as what I achieved with this research, some of the unanticipated challenges, and future aspirations for continued post-doctoral research in Ethio-Modern Dance and related topics.
This written thesis is accompanied by edited audio/visual documentation of the live performances of YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016).
xii Chapter One Arts Practice Research, Methods, and Situating the Self
Introduction This chapter of this thesis is presented in two parts which examine the methods and theories that play an interactive role in my investigation of my creative processes in the development of Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. This chapter also identifies a few key moments in my artistic journey and introduces how I devised Ethio-Modern Dance as my own theoretical concept and movement practice. In Part One of this chapter I will examine Arts Practice Research as a field of study and performance practice as a research method (Kershaw 2009), in order to express my perspective on their importance to my artistic and academic development. I will articulate the methods I utilise in my own arts practice research and introduce the rationale for conducting this research, along with the research questions which direct and inform my investigation. I engage with Richard Schechner’s (2003) ‘broad spectrum approach’ to refine my understanding of performance as a practice and discuss other methods I employ, which include but are not limited to, Practice as Research (Nelson and Andrews 2003, Nelson 2013), auto-ethnography (Chang 2008), narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Connelly 2000), and documentation (Nimkulrat 2007). Part Two aims to situate myself as a performing artist, and depicts key formative moments of my past that have shaped me as such. In alignment with the works of Pelias’ (2004), I will draw on alternative academic writing methods such as personal narrative and autobiographical forms. This will include narrative inquiry, memory recall, and reflective analysis writings used to aid in exemplifying important elements, such as family and music, which have played key roles in my artistic development. These writing forms help me to identify other significant lived-experiences (Barbour 2013), such as my university dance training, professional experience, and my repatriation to Ethiopia, which have helped shaped my current artistic practice and creative processes.
1 Part One: Methodologies and Theoretical Underpinnings
Research Rationale Throughout my career I have used the performing arts as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange within diverse communities – local and international1. Although I define myself as an African-American, it is my spirituality, my family, and my lived-experiences in Ethiopia since 2006 that compels me to promote Ethiopian culture through the development and presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance. Ethio-Modern Dance is a movement concept, which is rooted in my amalgamated embodiment of Ethiopian culture as expressed through the lens of a Western urban contemporary performing artist. My perception of my work as a Western artist is a reflection of my lived-experience (Barbour 2013) not only in Ethiopia; but within urban American Hip Hop culture; through my undergraduate dance training in various classical and modern dance techniques; my international professional performance experience within commercial and concert performing arts & entertainment; and my post- graduate academic research in Ireland. It was my quest for a deeper understanding of myself and subsequent acceptance of Ras Tafari (Emperor Haile Selassie I2) and the Rastafari Movement (Campbell 1987, Brooks 1995) as my spiritual practice, which led me to repatriate to Ethiopia from the United States in 2006. In April of 2010 I returned to the West after living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for four years, and while beginning to develop my concept of Ethio-Modern Dance. Motivated by Emperor Haile Selassie I, who stated, “We know that man’s physical needs and his intellectual and spiritual strivings can only be satisfied through the medium of education” (Selassie 1967:362), I returned to academia in the fall of 2012. I moved to Limerick, Ireland - to undertake a Master of Arts degree in Ethnochoreology at the Irish World Academy of
1 For the past twenty years I have performed, choreographed, and taught internationally. Many of these works incorporated embodied cultural knowledge of my own or the collaborators life experiences. These works include but are not limited to that of Pilobolus, F.I.V.E. Productions, and other international independent artists that I have worked with throughout my career, in the US, Europe, and Africa. 2 His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I (which translates as ‘Power of the Trinity’ in Ethiopia’s Amharic language) is the last of the 225 Kings to sit on the throne of the Ethiopian Monarchy also referred to as the Kingdom of Abyssinia. Selassie ruled from 1930 until the Monarchy was deposed in 1973 by a military coupe none as the Derg. Before being crowned King of Kings, Selassie carried the name Taferi (to be feared) and was given the title Ras (head) when he became the Duke of the Harar region in Ethiopia where is was born. This name is where the Rastafarians, who adhere to Haile Selassie I as a divine being, have adopted.
2 Music and Dance (IWA), University of Limerick (UL).
While gathering research data for my final presentation, which was 50% performance and 50% written thesis3, I discovered that there was very little written information about the various cultural dances of Ethiopia. At the time, I found some materials compiled from field work conducted by Hungarian researchers and university professors Gyögry Martin (1967) and Tibor Vadasy (1970, 1972, and 1973)4. This lack of accessible documented materials further motivated me to continue my investigation of Ethiopian dance and culture after the completion of my Masters in Ethnochoreology in 2013.
In order to promote my embodied understanding of Ethiopian culture, since 2013, I have presented material, instructed masterclasses, and workshops on Ethio-Modern Dance at international dance conferences such as Dance Research Forum of Ireland (2014), World Dance Alliance (2014), Congress on Research in Dance (2015), and the Royal Geographical Society (2016). Although I have developed other Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works5, this thesis examines my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographies, namely YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016).
Research Questions and Objectives This doctoral research, Bridging Horizons: Embodied Cultural Knowledge Through the Development and Presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance, emphasises the cultural influences of Ethiopia within the creative process of two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). This research aims to answer to following three questions: 1. What is my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance? 2. Why is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? 3. Can the development and presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance
3 Kerb Gen Ruk/Close But Far: An Autoethnographic Investigation into Choreographing an Ethio-Modern Dance Work (Courtney 2013) 4 After a visit to Hungary in 1964 then Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie selected a group of Hungarians to conduct fieldwork on Ethiopian music and dance culture. Vadasy became a dance instructor at Yared Music School and during that time taught my own mentor Gash Negash Abdu. (See Chapter 4) 5 Some of which include: Kerb Gen Ruk (Ireland 2013); Ritual (Ireland 2014); and Anchi Becha (Ireland 2014).
3 participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?6 With this research, my main objective is to use my embodied understanding of Ethio- Modern Dance as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange, in order to bridge cultural divides and extend cultural horizons. I aim to explore the metaphorical two-sided Ethio- Modern Dance coin and how each side relates to the choreographic works developed in my two performance productions. The first performance, YeBuna Alem (2015), aims to share my embodied cultural knowledge of Ethiopia (Ethio) with those outside of the country. The second performance, Common Threads (2016), aims to share my embodied lived-experience as a Western urban contemporary performing artists (Modern) with the Ethiopian community. Both sides of this metaphorical Ethio-Modern Dance coin, as well as the performances, attempt to illustrate Ethiopia’s cultural connection to other parts of the world through the medium of Ethio-Modern Dance and I use myself as a type of ‘cultural broker’ between the continents of North America, Europe, and Africa.
Arts Practice Research Making the decision to pursue an Arts Practice Research doctoral programme was not a difficult one as it allowed me to explore methods of conducting qualitative research or more accurately performative research (Nelson 2013). Arts Practice Research or Practice as Research (PaR) is for me a practice-led interdisciplinary research method, which involves ethnochoreology (Foley 2013), ethnography (Barbour 2013), autoethnography (Chang 2008), and other narrative writing forms, internet research, literature research, and field research. Through this PaR method, I argue that I can effectively investigate my artistic practices in the development and presentation of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works.
For the completion of this four-year structured PhD in Arts Practice Research programme at the Irish World academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, I am required to submit an approximated forty-thousand-word thesis, which presents and analyses my artistic
6 African American Dance Anthropologist Katherine Dunham was highly influenced by the dance culture of the Caribbean, specifically Haiti, and used her embodied understandings of these cultures as tools in her choreographic approach. She was able to find connections between the dances of African Diaspora and illustrated this in her research and her practice, which won her the respect of the communities she engaged with. (Dee Das 2012)
4 practice as the central research methodology. In the past twenty years, ‘creative performance as a method of inquiry’ (Kershaw 2009) has established itself as a form of research that challenges traditional methodologies. Since the early 1990’s the world of artistic doctoral studies has shifted away from a focus on science and theory towards research that is based on one’s artistic practice as it has been determined that a significant amount of new knowledge can be generated through the investigation of artistic practice (Schatzki, Cetina, Savigny 2001). Creativity is at the foundation of Performance Practice as Research (PPaR), and all established conventional understandings of performance or artistic aesthetic may be contested, based on an individual aesthetic interpretation. Former director of Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP)7, Baz Kershaw, stated: When the challenge of ‘artistic research’ meets established hierarchies of knowledge, the result might match that mythical moment in physics when an irresistible force meets an immovable object: an inconceivable disturbance. (Kershaw in Smith & Dean 2009:106)
These three methods, PaR, PPaR, and PARIP use artistic practice as the focal point of a research investigation and from my understanding these terms can be used interchangeably. For the sake of clarity, I will use PaR throughout this thesis in reference to my own artistic practice as research. PaR has steadily developed credibility as an approach to doctoral research (Nelson and Andrews 2003, Nelson 2013). PaR has faced many challenges, mostly centred on the guidelines and criteria for evaluation. According to an article by Nelson and Andrews (2003), evaluation of a PaR PhD is contextually specific, based on guidelines adjusted to the university’s specificity. Currently, because of the conventional criteria of doctoral studies, the practical component alone, has not proved sufficient for a complete evaluation. Therefore, it must be accompanied by a written analytical component as well. The admission of creative practice in a PaR PhD context is premised on the notion that research questions in the performing arts can be rigorously worked through in a range of practices (of which writing is only one). Where creative work forms a significant outcome of the research project, references to ‘thesis’ are understood to denote the totality of the submission without privileging any of the submitted components.
7 Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP), is a UK based inquiry project led by practitioner-researchers which included conferences, regional working group meetings, case studies, and interactive DVDs that explored various types of performance practice as research.
5 (Nelson and Andrews 2003:3)
As stated, the written component contextualises the creative process as well as the product by reflexive analysis, illustrating the relations between one’s chosen methodologies of research, and the production process. This PhD in Arts Practice Research is a suitable format for my research as it incorporates practical and written components, which allows me to articulate my creative intentions through my presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works and their subsequent written analysis.
Practice as Research Challenges I consider my PaR in the development and presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept rooted in the environment where it is being developed, Limerick and Addis Ababa, but representative of the embodied socio-cultural experiences of my habitus (Mauss 1935, Bourdieu 1972). This consideration can present its challenges when attempting to articulate to what extent these concepts impact my research. However, I would argue that these concepts are exemplified in the performances of YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). There are other challenges towards one’s approach to PaR, which Kershaw refers to as a ‘paradoxology of performance’ (Kershaw 2009). Kershaw states: …the successful growth of the practice-as-research movement internationally attests to the frequent power of its inquiries in addressing much broader dilemmas of the human animal in the twenty-first century. (Kershaw in Smith & Dean 2009:108)
I agree with Kershaw’s argument in that some of the main challenges of my PaR, are based on three focus areas: 1) Starting Points: Knowing, why and for whom the research is being conducted, which can determine the aim of the research and also limit the scope of the research based on a need to fit into guidelines or criteria for funding or admission; 2) Aesthetics: Where does the research-practitioner place value on the research, which is sensitive to the context but also can challenge assumptions or conventional modernist ideals of aesthetic?
6 3) Documentation: Archiving the process, research, and product with written and visual text in order to track the progress of learning in the project. (Kershaw in Smith & Dean 2009) To some extent these three focus areas have influenced my own PaR. For example, although my ‘starting point’ or research topic has broadened since my proposal’s acceptance by the University of Limerick in 2013, I have followed the university guidelines and criteria for doctoral research provided for me by my academic advisors, which aided me in my acceptance into the PhD Arts Practice Research programme. This research is being conducted as a part of the requirements for the completion of the PhD programme, but it is also an attempt to broaden the knowledge of movement culture between contemporary audiences in: Addis Ababa Ethiopia; Limerick, Ireland; and beyond. Regarding Kershaw’s second focus area, ‘aesthetics,’ I would argue that my understanding of aesthetics continues to evolve. As an ethnochoreologist, I have learned to appreciate the contextual nature of cultural aesthetics in relation to movement. With this cultural sensitivity, I developed an appreciation for various perspectives of aesthetics, which adds to my expanded contextual understanding of valued aesthetics. Lastly, although in recent years I have improved my skills of reflexive journaling and field notes, I still have a big challenge with video documentation of my creative processes and performance products. Nithikul Nimkulrat (2007) expresses the important role of documentation in practice-led and practice-based research, which in my opinion both fall under the category of PaR. Nimkulrat argues that Practice-led research documentation records the interplay between ‘researcher-practitioner’ through the creative process to the end product. In Practice-led research the role of the researcher and practitioner are equally important and focus on the process as much as the product (Nimkulrat 2007). Nimkulrat explains that this is slightly different from Practice- based research documentation, which focuses on the performance product as an archived artefact. The material generated from Practice-led documentation can be used as research material and can contribute to significant written and visual text that can assist in the researcher-practitioner’s analysis of the research project (Nimkulrat 2007). I would argue that my PaR is practice-led in that I am invested in the process just as much as I am concerned about the final product. Throughout my exploration of Ethio-Modern Dance in this PhD Arts Practice programme I have found it challenging to navigate my role as a
7 researcher-practitioner who wants to investigate my creative process but also has to produce a final product that will be part of the criteria for my evaluation. In my opinion, PaR and its evaluation requires a level of expertise by the research-practitioner (Nimkulrat 2007), supervisors, and evaluators in the field that is being researched. There are other discrepancies as to the validity of PaR, especially in cases where live performance is the basis of the practical investigation. A performance cannot be accurately duplicated because of its ephemerality, and in turn it can only be ‘reactivated’ to some degree by those who experienced the live event or when a recorded live performance is viewed. Even with these challenges, I would argue that a practice-led research methodological approach is one that allows me to increase my academic and my practical knowledge within my field and produce performance works that reflect the epistemic knowledge gained from my research.
The Practice of Visual and Written Documentation Documentation of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic productions, YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016), from creative process to product, plays a significant role in the reflexive analysis portions of my doctoral research. I will now briefly reiterate some of the methods that I used to document my research. According to Karen Barbour (2013), certain ethnographic methods are highly valued by dance researchers committed to the embodiment of knowledge through participation and observation. She states these methods engage: …with issues of reflexivity, pedagogy, cultural responsiveness, performance, individual and group identities, nationalism, ethics and representation… (Barbour 2013:1)
This can reveal insights about socio-cultural and political contexts. As Barbour (2013) added: Dance researchers appreciate that embodied participation is integral, whether in choreographic and performance research, teaching dance in formal education or community contexts, developing creative writing methods to represent lived experience, or in other contexts in which dance researchers engage. (Ibid.)
8 My embodied lived-experience within American, Ethiopian, and even Ireland cultures are at the root of my research and are central to my contextual engagement of my two bodies of choreographic works. Because embodiment is a central concept in my research, I employ autoethnography as a documentation method. Chang argues: Stemming from the field of anthropology, autoethnography…transcends mere narration of self to engage in cultural analysis and interpretation. (Chang 2008:43)
Autoethnography thus allows me to turn the lens of focus away from the people associated with my research and focuses the analysis on the embodied cultural knowledge that influences my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. I also engage with other ethnographic alternatives to academic writing, such as personal narrative and memory recall of lived-experiences, which contribute to my understanding of my own practice. This is in effort to get more in touch with “the heart, the body, and the spirit” (Pelias 2004:1) of my works as I would align with Pelias’ argument that: Writers and readers benefit from a close association with a scholarship that is evocative, multifaceted, reflexive, empathetic, and useful. (Pelias 2004:12)
I utilise narrative inquiry as a method in the form of interviewing or text-based correspondences from contributors in my research to capture different perspectives of their experiential involvement in my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic productions. According to Clandinin & Connelly (2000) authors of ‘Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research’: Emotion, value, felt experience with the world, memory, and narrative explanations of one’s past do not stand still in a way that allows for certainty. (Clandinin & Connelly 2000:37)
I choose to exercise the method of reflexive journaling with my own as well as with participant involvement in this research in order to document various perceptions of the creative process. Throughout this research, I employ other methods including interviewing, literature-based research, audio-visual recording, and internet research, such as public Facebook pages, which allows viewers to comment on posted ideas or recorded performances associated with my research. Most importantly, I investigate my artistic
9 practice as a method, by examining the various components that contribute to my understanding of myself as a performing artist and these two major choreographic works. All these methods I have chosen enables me to document aspects of my artistic practice, my creative processes, its influences, challenges, and successes, from pre- through post- production of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. Through the materials generated by these various methods of documentation, I am able to conduct an informed analysis of my works as they relate to my research questions and can better determine whether my expected results were attained.
The Performance Practice Paradigm My creative practice as an artist is grounded in my developing theoretical concept of Lifism and my perception of being a lifist. Borrowing from Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By (1980), lifism is a ‘metaphor I live by’ that allows me to interrelate my past and present life-experiences with my evolving understanding of aesthetic or beauty and its value. Art, aesthetic, and beauty can be considered subjective terms and their understandings are determined by the applied values of the observer and/or the producer. With lifism I attempt to broaden the perception of my creative works so they are not subjugated to one’s perception of art, aesthetic or beauty. In turn, as a lifist, the creative works I develop are a reflection of my perception of life as all things in life exist with a purpose and therefore should be valued. I am still refining my understanding of lifism as a theoretical concept, which is why it is not a main focus of this written thesis. Lifism is in constant flux as I am exposed to various life experiences. My understanding of a performer is someone who executes a skill before an audience, and an artist is someone who creates works that have a value aesthetic. As a performing artist, there are many components to my creative artistic practice. I interpret practice itself as the repetition of any activity in order to improve one’s skill. My artistic practice consists of being more than just a dancer or choreographer. I am also a writer, singer, actor, teacher, producer, and host, all of which are a part of my practice as a performing artist/lifist and constitute some level of performance whether informal (everyday life activity), semi-formal (in promotion of an event), or formal (staged event for an audience) (Gray 2003). My understanding of these performance forms, align with Richard Schechner’s broad-spectrum
10 approach (Schechner 1988) to ‘framing’ a performance. Schechner (2003) argues that his theoretical broad-spectrum approach connects ritual, sport, game, play, and theatre events through shared characteristics and functionalities. All of these categories I have experienced to various degrees and I would argue that they play vital roles in my understanding of the creative processes of my performance practices. Schechner says these types of performances are used to negotiate aspects within human society (Schechner 2003). He further states: Sometimes rituals, games, sports, and the aesthetic genres (theatre, dance, music) are merged so that it is impossible to call the activity by any one limiting name. That English usage urges us to do so anyway is an ethnocentric bias, not an argument. (Schechner 2003:7)
Others have mentioned performance as a “twice behaved behaviour” (Phelan and Lane 1998:9) but, for the reasons mentioned above, I, much like Schechner, argue that anything can be ‘framed’ as a performance (Schechner 2003). I turn, our understanding of art or the performing artist is ‘framed’ by our contextual interpretations and our applied aesthetic values.
Valued Aesthetic Our valued aesthetic is based on our own perception, meaning this concept of aesthetic value is based on our interpretation of personal lived-experiences. Richard Shusterman, in his book Performing Live (Shusterman 2000), states: …experience, for me, bears not only the sense of personal observation or encounter, but the sense of personal trial or experiment. (Shusterman 2000: ix)
In Performing Live (2000) Shusterman uses rap music and Hip Hop culture to exemplify a hierarchal understanding of aesthetic based on elite modernist conventions. Shusterman questions whether or not the socio-politically driven messages, largely expressed through Hip Hop and rap lyrics, should be valued any less as art because of a lack of mainstream understanding of urban American cultural perspective. He notes: …our culture whose tendency to reify and commodify all artistic expression is so strong that rap itself is victimized by this tendency while defiantly protesting it. (Shusterman 2000:66)
11 Shusterman (2000) further addresses a theory of white ‘corporate America’s’ fear of a rise in black or African conscious thought and its expression on the global stage. Shusterman argues that this oppressive mentality towards rap music and Hip Hop culture stems from the colonial desire to keep blacks on a level that is inferior to whites (Shusterman 2000). Shusterman examines the elements of rap’s amalgamated origin to its commoditization, expressing this dichotomy that exists between the idealism of what rap represents to its creators and the practicalities of making a living. He notes that regardless of how rap and Hip Hop are received by ‘outsiders,’ there is no way to deny the aesthetic craft involved in the creative process and performance of this now global phenomenon. I identify as a product of the black urban American Hip Hop culture that Shusterman examines, and I align with his notion that aesthetic values are social constructs. As an ethnochoreologist I choose not to discredit a person’s interpretation of aesthetic value, which Shusterman argues, makes art an archived artefact, instead of a living organism that is constantly evolving (Shusterman 2000). This is the perspective I hold as a lifist. My aesthetic value is based on my individual perception of my lived-experiences, not on that of an outside person, although ‘outsiders’ do influence my perception to some extent. In Part One of Chapter One I briefly discussed my understanding of Arts Practice Research and I give examples of the methodologies and the theoretical underpinnings I will engage with in my investigation of Ethio-Modern Dance. In Part Two I will use some of the alternative writing forms (Pelias 2004), mentioned above, to further situate myself as a performing artist. In the following section, I give personal accounts of past experiences and incorporate outside perspectives on some of the key formative moments that have helped to shape me as a performing artist/lifist.
Part Two: Situating the Self
My Foundation My lifestyle has an interpretive aesthetic value. Although in constant flux, my artistry is a reflection of my lived-experience (Barbour 2013) and my understanding of my own identity. To most people I am known as a dancer, but music and theatre have played significant roles
12 in my artistic development. The following sections will identify some of the key formative moments of my past that have influenced my development as an urban contemporary performing artist/researcher. These lived-experiences have led me to the key questions I embrace in this research. Presented in a personal narrative form, this next section recalls moments from my childhood, prior to my recognition of the performing arts as my career choice and academic field of study.
Youthful Daze My maternal grandad and grandma were a part of the Great Migration of Negroes from the southern states of the United States who relocated to the northern states in an effort to find better opportunities (Tolany 2003). Prior to my mother’s birth, they moved from New Albany, Mississippi to Racine, Wisconsin8 in the late 1940s. By the 1960s my Mom, educated in Racine public schools, was a teenager actively involved in the 9 (Figure 1) The Courtney Civil Rights Movement . By the mid 1970s Mom was married Family (1975) and had four kids (See Figure 1) before she met my biological father, who had two children of his own from prior relationships. In the summer of 1977 Mom was in the process of getting a divorce, from the man whose surname I carry, as she made her transition from her hometown of Racine, to the metropolitan area of Washington D.C. Mom and my father did not intend to build a serious relationship with one another as she recalled: At the time I met your father he was…still trying to be important. Once he got that PhD you couldn’t tell him anything…so when he found out I was pregnant… (H. Courtney, 2013: email correspondence)
Mom, being a devout Christian and an extremely spiritual woman, contemplated having a child out of wedlock. Mom later saw the circumstances of her conception as a sign from
8 Racine, Wisconsin is located along the southwestern border of Lake Michigan. It is a small industrial town known mostly for J I Case, Belle City and In-Sink-Erator manufacturing plants, SC Johnson Wax headquarters and Danish Kringles. 9 In my adult years, I discovered that Racine served as one of the many freedom stations or routes used by freed and runaway slaves of the Underground Railroad as a means to get to Canada (Marburger 2013).
13 God that she was supposed to give birth to this ‘special child’. My family used to say I was almost born in a dumpster because on the morning of July 23, 197810 Mom was taking out the trash when she went into labour. I came into the physical world named Michael William Lucas after William Michael Lucas (Luke), who was Mom’s close friend at the time and the first man I called Dad (See Figure 2). My mother would soon add Courtney as my surname to be consistent with my older siblings. Luke passed away in 1999 without ever seeing me perform, but he was still very influential in my life in that he showed me how to be honourable and he always had the utmost respect for my Mom. My palmer planter hyperkeratosis skin condition on (Figure 2) Me on Luke’s lap with his oldest the palms of my hands and soles of my feet I often son Dwayne (1980) refer to as a physical metaphor that reflects my relationship with my biological father. This skin condition is a genetic trait from the paternal side of my family and, if not taken care of, the skin can dry, crack, bleed and lead to infections. My biological father lived no more than 45 minutes from the house where I grew up in Springfield, Virginia, but I didn’t see him often. Even still my father had a role in the artist and man that I have become as his opinions have inspired my drive and motivation to succeed. Through the years our metaphorical ‘cracked and dry relationship’ has gone through some healing as we have grown a closer as father and son. I am also father to his grandsons, whom also carry his unique genetic skin trait. Along with my mom and father, my entire family has been an amazing support system throughout my life and they have motivated me to nurture my gift in the performing arts. But while growing up as the youngest of five children in a single-parent household, it was not always easy to follow the rules set by my Mom. Aside from attending Fairfax County Public Schools in the daytime, my Monday to Friday evenings consisted of practicing basketball or football for my Saturday games. We went to church on Sundays and on those days, we were not allowed listen to secular music until 12:00 pm. This is how I spent 13
10 I was born on the same day as His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia (HIM July 23, 1892 and myself July 23, 1978). Selassie is the spiritual father that I adhere to as a Rastafarian.
14 years of my youth and I now know that all those years of training in athletics prepared me for the most physically challenging things I would ever do with my body, dance. Those Sundays spent at the Great Little Zion Baptist Church in Fairfax Virginia, with its predominantly African-American congregation, would also become my spiritual foundation for the Pan-African Rastafarian I am today. Even with this foundation, I was an inquisitive child who wanted answers about where I came from. I wanted a deeper truth that connected me with the source of my being, so I asked many questions. When asked about my childhood, my older sister Tasha Courtney- Fuller, an established children’s book author11, recalled: As a child you were mischievous, entertaining and creative…Truth is at our core so you knew we would always tell you the truth whether you wanted to hear it or not. (Courtney-Fuller 2013: email correspondence)
My Mom set a standard for how we conceptualized truth with how she lived. I’m sure all of her five children would attribute our successes to the shining example she set for us. I don’t think that anyone in my life has been a better example of how to set practical goals and take the steps to achieve them. Throughout my childhood, Mom worked full-time as a nurse, attended school part-time (to obtain advanced degrees), and still found time to attend our sporting events. Although I grew up with athletic siblings and friends, she was the only person I can remember who encouraged me to explore the performing arts, which to some extent I did. Outside of being a part of school choirs, plays, and dances, I didn’t take the arts seriously as a youth. My fondest memories of dancing were in my best friend’s living room, where we would make up routines that we could do at the school social dances. There is one major dance performance that I can recall that impacted my desire and ability to perform. This took place in 6th grade at Saratoga Elementary in Springfield, Virginia and we danced to Janet Jackson’s song Rhythm Nation (1989). My best friend and I were selected to be in the front of the performance groups and I think that this helped build my confidence at a young age.
11 www.itsbathtimebaby.com (accessed March 9, 2017)
15 At this time, dancing was still second to my love for singing as certain types of music have the ability to move me deeply and singing was my first performing passion. One of my childhood acquaintances with whom I performed often in the school choirs from elementary up through high school (See Figure 3), had this to say about me at that time: Around popular people you could be a tyrant … funny but also cruel…in choir you seemed more authentic and calm... you always demonstrated a love of music…
(Law 2013: personal communication) (Figure 3) 9th grade Johnny Law on the far left and myself in the middle of the Boys Choir at Robert E. Lee High School (1992) One of my fondest memories of performing with Law was at the end of our 8th grade year at Francis Scott Key Intermediate12. We were a part of an acapella male barbershop choir, directed by the late Ms. West, who was a chain smoker with hair so grey that it seemed white. Law and I had competed for the lead in the song So Hard to Say Goodbye (1991), the Boyz II Men version, and I had won. We closed the show with this song and at the end I made sure to ignite a rush of emotion with the audience by saying, “I love you Ms. West,” on the tail end of our last note. I recall watching my instructor sob and I now identify that as one moment where I realized that I had the potential to captivate an audience. Through my love for singing, I recognised my passion for the spotlight as well as my love for the performing arts. Although as a youth I thought of myself as a singer, I felt that I was a good dancer as well. It is my love for singing and music that led me to be an artist and through my studies in the performing arts I have been able to develop an embodied rhythmic connection between music, song, and dance.
“Hit me with Music” (Trenchtown Rock, Bob Marley 1973)
There is another moment in my past, prior to making the decision to study dance at university level, where I recognised I had a talent for dance and performance. It was late spring of 1996 and after three years of decedent experimentation I finally finished at Robert E. Lee High School13. Thanks to affirmative action (Stubbs 2008), I had been accepted to
12 This school was named after the author of the American National Anthem. 13 Named after the leader of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865).
16 James Madison University14 (JMU), under the condition that I would attend a summer school transition programme to illustrate that I could handle college level academic courses. I completed the transition programme with a month left in the summer of 1996 before the start of the fall academic semester at JMU. Mom allowed me to go with two of my friends to Atlanta Georgia for the Summer Olympic Games of 1996; my sister Tasha, and her then fiancé, were working in the Atlanta area as part of the staff for the Olympic transportation services. The morning we were scheduled to leave Virginia, a bomb exploded in downtown Atlanta’s Centennial Park. Soon after hearing of this on the news, we proceeded with our ten-hour drive from Springfield, Virginia to Atlanta, Georgia. While in Atlanta we did not see any of the sporting events, but there was one night, while in the downtown area, we attended one of the many block parties taking place all over the city. There was an electric energy in the atmosphere and I was excited. At some point in the night, I remember being pulled by the sound of the music into an area where people were dancing. I don’t recall the song that was playing but this would be the first time I can remember music putting me into a trance-like state. I felt the music sink under my skin and inside my body, as I closed my eyes. I felt at one with the music. My body was moving to the rhythm, but I didn’t feel as though I was controlling it. I was in a zone, dancing as if no one was watching. After about three to five minutes my eyes finally opened. I then noticed a crowd of hundreds of people around me, but they were no longer dancing, they were watching me. Feeling slightly overwhelmed, I left the dance floor and went to stand on the side with my friends who were unaware of what I had experienced. I wouldn’t understand the importance of this event until about two months later when I had begun the Fall 1996 semester of classes at JMU and I decided to switch my major from Small Business and Entrepreneur Management to Dance. This transition would be the beginning of the life I was destined to lead as I began my spiritually grounded artistic journey with movement.
14 In a town called Harrisonburg in the Shenandoah Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia.
17 An Artist Emerges I would argue that my college years (1996-2001) were truly the most formative part of my artistic career and spiritual path. My discovery of myself as a performing artist coincided with my discovery of my spiritual faith as a Rastafarian. An understanding of myself emerged at that time as I recognised one of my purposes in life was to make an impact on the world like the many people I admired had done, such as Emperor Haile Selassie I, Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, and Mohammed Ali15. I found a truth in movement that compelled me to make movement my life. I spent two years at JMU in the Theatre and Dance Department (1996-1998) with a focus in dance under the direction of Shane O’Hare16. In an email correspondence, one of my first dance instructors at JMU Suzanne Miller-Corso mentioned: I remember you as a very eager learner…with passion, not the technical skills yet, but with a desire and thirst for knowledge in dance…(to) do whatever is necessary to forge ahead. (Miller-Corso 2013: email correspondence)
I can remember being eager at that time and I began to make my dance training a top priority, studying basic ballet, modern, and jazz dance techniques. I attended Bates Summer ’97 Dance Festival at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. There I studied with one of the most prolific Hip Hop movement innovators I know, Rennie Harris and his company Puremovement17. Seeing Harris’ Philadelphia-based company perform urban street dance in a contemporary performing arts environment, as well as working with him as a part of his repertory workshop, helped me discover that no matter what the style of art I create, it’s a reflection of Hip Hop because it is the urban American cultural lens through which I see the world.18 Years later this understanding of my connection to Hip Hop culture was reiterated in
15 Ali is the only person I mention who I actually met, when passing through the Los Angeles airport (2002), during the time I toured with Pilobolus. 16 Shane O’Hara is a Professor of Dance at James Madison University who has shared his art with audiences around the world. He holds a B.A. from Western Washington University and an M.F.A. from Arizona State University. O’Hara received JMU’s Provost Award for International Education in 2014 and has done extensive work with the Thompson & Trammell dance company. O’Hara is currently on the roster of the Fulbright International Specialist program. (https://www.jmu.edu/theatredance/people/all-people/ohara-shane.shtml) (accessed August 6, 2017) O’Hara was the head of the Dance school at JMU during my time in the program (1996-1998) and was also one of my first modern dance instructors. 17 Lorenzo ‘Rennie’ Harris is considered the pioneer of “Street Dance” Theater Rennie Harris and his company Rennie Harris Puremovement have brought urban themes and "social" dances to the "concert" stage. Puremovement is known internationally for their cohesive dance style that has found a cogent voice in the theater. Compared to dance legends, Alvin Ailey and Bob Fosse, Harris was voted one of the most influential people in the last one hundred years of Philadelphia history. (http://rhpm.org/) 18 In the summer of 2012 Harris and I would reconnect as roommates at the New Waves Institutes summer programme in Port of Spain, Trinidad, as we were both a part of the teaching staff.
18 an interview with the Ethiopian Reporter newspaper in which I was quoted as saying, “You don’t do Hip-hop, you live Hip-hop,” (M. Courtney in Tigabu 2013). As mentioned above, music has always been significant in my artistic development. One other influential person that I met at Bates Summer ’97 Dance Festival was musician/singer/songwriter, Philip Hamilton19, who played accompaniment for my first Afro-Caribbean Jazz dance class. Hamilton is an extremely skilled percussionist with a voice that for me sounded mystically angelic. Over the years, Hamilton and I have kept in contact20 and I have used his music compositions as inspiration in many of my choreographic works.21 When I returned to JMU in the fall of 1997, I had a new drive and motivation. I began to involve myself in activities outside of the Dance Department and won a Kennedy Centre Award in the American College Theatre Festival Association (ACTFA) Competition, for my lead role in Carriage (1997), an original student written play by Jerome Harriston.22 The faculty director of the play, Thomas Arthur, recalled working with me as a young performer. He stated: You showed spirit and fairly oozed art…you had principles…you always listened, you wouldn't stand for nonsense. You were a joy to work with. (Arthur 2013: email correspondence)
One theatre student, Tangelia Rouse-Ringo, who mentored me in the part and also played the role of my sister in Carriage (1997), (See Figure 4) mentioned: At a time when most dancers [had] at least a decade of training (Figure 4) Rouse-Ringo and I in under their belts, you were just learning the fundamentals of performance photo of Carriage (1997) dance and acting…your spirit woke up and answered the call to your life's mission… (Rouse-Ringo 2013: email correspondence)
19 Hamilton is most notably known for his vocal work with international jazz and world music artists, such as the Pat Metheny Group, Gilberto Gil, Ronnie Jordan, Spyro Gyra and Special EFX. 20 In the spring of 2012 I had the opportunity to share the stage with Hamilton as the bass vocalist in Philip Hamilton’s Voices performance and subsequent CD from the show Skins and Songs at the Painted Bride in Philadelphia. See video link http://youtu.be/WVPBzbdx9KQ (accessed March 9, 2017) 21 See video links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWB8wuS_J6c ; https://youtu.be/D5AWljyc2FY (accessed March 9, 2017) 22 At the time of this writing Harriston has written professionally for stage, television, and film.
19 As I began to explore the versatility of my talents at JMU, I recognised that I wasn’t getting what I wanted from the dance programme. I decided to transfer to a programme that would help me build a stronger contemporary dance technical foundation. Having been rejected by New York University in the spring of 1998, I auditioned in Philadelphia, for Temple University and the University of the Arts (UARTS) and was accepted by both schools. My now close friend and colleague Wanjiru Kamuyu23, was my tour guide at Temple. She recalled: The Ras Mikey I saw was a confident person who knew what he wanted and was willing to do what it took to get there. (W. Kamuyu 2013: email correspondence)
I eventually decide on UARTS over Temple because of the conservatory type training the UARTS Bachelor of Fine Arts in Modern Dance Performance programme had. In the summer of 1998, before I moved to Philadelphia, I attended the six-week American Dance Festival (ADF) at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where I became better acquainted with the then director Donna-Faye Burchfield24. Aside from training intensively in West African, ballet, improvisation, and yoga, I worked as the receptionist’s assistant and lived with a guest choreographer from South Africa named Sello Pesa25. ADF also introduced me to the Afro-Modern dance style of Ronald K. Brown26. My exposure to both Pesa and Brown’s contemporary African styles influenced my future aspirations to develop Ethio-Modern Dance. That summer at ADF is where I first saw Pilobolus Dance Theatre27 perform live, having no idea that, years later, I would be hired by the company. After
23 Wanjiru Kamuyu (Modern Dance technique, World Dance and Culture) is a native of Kenya and an M.F.A. (dance choreography and performance) graduate of Temple University. Aside from working with many renown choreographers, Wanjiru was an original cast member in Julie Taymor’s Broadway musical, The Lion King at Théâtre Mogador and in Bill T. Jones’ FELA! at the Royal National Theatre. She is the Artistic Director of WKcollective, where she creates and tours her own work at several well-respected venues for dance and theater throughout the world. (www.wkcollective.com ) (accessed March 9, 2017) 24 Donna Faye Burchfield has been a professor and director of the School of Dance at the University of the Arts since 2010. Before arriving at UArts, she worked with the American Dance Festival (ADF) for over two decades, serving as dean of the international school from 2000 to 2010. (http://www.uarts.edu/users/dburchfield) (accessed March 9, 2017) 25 Sello Pesa is a Soweto born choreographer and dancer interested in the changes and challenges that arise from living in South Africa and is greatly respected locally and overseas. He has been inspired by diverse South African choreographers and spent four years touring South Africa and Europe with the late Jackie Mbuyisela Semela’s Soweto Dance Theatre.Sello’s aspiration to make dance and arts accessible to a wide and diverse audience was realised in 2010 with the In House Project which placed performances in houses and public spaces in Jo’burg and its surrounding Townships. Sello enjoys exploring new ways of working and pushing his boundaries. (http://www.ntsoana.co.za/about/sello-pesa/) (accessed March 9, 2017) 26 Brown founded Evidence, A Dance Company in1985 and has worked with numerous artists and companies, teaching and setting choreographic works. His works aim to expand the experiential understanding of the African Diaspora through movement and storytelling by drawing on a connection to the African Diaspora history and tradition. (https://www.evidencedance.com/) (accessed March 9, 2017) 27 Dartmouth College students who had no dance training or prior knowledge of classical dance techniques founded Pilobolus in 1971. Pilobolus has become internationally acclaimed arts organization known for its diverse collaborations that push the boundaries of creative disciplines. (http://www.pilobolus.org/) (accessed March 9, 2017)
20 completing the ADF summer programme, I attended Bates Summer ’98 Dance Festival. It was here that I had my first encounter with capoeira (Browning in Dils and Albright 2001), taught to me by contemporary dancer Ben Pring28. I feel that the rigorous training I put myself through in the summer of 1998, prepared me for some of the hardest training in my dance career at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In the following sections I will discuss three influential moments from my time at UARTS.
Building Artistic Awareness As I mentioned in a previous section my father had other children one of which is my older sister Denise Porter, who was always very encouraging in my artistic journey. She stated: I just think you have a true artists heart and you have honed your talent but also your mind! (Porter 2013: email correspondence)
This honing that she speaks of began at JMU, although my first year at UARTS in the Fall of 1998 was yet another revelation. I was granted a partial tuition scholarship, but due to my technical skill level I started the Dance programme as a third-year sophomore. At James Madison University, I had become the big fish in a small pond in a short period of time. Now in Philadelphia (Philly), I felt like my skill set was far behind the others in my class. This became part of my motivation to push harder in order to quickly gain more technical awareness of my body. I trained in flat-backs from Horton, contractions in Graham, spirals of Limon, and various other forms including classical ballet techniques. During my first semester, I performed in a Momix29 choreographic work called Passions (1991), which was set on a group of the students by former Momix dancers - one of whom was Renee Jaworski, who at the time of this writing is an Artistic Director with Pilobolus. This was an introduction to the Pilobolus pedestrian style of movement and weight sharing, and this experience proved its importance when I auditioned for Pilobolus a few years later.
28 In the summer of 1998 Ben Pring was working with Doug Elkins Dance Company but in the summer of 2001 I would replace him in Pilobolus Dance Theatre. 29 Often referred to as kin to Pilobolus, Momix is known internationally for their innovative works, which display a captivation physical aesthetic. The productions focus on the beauty of the human form as well as the beauty of nature, music, imagery, and life itself. (http://www.momix.com/) (accessed March 9, 2017)
21 To release my frustrations of the intense training at UARTS, I spent many nights in the dance studios of 309 Broad Street in Philly, improvising to music and coming up with production ideas along with my two new friends Dougie Sanders and Marc Spaulding. Late in the fall semester of 1998 we had our first performance together at the UARTS’ Drake Theatre. We performed a choreographic work based on our improvisation sessions in 309, called Feelin' It (1998). This work was a structured improvography30 set to recorded music and text. On stage I felt we transcended the time and space of the theatre and we were living in our own world that the audience was there to experience. We called this feeling “gettin’ life” and Feelin' It (1998) would lay the foundation for what would become our production company. (Figure 5) F.I.V.E. Co-founders Sanders, Spaulding and Myself In the summer of 1999 Marc, Dougie, and myself did our first (2003) tour together with Raven-Symone31. Through the experience of collaborating on the major choreographic works we presented, it became clear that there was something real and natural about our connection on stage together. During the summer World tour of 1999 we started our company Fore Im a Versatile Entertainer (F.I.V.E.) Productions LLC.32 (See Figure 5) We saw ourselves as versatile entertainers and we established a unit that could express the different dimensions of our creativity. In a personal correspondence Raven-Symone noted: …The word ‘dancer’ is a commercial smack in the face to what you really (do)…movement makes me feel that it is embedded in your DNA…it’s actually more ritualistic/spiritual… (R. Pearman 2013: personal communication)
After the tour, we returned to UARTS to continue and complete our undergraduate studies. During my senior concert at the Drake Theatre in the spring of 2001, I presented my final work Dreams? I-Journey (2001). This urban contemporary choreographic work was meant
30 The late tap dancer Gregory Hines used this term to describe how he uses known movements as the structure that helps generate new material in his improvisations. http://youtu.be/RFvhwCjTuGk (accessed December 9, 2016) 31Raven-Symoné Pearman is an entertainer most known for her roles on The Cosby Show (1984), the Cheetah Girls (2003) and That’s So Raven (2003) and most recently Raven’s Home (2017). Aside from acting, Raven is an established singer/songwriter and has collaborated on several projects with RAS Mikey and his company F.I.V.E. Productions since 1999. 32 F.I.V.E. is a productions company geared towards bridging the gaps between concert art and commercial entertainment through the education and production of the performing arts. In recent years the other founders have taken on other projects and the company is now officially owned my me. I continue to brand the company with certain projects that I am involved in.
22 to exemplify my spiritual and dancing journey up to that point and how the two are interwoven. In the finale section, I used a piece of music from Philip Hamilton and wore traditional Ethiopian clothing highlighted with the colours of the Ethiopian flag, and it would be another four years before I would actually visit the country for the first time.33 (See Figure 6) After completing my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance at UARTS in May of 2001, I soon auditioned for and was hired by Pilobolus Dance Theatre, a company I knew very little about at the time. I think my as well as my inability to give up on something that I (Figure 6) Dreams? I-Journey (2001) performance photo UARTS Drake Theatre love doing, have been key factors to my performative success, although I now also understand the value of research within the field of dance. Pilobolus is a company that uses research in their creative processes and my experience while working with this world-renowned company would help refine my physical and philosophical approach towards movement and performance.
‘Piloboland’ I started rehearsing with Pilobolus soon after my 23rd birthday in the summer of 2001 and had never before had a job that worked from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. This was my first such job but certainly would not be my last. The word intense would be an understatement in trying to describe the physical and (Figure 7) Pilobolus Dance Theatre Tsu-Ku- Tsu (2002) Jaworski, Kent, and Myself emotional testing I went through while learning and creating Pilobolus repertoire. Their pedestrian-influenced movement style helped me reconnect with the simplicity and efficiency of movement. Anthropologist Dr. Anya Peterson Royce wrote a review for a Pilobolus performance at the University of Indiana and in the article Royce examined the premiere of a new choreographic collaboration Ben's Admonition (2002):
33 See video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOaaJ2n-Dqs (accessed March 9, 2017)
23 The title, coming from brainstorming and suggestions, refers to Benjamin Franklin's warning that either we hang together or we hang separately…Franklin could not, in his wildest dreams, have imagined the striking visual working out of that admonition through the bodies of Ras Mikey C and Kent…the curtain came up on a black stage; a single spot gradually picked out the two dancers hanging from a single chain. Upside down…they began the swinging odyssey that carried them through quiet harmony, friendship, dependence, anger and finally isolation and solitary deaths…Chase [the director of the piece] and her collaborators managed to maintain the signature architecture of space built by bodies working off and together with each other, while launching the dancers into the weightlessness of movement liberated from the ground…There was tenderness, humor, anxiety, sadness and acceptance…Even after Kent left to suspend himself from a separate rope and the dancers find some discovery and solace in coordinated swings, we are unprepared for the suddenness of the separate deaths hanging. [Anya Peterson Royce in www.hearldtimesonline.com 2002 (accessed December 9, 2013)]
While the University of the Arts helped build my technical awareness of my dancer body in relation to the space, it was Pilobolus who presented me with the opportunity to reconnect with the humanistic aspects in movement. The works that Pilobolus create speaks to audiences (Figure 8) Pilobolus Dance Theatre in a language that transcends the limitations of Gnomen (2002) O. Cook, M. Fucik, M. Kent, Myself words. Pilobolus is as unique and powerful as the fungus from which the company’s name derives. I would perform with the Pilobolus touring company from 2001-2003, after which time I did special projects with Pilobolus’ Satellite Company (Satco) until 2005 when I travelled to Israel with the company. Before I returned to the US, I decided to visit Africa for the first time and the trip to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia changed the course of my life and my career goals substantially.
24 Finding Home and Honing My Craft I am a Pan-Africanist and as such we believe that ‘Africa is for Africans at home and abroad,’34 and repatriation to Africa is a must. In late November of 2005 I went to Israel with Pilobolus Satco and I did not feel comfortable flying over Africa without setting foot on the continent of my ancestral roots. In the days leading up to my departure from Tel Aviv to Addis Ababa, there had been a revolt by the students of Addis Ababa University35, located in the capital city of Ethiopia. There was a general concern for my safety by some members of Pilobolus but this did not deter me from wanting to go. My connection to Africa is recalled in a more recent reflexive journal: …for me Africa is my spiritual as well as physical home since 2006... My connections to this continent as well as my lived-experiences… have a major impact on the types of works that I create…within the world of the arts I see myself as an urban contemporary performing artist of the African diaspora. (Courtney 2013: Personal Journal November 19)
(Figure 9) 2nd Reggae by the Nile Concert (Figure 10) Abeba, me, (Figure 11) Andinet International (2010) [I am to the far left and was a co- Tivon and Ya’al (2011) School, Addis Ababa - with my Grade producer and performer] 1 class (2010)
When I left Ethiopia for the first time in December of 2005, I also left my future wife behind and I felt like a child being stripped away from his mother, and I cried for days longing to return. After six months in the United States I returned to Ethiopia in the summer of 2006 to marry my wife of now over ten years. This next passage from a reflexive journal recalls my early years of living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with my wife as we started our family.
34 This slogan was made popular by the Honourable Marcus Garvey a publisher from Jamaica, considered to be one of the fore fathers of Pan-Africanism and the founder of the U.N.I.A. (United Negro Improvement Association), who is said to have prophesized the crowning of Emperor Haile Selassie, to Negros in the West in the yearly 1920s. 35 Formally name Haile Selassie I University this is a state university in Addis Ababa. It has thirteen campuses to which the Ethiopia government selects qualified students who have completed secondary school. It is one of few internationally accredited Ethiopian Universities.
25 I taught dance, produced music and dance-oriented shows, taught English (See Figures 9, 10, and 11) and took care of our new born son, Tivon, while my wife, Abeba, was finishing Law school at Addis Ababa University. (Courtney 2013: Personal Journal October 15)
I asked Tina Falle, an Austrian/American and one of my former dance students from the Eallaz Dance Studio36 in Addis Ababa, about her experience in my classes. She stated: Mikey is a dancer at heart, and you can feel this in his (Figure 12) My Contemporary Dance class at Eallaz Dance Studio in Addis Ababa, I teaching…I was 'surprised' at first at his technical am in the blue pants and Falle in the light skills…his blend of 'natural' talent…combined with blue top (2009) classical training, (See figure 12) (Falle 2013: email correspondence)
Tina’s comment is significant in that it expresses how I was merging styles and techniques in my classes. This for me was an investigation of what I could do with the embodied knowledge that I had at that time. Through my experiences of teaching, creating, and living in Addis Ababa I began embodying various aspects of Ethiopian culture. This embodiment included components of Ethiopian traditional/cultural and contemporary music and dance, religion, iconography and the day-to-day lived experiences of the Ethiopian people. My embodiment of Ethiopian culture was used a tool of influence in my urban contemporary dance process and when I returned to the US in March of 2010, I began to use the term Ethio-Modern Dance to describe what I had begun developing before I left Addis Ababa. In a reflexive journaling entry, I expressed my reason for returning to the U.S. and my initial intentions in terms of developing Ethio-Modern Dance. When my wife discovered my talent for the arts, two years after we were married, she was adamant about us moving to the US, after she finished law school…After my return to the US…I wanted to incorporate and promote the positive aspects of Ethiopian culture that I had been exposed to during my time there. So, I developed the term Ethio-Modern Dance and decided that this would be the thing that separated me from other artists in my field…I was hired by Donna-Faye Burchfield…the new Director of Dance at UARTS, to teach ‘African dance in Diaspora.’ I wanted to be at
36 This was the first international dance studio in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, which opened in 2009. I was the director of dance at the studio and taught a variety of dance classes. He was here that I began my exploration of incorporating Ethiopian culture into my urban contemporary dance style.
26 a university and I wanted students who were practically and intellectually engaged in the class… (Courtney 2013: Personal Journal October 15)
This term ‘Ethio-Modern Dance’ allowed me to promote an aspect of African culture that I saw as underrepresented within the global perspective of the African performing arts.
My Return to Academia Early into the 2012 spring semester as senior lecturer at UARTS, my partners from F.I.V.E. Productions, Dougie and Marc, had relocated to Los Angeles, California. I received a call from Dougie one day, as he had stumbled across the term Ethnochoreology (Foley 2013) on Wikipedia while researching concepts for (Figure 13) Ethio-Modern Dance Workshop at University of Limerick (2013) an upcoming dance project. Dougie suggested that I examine the term for myself, and within a week I applied and was eventually accepted into the Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. This proved to be an intense one-year programme, but I was able to refine my focus in the development of Ethio-Modern Dance. I have since continued this investigation with the pursuit of this PhD in Arts Practice Research degree. Indeed, Ireland and the University of Limerick have provided me with a platform to create, research, and educate the communities that I encounter with my embodied knowledge. With the support of a Stepping Stones Scholarship from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, as well as an Irish Research Council Award from the Irish Government, I have been able to develop my academic and artistic practice and to become a cultural broker between three continents. As I continue to embody lived-experiences, I learn. And as I learn, I teach. My studies, research, choreographic work and teaching experiences have all shaped my sense of self and my life’s purpose of using movement as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange in Ireland, Ethiopia, the United States and elsewhere. I addressed the impact of Higher Educational Institutions on my personal and professional life when in my journal I stated:
27 The university has given me many opportunities to share my professional experiences…I strive to keep my students engaged but also to challenge them and make it fun. (See figure 13) I have realised that a student will never be what you want them to be, but as a teacher you can show them how to be the best that they can be…I am on a quest to find a balance for myself, at least within my own conscience. This balance will help me to better serve my creator, my family and the world that I inhabit, and this servitude is my purpose for existence. (Courtney 2013: Personal Journal October 15)
Overview of Chapters In the coming chapters of this thesis, I will continue my investigation of Ethio-Modern Dance and its use a medium for cultural knowledge exchange. Chapter Two consists of a literary review that exemplifies my understanding of embodiment as the theoretical concept at the root of my arts practice research. This chapter also looks at other concepts such as metaphor, cultural identity, and the soma, which emerged through the creative process of my two major performance works YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015) and Common Threads (2016). Chapters Three and Four are dedicated to an analysis of each of these two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. These chapters examine both bodies of work in relation to my methodologies, original research questions, overall research objectives, (see Chapter One), and thematic concepts associated with these works. Chapter Three is an analysis of my first major body of work YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015), which emphasises one side of the metaphorical Ethio-Modern Dance coin, as it was created and presented in Ireland. This choreographic production depicts narratives associated with the discovery of Arabica coffee in a remote region of Southwestern Ethiopia and its subsequent migration to other parts of the world. Chapter Four provides an analysis of my second major choreographic production Common Threads (2016), which emphasises the other side of the metaphorical Ethio-Modern Dance coin, as it was created and presented in Ethiopia. Chapter Four also investigates my roles as artistic director in Common Threads (2016) and the community engagement in this showcase of culturally diverse styles of movement presented in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s National Theatre. Chapter Five concludes this written doctoral thesis and will reexamine arts practice research and its effectiveness as a methodology in achieving my desired research goals. Chapter Five will also address what I have discovered
28 from conducting this research and my future plans for further investigation of Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept.
29 Chapter Two Contextual and Theoretical Development
Introduction As it is my aim to use movement as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange, this chapter will examine my conceptual and theoretical investigations of embodiment as it pertains to my movement research exploration with Ethio-Modern Dance. I will draw on the theoretical writings of Thomas Csordas (1990,1993), Anya Peterson Royce (1977), Sondra Horton Fraleigh (1987, 2004), George Lakoff & Mark Johnson (1980), Stuart Hall (1996), and others to illustrate how embodiment is rooted in the concepts and themes that emerged from the creative process of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works - YeBuna Alem (2015), and Common Threads (2016). These themes and concepts include, but are not limited to, culture, identity, metaphor, and the soma. This chapter will also address the interrelated connection of these concepts to my central theme of embodiment. Through critical review and engagement of the works by the writers and researchers mentioned above, this chapter will exemplify my expanded theoretical comprehension of these concepts and their application to my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016).
Conceptual Overview With performance practice being the foundation of my practice-led research, the importance of the creative process and performance product are just as valuable as the theoretical analysis of my practice. Professor in performance studies and ethnographer D. Soyini Madison states, “…theory becomes another way to know performance better; and performance becomes the desired illuminator of the theory,” (Madison 1999:107). In this research, the creative process and performance have illuminated and refined the theoretical concepts associated with Ethio-Modern Dance, and in turn, the theoretical concepts have given clarity to my overall understanding of my choreographic performance works and their multiplicity of interpretive meanings.
30 Since the commencement of my research investigation of Ethio-Modern Dance, embodiment or ‘embodied knowledge’ (Royce 1977, Ness 1995, Foley 2013) has been a central theme as well as my methodological point of departure. This theoretical concept has aided my development and analysis of the movement within my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, as well as its meanings, its sensations, and its potential to broaden cultural understanding. According to socio-culture theorists Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay all types of language: …use some element to stand for or represent what we want to say, to express or communicate a thought, concept, idea or feeling…the ‘language of the body’ uses physical gesture…to ‘say something’. - not about what they are but what they do, their function. They construct meaning and transmit it. They signify. They do not have clear meaning in themselves. Rather, they… carry meaning…as symbols, which…represent (i.e. symbolize) the meanings we wish to communicate…they function as signs [that] represent our concepts…to enable others to ‘read’, decode or interpret their meaning [hopefully] in roughly the same way that we do. (Hall and Gay 1996: xxi)
I use the language of ‘my’ body to create Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works and the movements within these works ‘carry meaning’ and represent the concepts that I aspire for my participants to embody and interpret. Our intentionality and comprehension of movement is interrelated to our embodied understanding of ‘the self’ in our existence. My perception of my life is rooted in my theoretical understanding of my habitus, my cultural identity, and the embodied knowledge of my lived-experiences. Following Marcel Mauss (1935), Pierre Bourdieu in ‘An Outline of a Theory of Practices’ states that the concept of habitus: …expresses first the result of an organising action, with a meaning close to that of words such as structure, it also designates a way of being, a habitual state, and in particular a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination. (Bourdieu 1972:214, English Translation 1977)
My aesthetic values of life and art are in constant flux through my integration of new experiences. The theoretical concepts of embodiment, habitus, culture, identity as well as somatics - “the field which studies the soma: namely the body as perceived from within first- person perspective” (Hanna in Johnson 1995:341), apply in some degree to my understanding of my artistic practice. The following section examines theories of
31 embodiment in connection to our phenomenological ‘somatic modes of attention’ (Csordas 1993) as well as our habitus (Bourdieu 1972).
Embodiment: Theory, Concept, and Metaphor Theoretical Perspectives on the Concept of Embodiment All learning is embodied, and my concept of embodiment is derived from the works of other researchers and theorists, most of whom stem from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s findings in Phenomenology of Perception (1962). Merleau-Ponty saw embodiment as an existential phenomenon that must be investigated through the ever-evolving lens of phenomenology. For Merleau-Ponty, “Phenomenology is the study of essence” (Merleau-Ponty1962: vii), which means that the problems we associate with existential phenomenology are rooted in the complications of defining ‘essence’ or existence. He states, “…phenomenology is also philosophy, which puts essences back into existence…” (Ibid.) A dance practitioner and author of Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion (2004) Sondra Horton Fraleigh philosophically connects existentialism and dance. She states: Existentialism like modern/postmodern dance, feeds on experiment... Postmodern dance…continues in the experimental mode of the original modern, even as it inverts the bodily styles and practices inscribed therein…modern/postmodern dance improvises towards its choreographic ends and openings…” (Fraleigh 2004:18-19)
This correlates with my Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept, in that it is an experiment or exploration of modern dance which is influenced by embodied Ethiopian culture. I use improvisation as a part of this exploration in order to discover what the choreographic work will be, while refining my understanding of this movement experiment. My approach towards investigating Ethio-Modern Dance is not only physical but also mental. Merleau-Ponty states: …phenomenology can be practised and identified as a manner or style of thinking, that it existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself as a philosophy. (Merleau-Ponty 1962: viii)
To paraphrase the above statements, existential phenomenology is both theoretical and practical, and it is within the practicality of this phenomenal space that we begin to explore
32 embodiment as concept and methodology. In regard to embodiment, Merleau-Ponty rejected Descartes’ notion of mind-body dualism by contending that thinking, feeling, and doing are all practical actions that obligate embodiment and that the mind-body separation only exists in theory. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is never isolated because it is connected to the mind and always engaged with the world (Wainwright, Williams and Turner 2006). Psychological anthropologist Thomas Csordas (1990), argues that there is a paradigm of embodiment. In his article, Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology, (Csordas 1990), he clarifies this theory as he states: By paradigm I mean simply a consistent methodological perspective that encourages reanalysis of existing data and suggests new questions for empirical research. (Csordas 1990:5)
Csordas further addresses this embodiment paradigm in a later article Somatic Modes of Attention (Csordas 1993) stating: …the paradigm of embodiment means not that cultures have the same structure as bodily experience, but that embodied experience is the starting point for analysing human participation in the cultural world. (Csordas 1993:135)
Csordas examines an individual’s embodiment, and its relationship to others as he adds: Somatic modes of attention are culturally elaborated ways of attending to and with one’s body in surroundings that include the embodied presence of the others. A notion of somatic mode of attention broadens the field in which we can look for phenomena of perception and attention, and suggest that attending to one’s body can tell us something about the world and others who surround us…Attending to others’ bodily movements is even more clear-cut in cases of dancing… (Csordas 1993:138-9)
This existential phenomenological approach towards embodiment implies that movement has meaning (Hall and Gay 1996). This meaning is determined by how the movement is interpreted, which is based on one’s understanding of what is being experienced in a particular environment. Csordas further refines embodiment, as he states: …embodiment can be understood as an indeterminate methodological field defined by the perceptual experience and the mode of presence and engagement in the world. (Csordas 1993:135)
33
This would mean that ‘we are what we learn’, and everything we know and comprehend is because of our ‘lived body’ experiences (Fraleigh 1987). Our embodied habitus (Pierre Bourdieu 1977, following Mauss 1935) is a direct result of these experiences and our behavioural responses reflect our cultural understanding of our surroundings. Csordas argues that embodiment takes on various characteristics, as a paradigm or methodological orientation, which requires that the body be understood as the root of our comprehensive cultural knowledge (Csordas 1990). This implies that everything in life has a cultural connotation and in order to gain any type of knowledge, whether corporal a type of “knowing by doing” or cerebral - a “knowing by observing” (Royce 1977, 2002: xvi), the learned experience must be embodied. As Csordas extends, …that the body is not an object to be studied in relation to culture, but is to be considered as the subject of culture, or in other words as the existential ground of culture. (Csordas 1990:5)
I would argue that, in essence, we represent or integrate our understandings of culture through how we move. We transmit our embodied conceptual ideologies of identity, ritual, symbolism, metaphor, gender, and so on in what we do as human beings as well as performing artists. Somatic Modes of Attention (Csordas 1993) focuses on various theoretical concepts associated with embodiment, and argues for its use as a methodological orientation (Csordas 1993, and Csordas in Sklar 2008). Csordas aligns with Merleau-Ponty (1962) (whose approach towards embodiment is grounded in perception) and Bourdieu (1977) (whose understandings are led by practice) to illustrate some correlations and contrasts of their somewhat complementary viewpoints. Both perspectives deal with the notion of indeterminacy in our existence, in which the applied understanding of movements’ representation to a respective culture is not universally refined or defined. I suggest that this indeterminacy is reflected in my embodied understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance. At present, the exact definition of Ethio-Modern Dance is evolving, but through this research, I explore the depth of influence in the characteristics I associate with this movement concept. In his article, Csordas (1993) puts an emphasis on our ‘somatic modes of attention’, which allows one to become more aware of how and why the body moves the way it does. Csordas argues that the way in which “we attend to and with our bodies…are neither arbitrary nor
34 biologically determined, but culturally constituted,” (Csordas 1993:140). From an ethnochoreological perspective (Foley 2012), it is generally understood that one’s embodied understanding of movement is culturally specific. According to Bourdieu, it is one’s habitus or “highly organized set of bodily dispositions” (Bourdieu 1977 in Csordas 1993:147) that is the guide to how movement is perceived. In order to analyse this perception, one has to take into account the implied meanings of the culture from which the movement stems. Knowing this, the habitus of the performers and audience participants in my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works is considered during the creative process of these works. For Merleau- Ponty it is one’s bodily perception that begins the ‘reflective thinking’ and determines what is being experienced. According to Csordas, Merleau-Ponty “recognized that perception was always embedded in the cultural world” (Csordas 1993:137). I would therefore argue that as a performing artist/lifist it is this understanding of perception that allows my works to be interpreted, based on the cultural knowledge and experience of the individual in relation to others in the ‘cultural world’. Wainwright and Turner (2003) argue this point further stating, “Bourdieu links agency (practice) with structure (via capital and field) through the process of ‘habitus’” (Wainwright and Turner 2003:4). This means that two different people from varied cultural backgrounds can watch or participate in the same body of work and embody different meanings that are represented through the choreographed movements (Fraleigh 1987).
Although, Bourdieu (1977) draws upon Mauss (1935) and Merleau-Ponty (1962) in the development of the concept of habitus, in the article, Varieties of Habitus and the Embodiment of Ballet, by Wainwright, Williams, and Turner (2006), the authors address how researchers use the Bourdieusian approach to ‘embodied practices’. They argue:
Bourdieu’s concept of habitus: illuminate[s] the circular process whereby practices are incorporated within the body, only then to be regenerated through the embodied work and competence of the body.
(Crossley, 2001: 106 in Wainwright, Williams and Turner 2006:536)
In this article Wainwright, Williams, and Turner (2006) examine a case study on the different modes of habitus embodied by dancers from the Royal Ballet (London). The article highlights what the authors refer to as the individual habitus, the institutional habitus and the
35 choreographic habitus, and they examine the correlation between these three concepts. They argue that there is an “interconnection and reciprocity between [the] individual and institutional habitus” (Wainwright, Williams and Turner 2006:538), meaning that the individual is influenced and shaped by his or her institution and it is virtually impossible to separate the two in regard to how a dancer embodies certain movements. They state:
The body is a repository of ingrained and durable dispositions and this incorporation of our history is demonstrated, for instance, in the differences in the posture that men and women adopt.
(Bourdieu 2001 in Wainwright, Williams and Turner 2006:537)
I would argue that the choices that I make in my artistic practice are a reflection of my ‘interconnected’ embodiment of my individual and institutional habitus, which stems from my formalized education and various spiritual/religious experiences (See Chapter 1). Regarding the choreographic habitus these authors further state:
There is a reciprocal relationship between the choreographer’s ideas of what movements he (typically) wants, or how they look on the bodies of the dancers he is inscribing his choreography on, and with how these steps feel for the dancer.
(Wainwright, Williams and Turner 2006:544)
This statement, I too engage with in my own choreographic investigations as I strive to put movement on a dancer’s body that not only reflects my intentions, but also makes sense to the dancer, their dance abilities, and technical training. Marcel Mauss adds:
Body techniques, within and beyond ballet, are not naturally acquired; they are essentially about education (Durkheim and Mauss, 1975[1912]). As a result of this detailed education of the body into a cluster of techniques, human beings occupy a habitus. Mauss argued that this habitus is the: ‘techniques and work of collective and individual reason rather than, in the ordinary way, merely the soul and its repetitive faculties’.
(Mauss in Wainwright, Williams and Turner 2006:551)
Mauss connected the spiritual aspects of the human habitus to the physical body early on. This concept of an interconnection between the body, mind, and spirit, which develops one’s
36 habitus, is a theory that resonates with me, and is applied to my own understanding of habitus and identity.
Embodied cultural components and the meaning behind the movements, which constitute my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, vary given with whom I am creating the works and the environment in which I am presenting the works. This means that Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept or dance genre is context driven and there is constant negotiation of the ‘Ethio’ and the ‘Modern’ influences. It is through my conscious attentiveness to the creative process and my analysis of the works, that themes are unpacked and various layers of interpretation can be revealed (See Chapters 3 and 4). My attentiveness is not restricted to my creative process as this attentiveness begins with my awareness of my lived body (Fraleigh 1987) in its environment.
Through analysis, it can be argued that most embodied practices align with the aforementioned theories of embodiment, and this would include Ethio-Modern Dance. Elkins refers to the ‘reanalysis of existing data’, or putting written meaning to the movement, as ‘re-textualizing’ (Elkins 2010). This ‘re-textualisation’ exists in several interrelated strands as the creator of the movement, the doer of the movement, and the observer all develop their own understandings of the movements taking place. This understanding may be individual or may be shared, but its universal comprehension is based on the common cultural or contextual knowledge that exists between all parties (Elkins 2010). This concept of re-textualisation applies to the creative process, and analysis of my Ethio-Modern Dance works, which I will address in the forthcoming chapters.
Metaphorical Concept Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish— a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language…typically viewed as characteristic of language alone…We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action.
(Lakoff and Johnson 1980:4)
This is the starting point for linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By (1980). They begin to explain how we perceive our world and
37 that which we experience through our comprehension of an application of metaphors. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that our perception of reality is based on a conventional metaphorical concept system, so how we think about and articulate our experiences is metaphorical. Because of this, most people do not consciously acknowledge the complexity or contextual specificity of the metaphor ingrained in our perception of experiences until there is an attempt to communicate with metaphorical language, which is generally not received in the way that we intend. These authors identify the details within metaphors and the culture-based structural systems that determine our perceptions and actions. For example, “time is money” is a metaphor that gives a monetary value to time, which is then tied to other metaphors such as “don’t waste my time”, which implies that if time is lost, then so is money (Lakoff and Johnson1980). Lakoff and Johnson (1980) attest to the many ways of categorizing metaphors and their possibilities of expression and/or interpretation. They address the various types of metaphors, such as orientational metaphors, that deal with our perception and relation to space or environment, and how generally we view a word like ‘up’ in a positive way and ‘down’ would be perceived as negative (Lakoff and Johnson1980). But, there are special instances where this would not be true, and this pertains to the context in which a word is used. This context can aid in our understanding of a word as a metaphor. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) refine many of the different categories and sub-categories of metaphors, but for the sake of this thesis, I will not address these independently as they are quite complex in their differentiations. Metaphors, like art, are open to interpretation based on an individual’s ‘experiential concept system’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Common perceptions of experience occur when cultural values are cohesive, although there is no universal understanding of any language or action-based metaphor. For instance, Lakoff and Johnson, address our understanding of actions involved in an argument by using the “Argument of War” metaphor (1980:4) as one example that illustrates our cultural perception of arguing and its relation to our perception of a battle. The authors attest that the interpretation of ‘argue’, as a word or an action, is itself not universal. They state: Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way…we have a discourse form structured in terms of battle and they have one
38 structured in terms of dance…The essence of metaphor is under-standing and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. (Lakoff & Johnson 1980:6)
In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) broaden the idea of the ‘metaphor’ as a conceptual system of perceived experiences. The information is insightful and can serve as a good textbook, linguistic reference, or philosophy. The authors allude to the notion that the same metaphorical conceptualization theories that are applied to language and culture should be applied to movement or dance and culture as well. Line Brandt furthers Lakoff and Johnson’s point when she argues that there are a number of “metaphors linking dance to dialogue” or movement to language and therefore its symbolic meaning (Brandt 2015:1). Brandt states: In bodily behaviour of dancing, the rhythmic patterns are expressed through gestures that communicate from body to body and directly signify emotional states…which are subsequently mirrored mentally by an audience. Dance is therefore determined by contexts, and contexts are determined by the domains of meaning in the human life world, different forms of dancing unfold in different semantic domains… (Brand 2015:1)
Brandt highlights the significant role of communication through the interrelations of what she calls “the fundamental triad: music, language, and dance” (Ibid.). She contests that: [T]he meaning of music…is directly tied to bodily experiences; the meaning of music is movement…Hence, the “meaning” of dance moves (at a basic non-narrative level) is…emotive and schematic… (Brandt 2015:4)
If we are looking at the structure of dance as an experiential domain, we conceptualise it metaphorically and express it through the use of other domains. Adversely, the term dance can provide a conceptual frame for addressing movements that are only metaphorically dance-related. The context in which movement or dance is presented and the embodied habitus of the participant, will determine what symbolism or metaphorical meaning will be applied to the movement.
Embodied Metaphor In the case of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, the concept of embodied
39 metaphor plays an important role in the creative process of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. For example, in YeBuna Alem (2015), I become a metaphor within the metaphor of the performance as I, the choreographer, am the cultural broker for Ethio- Modern Dance, and my character in the performance is the metaphorical embodiment of Buna/coffee (See Chapter 3). As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have alluded, embodiment as a concept can be interpreted in many ways and words are understood ‘through the body’ in relation to one’s cultural context. Brandt further states that, The human body, in a semiotic perspective, is not just a container letting fluids in and out and navigating in space; it is a social and communicative body, adorning itself with ornamental signifiers signaling (e.g. ethnic) affiliation. It is a rhythmic body that engages in literary practices and in dancing – in synchrony with and reaction to other bodies. A semiotic notion of embodiment [...] hence implies the incorporation (literally) of the gaze of the Other.
(Brandt 2013b: 25)
Therefore, if all learning is embodied, and embodiment as a concept has a metaphorical interpretation, then learned language or movement and their applied meanings may also be interpreted as metaphor. Theorist Eleanor Metheny states, “…meaning is necessarily symbolic…a word or movement has meaning only by symbolizing” (Metheny in Best 1997:42). As I mentioned earlier in this thesis, my aesthetic understandings and artistic practice are based on a developing metaphorical concept system that I call “lifism”. As a ‘lifist’ my understanding of my practice is in constant ‘flux’, in that it is evolving as I encounter new experiences and integrate new conceptual views with those of my past. I would argue that this is a progressive process, because my practice is a reflection or a symbolic representation of how I live. Other metaphorical concepts emerged during the creative process and performance of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). One of which, ritual, I will now examine briefly.
40 Ritual Metaphor Victor Turner, an anthropologist who conducted pivotal research of a Ndembu village in Zambia, refined one understanding of ritual, through his investigation of symbolic practices of people from South Central Africa (Turner 1969). Turner defined ritual as: a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, (Turner 1977:183)
I would argue that this aspect of Turner’s definition relates to my own theoretical understanding of how ritual is embodied metaphorically in my Ethio-Modern Dance artistic practice, as the ‘gesture, words, and objects’ presented in my two major choreographic works are interrelated to their performance environment (See Chapters 3 and 4). I would also align with Catherine M. Bell’s (2009) notion that ritual can be “a form of social activity,” (Bell 2009: vii), not fixated on the past, and can be seen in modern everyday life. Both Turner (1977) and Bell’s (2009) approach to ritual resonate with my own understanding of this concept. To further examine the ritual concept and its relation to my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic process, I will now draw on the works of Andrée Grau (2001) and Ellen Dissanayke (2003). Andrée Grau’s article Ritual, Dance, and “Modernisation”: The Tiwi Example (2001) aligns with the argument of Gern Baumann (1992), that most of the anthropological discourse, from the post-Durkheim era of the late 19th century has been rooted in the assumptions that: 1. Rituals are seen to be symbolic performances at the core of the social identity of communities; 2. They create maintain (or transform) a society’s cultural identity and social relations; 3. The existence of a ritual community or congregation is assumed, whose members share a relationship to the performance, its symbols and their meanings; 4. Thus, rituals are seen to be best understood as acts internal to the category or group that celebrates itself through them, the group being essentially concerned with itself rather than with the outside world. (Grau 2001:73)
I would define ritual as a performance of particular actions, which generally have symbolic or ceremonial intentions, although the exact meaning of these movements may vary within different cultural contexts. I align with Ellen Dissanayke’s argument in her chapter The
41 Core of Art: Making Special (2003) in regard to the relationship between ritual and art. As an example of this relationship Dissanayke uses the exaggerated bows of ballet dancer at the end of a performance. She states: Thus in general, both rituals and art are formalized. Movements—what people do— are prescribed, the order of events is structured, and the individual participants’ perceptions, emotions, and interpretations are thereby shaped.
(Dissanayake 2003:21)
Dissanayake later adds:
Ritual ceremonies and the arts are socially reinforcing, uniting their participants and their audiences in one mood. They both provide an occasion for feelings of individual transcendence of the self—what Victor Turner (1969) calls communitas and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1975) calls “flow”—everyone shares in the same occasion of patterned emotion. (Ibid.)
Grau and Dissanayake’s characteristics of ritual reinforce my notion of its connection with my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). I would argue that in these performances ritual is often represented metaphorically through symbolic interpretations of movements, gestures, and cultural practices (See Chapters 3 and 4). The following section examines the concepts of somaesthetics (Shusterman 2006) and the soma-self (Fraleigh 2004) in relation to my investigation of my artistic practice.
Somatic Self: Body, Mind, Spirit Following Mauss (1935), I argue that the body, mind, and spirit of an individual work in tandem in the representation of the ‘self.’ If one is attentive to the development of each component, as well as their interconnectedness, I would contend that one can improve one’s connection to the lived body (Shusterman 2006) as it exists within a particular socio-cultural environment. I, therefore, draw on Sondra Fraleigh’s ‘soma-self’ and Richard Shusterman’s ‘somaesthetics’ as starting points to explore the impact of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ bodily awareness in my artistic practice from its ‘means’ (creative process) to its ‘ends’ (performance product), and vice versa (Shusterman 2006 and Fraleigh 2004). Since all
42 experience is embodied and therefore centralized through and in the body, I will first examine my emerging comprehension of terms such as the body or lived body and the soma. According to Shusterman: …the body is not only an essential dimension of our humanity, it is also the basic instrument of all human performance, our tool of tools, a necessity for all our perception, action, and even thought. (Shusterman 2006:2)
The body is thus an integral tool or instrument in humanity for the sustainment of our existence. The body essentially is where our understanding of the self and the lives we lead begins and ends. Who I understand myself to be in relation to others and my environment is reflected through the inner actions, thoughts, and words generated within and from my lived body. Likewise, one’s interpretation of self within a particular environment is perceived through the outer expressions of one’s lived body (Fraleigh 1987, 2004 and Shusterman 2006). Fraleigh applies this notion through the lens of a dance practitioner. She states: To express the dance is to express the lived body in an aesthetic…I am embodied in my dance…my dance cannot exist without me: I exist my dance. (Fraleigh 1987: xvi)
Fraleigh also examines Japanese philosophers, Ichiwaka Hiroshi and Yuasa Yasuo, who have themselves investigated the phenomena of the ‘lived body’ from the perspective of the Butoh dance style cultural. Fraleigh contends: If body is spirit as Ichiwaka holds, then we experience various degrees of spiritual connectivity through dance, even the freedom we seek through unification of body with conscious intent and intuitive life. This in turn allows us to understand the body that is beyond the skin, and connectivity as a gift of bodily being… (Fraleigh 2004:28)
The spirit body or ‘body as spirit’ and its interconnected metaphysical exchange, requires a disciplined development of one’s attentiveness to these components of the inner and outer bodily experiences. This continuous exchange keeps refining the definition of the lived body and its purpose within our human existence stays in flux. “Metaphysics as a branch of philosophy studies the nature of being and beings, existence, time, space, movement and causality,” (Heidegger in Fraleigh 2004:1). Metaphorically speaking, our journey in life
43 through and with our bodies is just that, a journey and not a destination. Therefore, our comprehension of self in relation to our existence is constantly evolving. Fraleigh adds: If existence is indeterminate…then we dance as unfinished metaphysical artifacts…” We are works in progress…and like works of art we live between content and process. Our living metaphysical reality…spreads into our everyday dances… (Fraleigh 2004:49)
These and other embodied experiences are understood through awareness and perception. Our own proprioceptive awareness of our body, how we perceive it, and how we ‘experience our potential’ (Fraleigh 2004) would briefly define the soma. The soma-self is our own perception of who we are and “not the person we believe others see when they look at us,” (Fraleigh 2004:1-2). American pragmatist philosopher and author Richard Shusterman has done extensive research into the soma and developed an ‘interdisciplinary field called somaesthetics’: Somaesthetics is devoted to the critical, ameliorative study of one’s experience and use of one’s body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aisthesis) and creative self-fashioning. (Shusterman 2000:138)
In several of his books and articles including Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (2000), and Thinking Through the Body, Educating for the Humanities: A Plea for Somaesthetics (2006), Shusterman argues that our notion of our body is constructed based on our understanding of who we are and how we relate and represent ourselves to the outside world. According to Shusterman, “Strengthening the body helps develop the mind, which it nourishes and informs through its senses,” (2006:9). Shusterman, recognizes the co-dependency of the ‘body, mind, and culture’ and uses somaesthetics as an ‘interdisciplinary research program to integrate their study,’ (Shusterman 2006). Shusterman believes that better ‘somatic knowledge’ is needed “to improve our understanding and performance in the arts,” (Shusterman 2006:2). I would agree with Shusterman in that an increased somatic awareness is necessary to improve one’s understanding of the self in relation to the works one is producing in the world one exists in. This notion of somatic awareness is a concept that I embody within the creative processes of my two Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016).
44 Shusterman argues further that the ‘essential union’ between the body and mind can be expressed through his term body-mind as, “Mental life relies on somatic experience and cannot be wholly separated from bodily process,” (Ibid.). He argues that our understanding of the body-mind is ‘shaped by culture’, and culture, its language, values, institutions, and media determine how we identify the ‘soma-self’ and the actions, thoughts, and words that represent our understandings. Shusterman also notes that, “Conversely, culture…cannot thrive or even survive without the animating power of embodied thought and action,” (2006:3). According to Shusterman, there is a sense of human unity in the body as well as a sense of division “through…physical structure, functional practice, and social interpretation…” (Ibid.) and that regardless of our commonalities or differences, all bodies are “laden with social meaning,” (Ibid.). Again, the soma and somatic practices are about proprioceptive awareness or feelings that generally begin with becoming conscious of the breath as it moves in and out of the language of the body. The cultivation of our enhanced lived-bodily awareness is a central task of Shusterman’s somaesthetics, as he states: Moreover, bodily abilities set limits of what we can expect from ourselves and others, thus determining the range of our ethical obligations and aspirations. (Shusterman 2006:5)
Again, this notion is considered within the creative process of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, as within both performances I collaborated with a range of performer abilities to produce these bodies of work. Shusterman proposes five categories in relation to somaesthetics: pragmatic somaesthetics; performative somaesthetics; representational somaesthetics; experiential somaesthetics; and practical somaesthetics. Pragmatic somaesthetics “presupposes the analytic dimensions” (Shusterman 2006:14) and is comprised of critical and comparative study of existing methods and theories in order to improve the use of the lived body as a tool in our understanding of the soma-self. Some of these methods include: types of diets, meditation, the ways in which we groom or accessorize our bodies through dance, martial arts, “and modern psychosomatic disciplines like Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais Method,” (Ibid.). These disciplines do not divide the body, but instead seek improvement of the whole self. Shusterman notes distinctions between certain types of pragmatic concepts such as
45 ‘representational, experiential, and performative somaesthetic’ disciplines, but acknowledges that the characteristics of each may overlap. For Shusterman, representational somaesthetics deals with the cosmetic surface appearances of the self like the use of makeup. Experiential somaesthetics aims to give us a better feeling of our whole self, through practice such as in Yoga or Tai Chi. The third pragmatic discipline performative somaesthetics, focuses on “building strength, health, or skill,” (Shusterman 2006:14). Performative somaesthetics can be “associated with or assimilated in to the representational or experiential categories,” (2006:16). I apply performative and experiential somaesthetics, to technical training within my creative process. Representational somaesthetics, relates more to the presentation of the self in front of the mirror or on the stage, or how I want myself to be seen in relation to my valued aesthetic. According to Shusterman, the final way of improving the use of our ‘body as tool’ is through practical somaesthetics, which he argues is often marginalized by contemporary philosophy. Shusterman says that practical somaesthetics engages “in programs of disciplined, reflective, corporeal practice aimed at somatic self-improvement (whether representational, experiential, or performative),” (2006:16). Shusterman asserts that more attentiveness to our process in understanding “the body’s presumed status” as the ‘means’ or ‘tool’ is needed, although the product or the ‘ends’ is just as significant. Shusterman challenges the ‘means- ends’ dichotomy with the arts, stating “…the dancer’s body belongs as much to the ends as to the means of the dance work,” (2006:16). Shusterman further adds “… art’s emotional values…must be experienced somatically to be experienced at all,” (Ibid.). I have often affirmed that the key to understanding life and how we are connected to all life, starts with a journey of discovering one’s self. Because of my knowledge in the practical, research, and theoretical aspects of my artistic discipline, I am able to consciously and unconsciously engage with these theories. Shusterman adds: Knowledge…is sturdier when incorporated into the muscle memory of skilled habit and deeply embodied experience. As human thought would not make sense without the embodiment that places the sensing…so wisdom and virtue would be empty without the diverse, full-bodied experience… (Shusterman 2006:17)
Shusterman’s notion that certain somaesthetic disciplines focus on the care of the body, as well as its outward representation, and that these can produce individuals who are more
46 aware of their ‘self-self’ and others (Shusterman 2006). I agree with Shusterman that this can lead to a society where we can all potentially understand each other better as we pursue a life of more integration and less separation. Within a creative process, the individual’s knowledge of the ‘bodily self’ allows for participants to develop at their own ‘means’, yet still keeping in mind the common goal of creating the ‘end’ or finished product. This concept of somaesthetics is indirectly applied into my artistic practice, in that I am conscious of my valued aesthetics within my own body which transmits into the choreographed movements that I create. In the section that follows, I continue to draw on the works of Shusterman and others, to illuminate the understanding of my embodied cultural self and how I identify myself, and my artistic practice, in relation to the world I exist in.
Embodied Cultural Identity I grew up in the United States of America, a place that is propagandized to the world as a ‘melting pot’ of different cultures that exist together in a type of ‘multicultural’ environment. Through my investigation of culture as a concept, specifically multiculturalism, I have developed concerns about my own American ‘multicultural’ identity, and how my perception of this concept relates to my analysis of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). The following examination is derived from the perspectives of Richard Shusterman, Mikhail Epstein, Peter D. McDonald, Jane C. Desmond and others on the concepts of multiculturalism, interculturalism, transculturalism, and identity. From investigating their perspectives, I have begun to broaden my understanding of my ‘cultural self’ and how this relates to my creative practice as a performing artist/lifist. At this point, I will examine some of the theories associated with the definition of culture and identity. Han Chang states, “Given that culture is a web of self and others, autoethnography is not a study of self alone,” (Chang 2008:65). Much of my written doctoral thesis will come from an autoethnographic perspective, but in order to better understand one’s self and one’s understanding of cultural identity, then the self must be examined in relation to others and the environment where one exists. Slovenian Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek says that culture is a ‘way of life’, while gender theorist scholar Anne Phillips understands culture as ‘literatures and ideas’ (Žižek and Phillips in McDonald 2011:372). There are many
47 definitions of the concept of culture (see Geertz 1973a and b; Csordas 1990; Desmond 1993; Shusterman 2000; Chang 2008) but regardless of one’s perspective, our cultural understanding plays a significant role in how we are seen in and how we actually see the world. Our understanding of culture helps define how we identify ourselves in relation to others. In McDonald’s article, Thinking Interculturally (McDonald 2011), as well as in Shusterman’s chapter in Performing Live entitled, Multiculturalism and the Art of Living (Shusterman 2000), both argue that there are current complexities and an unease associated with the term multiculturalism. According to McDonald (2011) and Shusterman (2000), terms such as ‘culture’ and ‘multicultural’ can be used linguistically to replace terms that may be perceived as controversial, such as ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’. Shusterman addresses the ‘contextual nature of cultural identity,’ and he refers to the general concept of multiculturalism as a type of monocultural blurring (Shusterman 2000:185). McDonald explains that there are often “different socio-political contexts, within which the concept has been fashioned,” (McDonald 2011:369). McDonald further argues that the general defense of multiculturalism is what Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, refers to as “nothing more than a plea for plural monoculturalism” (Sen 2007:157 in McDonald 2011:370). Shusterman uses the United States as his example to address America’s push for a multicultural identity. This push, according to McDonald came out of ‘white peoples’ desire to separate themselves from the ‘other’ Americans, especially following the abolition of slavery. This created what McDonald refers to as the “subnational community,” (McDonald 2011:370). Multiculturalism, in places like the United States, is promoted as a way of integrating people by acknowledging certain ‘cultural’ differences. Unfortunately, the origin with which character traits of culture are associated, is contextually complex, as is how a culture is viewed in comparison to other cultures within a ‘multicultural’ community. Shusterman states that: …today’s idea of multiculturalism is…based on a sad recognition of grave social injustices that Americans (and Europeans) have systematically committed along racial lines, the term “culture” euphemistically substituting for race. (Shusterman 2000:185)
48 This statement would describe the United States that I know, because what I understand to be American culture is a blend of the Native Americans, European settlers, African slaves, and other nations of people who migrated to this particular place, which gave the United States its identity. I would argue that we are only able to make assumptions as to the origins of particular cultural nuances. Therefore, a culture’s originality or its appropriation would be as subjective as the definition of the term itself. In her book, Embodying Difference, American Professor of Anthropology and Gender and Women’s Studies, Jane C. Desmond addresses how cultural nuances can be expressed through human movement. To support her argument, Desmond uses the work of fellow anthropologist Sydney W. Mintz and writer Richard Price who state: …whether Negroes borrowed from whites or whites from Negroes…it must always be remembered that the borrowing was never achieved without resultant change in whatever was borrowed, and…without incorporating elements which originated in the new habitat that…gave the new form its distinctive quality. (Mintz and Price 43-44 in Desmond 1993-1994:42)
The point that I am alluding to here is that multiculturalism as a concept can be used to convey a sense of community, but monocultural equality is theoretically and practically, non-existent. Shusterman acknowledges that within most multicultural societies there exists what Bourdieu calls an “aristocracy of culture” (Shusterman 2000:59) or a cultural hierarchy based on a society’s traditions. The United States history has shown that ‘white’ people are considered superior on the culture spectrum and as Russian-American theorist, Mikhail Epstein suggests in Transculture: A Broad Way Between Globalism and Multiculturalism (2009), “Multiculturalism extols ‘pride’ in any single culture (and especially of cultural minorities),” (Epstein 2009:344). These monocultures are a reflection of what Shusterman (2000) and Epstein (2009) refer to as cultural pluralism, in which sub-cultures are joined and grouped in larger categories. For instance, African-American culture groups all of the cultural nuances from Africa and its diaspora into one category. This gives the perception that all African cultures are the same, but in actuality the African-American cultural group is based on class and the colour of one’s skin. This suggests the idea that if one is called ‘black’ then one is considered to be of African heritage, or possible it is the other way around. In contrast to multiculturalism, Epstein goes on to state that:
49 …transculturalism embraces the moral value of humility that makes one culture open to other cultures. Every culture is intrinsically insufficient and needs interaction with other cultures to compensate for its deficiencies… (Epstein 2009:334)
For me, the concept of transculturalism is more along the lines of my own philosophical ideologies on humanity. Epstein argues that we as humans should aspire to reach a metaphysical state of “no culture” in a “transcendental realm that relates to all existing cultures as they relate to nature,” (2009:335). Epstein aligns his perspective with that of Georgian philosopher, Merab Mamardashvili who states: …a step transcending one’s own surrounding, native culture and milieu…Not for the sake of another culture, but for the sake of nothing. Transcendence into nothing… [the] pulsating center of the entire human universe. This is a primordial metaphysical act. (Mamardashvili in Epstein 2009:335)
In examining this concept of ‘transculture’ or cross-cultural embodiment in relationship to my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, Ann Cooper Albright addresses the notion of “Channeling the ‘Other’” in an article of Research in Dance Education (Albright 2003). Albright, examines “an embodied approach to teaching across cultures” (Albright 2003:177) and as teaching is a major method within my choreographic process, I align with Albright’s theories on embodiment. She describes embodiment as “the process by which cultural values are internalised and represented by social bodies” (Albright 2003:177). This would correlate with my embodied understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance as I have internalised certain values of Ethiopian culture and other world cultures, which I use as tools of influence in my artistic practice of teaching and creating Ethio-Modern Dance. Therefore, when my embodied knowledge is taught and transmitted to the participants in my Ethio- Modern Dance choreographic works, this knowledge is internalised and interpreted by these participants, and their understanding is represented in their performance as social bodies of their respective communities. With a background in ethnochoreology, it is my awareness and sensitivity to culture (Sklar in Dils and Albright 2001) and its differences that has altered my thoughts about the origins of modern/contemporary and popular dance movements. Albright notes that An awareness of cultural difference has shattered any easy assumptions about
50 modern dance as ‘natural’, ‘authentic’, or the undisputed origin of most 20th-century and contemporary dance forms. (Albright 2003:177)
This would be evident in my correlation of traditional Ethiopian dances and movements from Hip Hop dances - more specifically the rhythmic articulations of the shoulders in Ethiopia’s eskista dance and its similarities to urban American Hip Hop dance known as the ‘Harlem Shake’, and the pattern and energetic flow of Gurage dance steps and B-boying ‘top rock’ steps. It is my attempt to always “honour cultural difference, while at the same time affirm a willingness to engage our bodies in historical and cross-cultural analysis,” (Albright 2003:177). These cross-cultural relationships are not the focus of this thesis, however, it is my embodied understanding of these dance cultures that have made the transmission of my Ethio-Modern Dance movement less complex, in that I can relate to dancers of different cultural backgrounds in various ways for them to apply their own embodied knowledge to what they are learning. Although there has been an increase in my understanding of the negative connotations associated with the term ‘multicultural’, for my research most people who view my Ethio- Modern Dance choreographic works and have prior knowledge of Ethiopian culture, may see these works as multicultural. Due to my intentional promotion of Ethiopian culture through Ethio-Modern Dance, I would argue that this particular movement concept does exemplify a type of cultural hierarchy, with Ethiopia being at the top of my Ethio-Modern Dance cultural spectrum. It could also be argued that my Western contemporary habitus is the most prominent culture in my Ethio-Modern Dance works, but the defining factor in the analysis of my works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016) is individual knowledge and perspective. McDonald states: …Will Kymlicka argues, there has always been some conceptual confusion around multiculturalism…because it has often times served as a catchall, covering a multitude of minority histories. (McDonald 2011:369)
At this stage in my research, I would agree with the notion that my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works are thematically multicultural as my embodied understanding of Ethiopian culture is prominently reflected in these works, even though it is projected through
51 the lens of a Western urban contemporary performing artist. With my deepened understanding of multiculturalism, I am more apt to ‘thinking interculturally’ (McDonald 2011) about my future creative processes and how I would like for my urban contemporary works to be seen. In an idealistic reality as a human being and performing artist/lifist there is no culture or race which is superior to another. Even my acceptance of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographed productions as multicultural bodies of work, does not imply that Ethiopian culture is superior to any other culture that may influence the choreography. I acknowledge that in artistic practice and in life there is a perceived and often times accepted hierarchy within societies, but as I reflexively reexamine my life, I would argue that, “all cultures exist interculturally”, (McDonald 2011:373). This intercultural concept applies within my bodily movement styles as well. My movement is particular to my habitus, as Desmond states: Like Bourdieu’s concept of “taste” (distinction), movement style is an important mode of distinction between social groups and is usually actively learned or passively absorbed in the home and the community. (Desmond 1993-1994:36)
I agree with Desmond’s argument that movement should be seen as a primary social text that conveys certain cultural nuances relating to perceptions of identity, which stem beyond ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality. My perception of my own identity is an intercultural one and I strive to use my body and that of others to convey this concept. I argue that through movement, I am able to express my intercultural identity honestly, and I strive to embody meaning and values that convey equality between cultures without the use of verbal language. Aside from the perplexity of which cultural concept to attach to my bodies of work, I am also challenged in the creation of my Ethio-Modern Dance works by the integration of “culturally different bodies” (Albright 2003:177). I align with Albright and aspire to discover: How could I engage my students’ [dancers’] physical experiences, when those experiences (for the most part) arose out of a completely different cultural framework? (Albright 2003:179)
These and other challenges I investigate in the analysis of my two major Ethio-Modern
52 Dance choreographic works, YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016), in Chapter Three and Chapter Four of this thesis.
Ethio-Modern Dance: The Two Sides of the Coin As a performing artist/lifist I am on a constant quest for broader understanding of myself and others. My understanding of self is at the core of my practice and my doctoral research. ‘Urban’ contemporary is an umbrella term I use to describe the works I produce as a performing artist/lifist. Although, the term urban contemporary is most commonly associated with African-American radio formatting, for me it represents my embodiment of urban America’s Hip Hop and popular culture in which I was raised, and the current multi- dimensional contemporary culture that I exist in today. As an urban contemporary performing artist/lifist, there are theoretical movement concepts that I explore, one of which is Ethio-Modern Dance, which is the focus of this doctoral research project. As I have mentioned, Ethio-Modern Dance is a movement concept I have been developing for approximately ten years, although I did not begin to use the term until 2009. This movement concept is based on my embodiment of Ethiopian and other world cultures, which I use as inspirational tools in the creative processes of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. My autoethnographic research investigates what Ethio-Modern Dance is for me, based on my embodied history (Shusterman 2008) of Ethiopian culture and other lived-experiences. In my written thesis for my Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology degree, I mention: Ethio (my African heritage) and Modern (my perception of the world I exist in now and its many influences) dance uses my embodiment of Ethiopian and (other)…cultures as tools in my creative process of movement… (Courtney 2013:8)
Metaphorically speaking, there are two sides or perspectives to my Ethio-Modern Dance coin. On one side, while I am creating outside of Ethiopia, I am more inclined to utilize influential aspects of Ethiopian culture as major tools in my classes, workshops, and choreography. Whether it is Ethiopian traditional/cultural dance movement37, music,
37 Within the Ethiopian context, the terms ‘traditional’ and ‘cultural’ are used interchangeably to describe the indigenous dances of the country. Some of the Ethiopian traditional/cultural dances which have influenced my Ethio-Modern Dance works are Eskista, a shoulder
53 cultural iconography, or day-to-day life encounters, all of these aspects can and generally do influence my Ethio-Modern Dance works outside of Ethiopia. I make a conscious assertion to expose more of my embodied knowledge of Ethiopian culture to the world outside of the country, in an effort to metaphorically plant the seed of intrigue in those who participate in or witness these Ethio-Modern Dance works. This would describe my general intentions with my first major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production YeBuna Alem (2015) (See Chapter 3). On the other side of this metaphorical Ethio-Modern Dance coin, while in Ethiopia I am less inclined to promote my embodied knowledge of Ethiopian culture, although it does play a role in my creative process to some degree. I would argue that in Ethiopia, the majority of the people I engage with on Ethio-Modern Dance projects, already have knowledge of Ethiopian culture. It is with this understanding that I draw more on my embodied knowledge from cultures outside of Ethiopia and utilize my expertise in Western contemporary dance production as a major component of the Ethio-Modern Dance works I produce in Ethiopia. This would be the case with my second major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production Common Threads (2016), as my inclination was to illustrate my embodied connection of Ethiopian culture to other world cultures through the medium of movement. The showcase of culturally diverse choreographic works in this production also highlighted universal social themes, such as embodied cultural knowledge exchange, community engagement, and youth empowerment. All of this was done in an effort to raise the standard and diversity of dance as a profession and artistic discipline within the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia dance community (See Chapter 4).
Chapter Summary This chapter has examined and articulated my general understanding of embodiment as well as the other concepts and themes that have emerged from the creative process of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance works, YeBuna Alem (2015), and Common Threads (2016). It has been stated, “As ethics melts into aesthetics, so art replaces religion as the most credible core of spiritual value” (Shusterman 2000:189). My Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic
neck and torso dance originating from the Amhara and Tigray regions; and from Southern Ethiopia Wolaita culture hip and legs movements and Gurage culture foot work and full-bodied movements.
54 works are grounded by my philosophy of a universal spirituality, and therefore need to align with my deep conviction about universal equality as well as my aspirations to promote Ethiopian culture in a positive manner. I aspire to be ethical in my approach towards embodied cultural knowledge and how it influences my creative processes. The Ethio- Modern Dance works I produce embody Ethiopian, African Diaspora, and other world cultures, which are woven together through the language of movement and given new meaning, as former meanings are interpreted through aesthetic abstraction, and then reinterpreted or re-textualised through transmission of meanings from the performers to the audience. I have resolved to use the term ‘multiculturalism’ to describe my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works as it relates to this doctoral thesis, as I acknowledge the hegemony of cultural influences and intentions in these works. Due to my awareness of the hierarchy associated with the term ‘multicultural’, in the future my aim is to create works that I would consider more intercultural and I will continue to aspire towards a more transcultural ideology in my daily life and future choreographic works. I envisage a time when humanity is not categorised culturally, and we exist without needs for generalisations or hierarchies. This multi/inter/trans-cultural equality I seek to embody and transmit through my urban contemporary bodies of work, I hope will be an example of one way to bridge cultural knowledge gaps that exist in our global communities. Within my creative process, there is a conscious as well as unconscious attentiveness to my soma-self. The narrative meanings attached to movements, symbols, or gestures does not predetermine meanings attached to these lived body cultural representations. Movement, much like language and its meanings, are not universal, although through comparative examination of cross-cultural research there may be some established similarities. There are many challenges in my attempt to refine the meanings of each movement within my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, and furthermore challenges in how my embodiment of culture (Sklar in Dils and Albright 2001) has re-contextualised the meanings and values to my movement’s metaphorical representation. Language, just as movement, is constantly evolving in understanding, as it is expressed within a cultural context. From the ethnochoreological perspective, the symbolic representation of dance or “structured human movement systems” (Kaeppler 1972), and the metaphorical meanings attached to these movements, are based on the cultural context from which these movements or dances stem.
55 My understanding of culture in relation to identity is a complex conundrum of contextual linguistics and subjugated perspectives. My artistic practice engages the notion that the symbolic cultural attachments made by viewers of my Ethio-Modern Dance works, is based on an individual, or a cultural groups’ collective understandings of what the movements mean in relation to their own cultures’ shared meanings of the movement. Without prior knowledge of what Ethio-Modern Dance entails, the performer or audience participant is free to associate these works with any culture they choose. This association is embodied and understood through their own body and mind’s lived-experience. For this reason, it is important that before corporal embodied knowledge is transmitted, there is the cerebral knowledge that is addressed to give participants a starting point from which to examine the intercultural representations within a work. The performers and audience participants of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works come from a variety of cultural backgrounds and attach their own cultural understandings to my works. Their attachments or interpreted meanings are not right or wrong, and for me this is the beauty of art, in that the creator’s embodied cultural intentions will not always be the receiver’s embodied cultural understanding. No one perspective is paramount when it comes to interpreting art and/or culture, but through dialogue in a common language, differences in attached meanings of cultural representation can be articulated and therefore a basic, yet still complex, piece of knowledge can be exchanged between cultures. With my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, I expect different people to connect with the work in different ways, but always through the lens of their own living body and perceived cultural identity. In the following two chapters, I will examine embodiment, culture, ritual and some of the aforementioned concepts as they relate to my analysis of the creative processes and presentations of my two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographed productions. I will look further into my embodied metaphor within the metaphor of YeBuna Alem (2015) and the conceptual metaphor that wove together the pieces of Common Threads (2016).
56 Chapter Three Performance One: የቡና ዓለም YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World
(Figure 14) Promotional flyer YeBuna Alem (2015)
57 Introduction This chapter will analyse the methods I employed, and the theoretical concepts that emerged through the creation of my first major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production የቡና ዓለም38/YeBuna Alem (A Coffee World), herein referred to as YeBuna Alem. YeBuna Alem premiered at the University of Limerick’s Tower Theatre in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, on May 26, 2015 at 7:00pm. Through the development and presentation of YeBuna Alem (2015) I was able to investigate and refine my embodied understanding of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreography, as well as illustrate aspects of embodied Ethiopian culture that influenced this body of work. For my analysis of YeBuna Alem (2016), I enlist the works of Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley (1988), Grau (2001), Yoseph (2013) and others to assist with the structure, comprehension, and articulation of various components within this choreographic production. I have collected research data for this analysis through various methodologies, including but not limited to: literary review; audio-visual documentation of the creative process and final performance; personal as well as performer reflective journaling; participant surveys; and the use of social media as a resource for the creative development of ideas. The following chapter will examine embodied culture, ritual, and narrative as theoretical concepts that emerged through my creative process. I have also drawn on the works of Pike (1954) to illustrate how his emic and etic concept, and those concepts mentioned above, relate to the role of documentation in my analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015). I will approach the analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015) by examining how effective this production was in answering my central research questions: What is my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio-Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?
The Reason The purpose for creating this Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production, YeBuna Alem
38 የቡና ዓለም is the YeBuna Alem, or ‘coffee world’ translated in Amharic, written in the Ethiopian syllabic script known as the fidel.
58 (2015) is rooted in my personal desire for more cultural integration in humanity and my aspiration to share my embodied knowledge of Ethiopian culture with the University of Limerick dance community. As Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley (1988) state: The dance may have a purpose or function primarily as an artwork or as a ritual act or as a form of entertainment…or as more than one of these simultaneously. (Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley 1988:13)
This statement highly resonates with my reasoning for conceiving and producing YeBuna Alem (2015). This choreographic production was multidimensional in its embodiment of Ethiopian culture and other world cultures through art, ritual, education, and entertainment. In Ethiopian communities, there is a tradition that is referred as a buna ceremony or ‘coffee ritual’ (Yoseph 2013). This is a cultural engagement that can take place anywhere from one to five hours, depending upon the occasion and the person who is preparing the ceremony (Yoseph 2013). I will examine this coffee ceremony in more detail in a later section although, generally, what consumes the most time in a traditional Ethiopian buna ceremony is the hand ground roasted coffee beans, which are simmered in a long-necked clay kettle like pot, known as a jebena. Many parts of the Western world contrast to a slower Ethiopian traditional way of making coffee. I would argue that the majority of our world’s coffee consumers most often take it ‘on the go’. So much, that on the international market there are several brands of ‘instant’ coffee, even in Ethiopia. Yet still, for many people, it is a part of their everyday lives. In knowing this from my own international lived-experiences (Figure 15) Painting of Traditional Ethiopian (See Chapter 1), I questioned as to how many people Buna Ceremony (artist unknown) that I encountered actually know that one of the most popular strands of coffee, Arabica, originated in Southwestern Ethiopia. This question and the abovementioned aspects of an Ethiopian buna ceremony were embodied narratives which influenced my intentions with the choreographic process of YeBuna Alem (2015). With an aim to share my research and choreographic works with others, for this production I positioned myself as a type embodied Ethiopian cultural broker, sharing my knowledge about Ethiopia, to the University of Limerick, Ireland dance community. In YeBuna Alem
59 (2015) this notion of me as a cultural broker is also embodied metaphorically in my role as Buna (coffee) in this performance. This body of choreographic works interprets the stories associated with Arabica coffee, from its discovery in Ethiopia to its subsequent migration to other cultures around the globe. In YeBuna Alem (2015), coffee is a literal cultural conduit and metaphorical ‘bridge’ between Ethiopia and the world’s ‘horizons’. The following section utilises reflexive journaling, memory recall, and other autoethographic writing methods to illustrate how this ‘concept of coffee’ was developed.
From Kaffa to Café: A Concept of Coffee As I recall, I was three months into the PhD Arts Practice Research programme, and on the morning of November 14, 2013, I awoke at 5:06 am in my university apartment and began to make notes about ideas for choreographic works that could be a part of my first doctoral Ethio-Modern Dance production. At the time, I did not have an idea for one thematic concept, although, I was drawn to the notion of utilizing Ethiopian folklore as an influence on the type of narrative-driven choreography that I was envisioning. By January 2014, I had already begun searching for Ethiopian narratives, legends, and folklore stories on the Internet and coffee was one of the first ideas that resonated with me. Around this time, I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and met Metasebia Yoseph, an Ethiopian American writer and entrepreneur. Yoseph and I were introduced at the daughter of mutual friend’s birthday party. (This same mutual friend, owner of Effoi 39Pizza, would two years later be the catering sponsor for Common Threads (2016).) I discussed with Yoseph some of the ideas I was investigating as part of my doctoral research. She informed me that she had recently completed her book, ‘A Culture of Coffee’ (Yoseph 2013) and suggested that I read it in order to possibly acquire some qualitative data for my research. I did not know at that time this book would become a resource which would inspired choreographic narratives and the overall theme of YeBuna Alem (2015). Yoseph’s (2013) book advanced my knowledge of Arabica coffee, the Ethiopian buna ceremony, and the legend of Kaldi40, the Ethiopian
39 Effoi is a premiere pizza chain with an aim of putting the Ethiopian culture into its food by using 99% local ingredients. Effoi is progressively becoming a cross-culture movement of sharing by connecting visitor and the local community through a satisfying food experience. 40 Kaldi’s is also the name for one of the largest coffee shop chains in Ethiopia. Ironically, the traditional Ethiopian buna ceremony is not a marketing strategy of most Kaldi’s establishments. With a logo very similar to the American company Starbucks, Kaldi’s coffee is made faster than the traditional way, produced with more modern equipment, and can be taken to go.
60 goat herder associated with coffee’s discovery (Yoseph 2013). When I concluded reading A Culture of Coffee (Yoseph 2013), I knew that I wanted to explore this legend of Kaldi in my creative process for my first major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work YeBuna Alem (2015). When I returned to Limerick, Ireland, I began to utilise my social media outlets, such as Facebook, to engage in dialogues with my international network of friends and family about the ‘culture of coffee’ (Yoseph 2013) in their lives. I developed a Facebook public group page ‘My PhD Research41’ and informed the members of my page that I would use various stories associated with coffee as themes in my first major doctoral Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work. In a written post on My PhD Research page I stated: So some of you may know that I am planning my first PhD performance in May 2015. The theme is A World of Coffee (From Kaffa to Cafe). I will use movement and theater to illustrate how coffee, found in Ethiopia, has become a cultural conduit. If you would like to share with me what coffee means to you and the culture you align yourself with, it may assist me in choreographic ideas. Feel free to contribute your stories to this page or inbox me. Bless RMC (Dec. 9, 2014, My PhD Research, https://www.facebook.com/groups/627404813965323/?fref=ts)
Most of my Facebook page’s group members were intrigued by the topic and what I might create and a few of the members provided personal narratives associated with coffee, from their respective cultural perspectives. One of those personal narratives was the inspiration for Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015), which I will examine later in this chapter. During YeBuna Alem’s (2015) early stages of journaling and developing narrative ideas, before going into the studio and choreographing, I also began to reach out to various performers at the Irish World Academy about their possible contributions to the project. By early January 2015, I distributed a letter of my ideas for my first performance to certain University of Limerick students and staff (See Appendix 2). This letter included general questions about peoples’ knowledge of coffee, its origins, and its relation to their respective cultures. I also posted this letter to My PhD Research Facebook page with the intention of gaining more knowledge about coffee as a global phenomenon, from my international network. In this letter, I posed the question ‘How do you see coffee in relationship to the
41 https://www.facebook.com/groups/627404813965323/?fref=ts)
61 world?’ (See Appendix 2) I received a response from my Italian female friend, who was a law school student participating in a study abroad programme at the University of Limerick. She stated, “…it (coffee) is a moment…an excuse that we use to socialize,” (Rotano in YeBuna Alem online letter 2015: question number 4). I would argue that many people in most parts of our world socialise over a cup of coffee. All of the responses to the letter helped to broaden the possibilities of what I could do with this choreographic work. As my creation of YeBuna Alem (2015) was practice-led (Nimkulrat 2007), I found myself invested in the creative process and less concerned with the actual presentation of the final product. My major concern with the creative process of YeBuna Alem was the narrative. I decided to start my choreographic process with a theme based on a 15th century Ethiopian folklore story associated with Ethiopian buna, the legend of Kaldi, which depicts a story of the Ethiopian goat herder whose goats are believed to have discovered Arabica coffee (Yoseph 2013). In this next section I will use Yoseph’s, A Culture of Coffee (2013) to provide an abridged version of this Ethiopian folklore story, which became the narrative inspiration for the first section of YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015) entitled Herdu42 (The Herd).
The Legend of Kaldi In A Culture of Coffee (Yoseph 2013), according to the 15th century Ethiopian folklore story, Kaldi was a young goat herder who travelled the vast mountainous countryside of the Kaffa43 region of Ethiopia.
Travelling, for the most part in solitude, aside from his (Figure 16) Painting of Kaldi with the goats (artist unknown) goats, Kaldi journeyed with a homemade bam-boo pipe known in Ethiopia as a washint. Not only was this washint used for his personal entertainment on these long treks, but it also served as a way for him to signal his herd. The goats had been trained to follow the sound of the washint, however, one day the herd did not respond to Kaldi’s call. Kaldi was forced to go and search for his herd, and “he found them dancing and jumping about on their hind legs, possessed with a vitality” (Yoseph
42 In Ethiopian language Amharic, the ‘u’ sound attached to a word usually means ‘the’. Herdu or ‘the herd’ is a blend of the English word ‘herd’ and the Amharic ‘u’ (‘the’ in English). 43 Kaffa is located in Southwestern Ethiopia and its name is often associate with the words ‘coffee’ and ‘café’.
62 24:2013). Kaldi did not think much of their behaviour until on another occasion he saw the herd eating the same shrubs, which he had noticed were around when he first saw their exuberant dancing behaviour. He then began to investigate the plant himself by eating it bit by bit until he discovered that it was the beans of the plant that provided the “spirited chemical property” (Ibid.) that we know today as caffeine. After Kaldi’s discovery, he was compelled to share it with an elder of his community and from there the social network within the village spread the word of this remarkable new plant until it reached the monks of the monastery. The monks found that the plant helped them maintain a sense of alertness during the long prayer sessions, and once the church had approved its use, it began to spread to other regions of Ethiopia (Yoseph 2013). More specifically, it made it to Harar, which is a predominantly Islamic walled city in Eastern Ethiopia, located close to the Red Sea, a popular trade route connecting the Eastern world to the West (Adejumobi 2007). According to Yoseph (2013), the legend says that once the Arab traders in Harar became knowledgeable of coffee, they began to export it out of Ethiopia to other parts of the world. To many Ethiopians this is why Ethiopian coffee is known as an Arabica strand, because it was the Arabs who named and traded it (Yoseph 2013). With YeBuna Alem (2015) I attempted to create a performance production that was not only entertaining but also educational for the performer and audience participants. One of my intentions with this body of Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works was to illustrate my embodied knowledge of the various stories associated with Ethiopia’s Arabica coffee. This particular Ethiopian folklore story about Kaldi, became a part of my embodied knowledge, which was reflected in the choreographed movements of Herdu44 (YeBuna Alem 2015). In the following section I will examine the embodied ritual influences that were illustrated in the choreographed movements of the performers as well as in the atmosphere of the performance space for YeBuna Alem (2015).
44 This title is a blend of the English word herd and the Amharic word for ‘the’, which is the phonetic ‘oo’ sound of ‘u’ attached to the end of a word.
63 Embodied Ritual Elements I would argue that my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works that I create often illuminate movements that have been inspired by symbolic and metaphorical interpretations of my lived-experiences. Much of this significance has been developed through my individual and institutional habitus (Wainwright, Williams, and Turner 2006), more specifically my connection to ritual movements associated with the different spiritual or religious practices45 that I have been exposed to during my life, in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. As mentioned earlier in this thesis, I define ritual as the performance of particular actions, which have symbolic meanings or ceremonial intentions (See Chapter 2). Sense ritual and art are both formalized (Dissanayake 2003), I would argue that there is a connection between the two, although our understanding of this connection is open to interpretation. Still both ritual and art are socially reinforcing (Ibid.) and I feel the same about the ritual and art connection in my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work YeBuna Alem (2015). Andrée Grau reiterates the notion of a ritual, art, and socio-cultural connection. She states: Ritual performance can serve as a commentary not only on the text, but on social life in general, to the extent of occasionally transforming both text and/or life. (Grau 2001:75)
In the presentation of the Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works of YeBuna Alem (2015), there are elements of ritual represented throughout the performance that resonate with Grau’s argument. This ‘commentary’ was revealed through the choreographed movements of the performers, as well as in other aspects of the production. For example, I would argue the titles of the different choreographed sections (See Appendix 5) as well as the choice of props and iconography, enhanced the embodied ritual influences of this production. However, buna (coffee) itself is associated with ritual practices in Ethiopia (Yoseph 2013), which I will briefly examine now. Traditionally, an Ethiopian buna (coffee) ceremony includes various rituals such as the burning of etan (incense). The process of the buna from the frey (seed/bean) to the sini (the
45 These spiritual and religious practices include but are not limited to Rastafarianism, the Baptist, Ethiopian Orthodox, and the Catholic churches as well as my exposure to Buddhist, Islamic and Hebrew religions.
64 small cup in which coffee is served), traditionally involves the frey being cleaned, roasted, ground, and brewed as the onlookers converse with anticipation. There is also an abundance of fresh fendisha bekolo (popcorn) that is eaten and scattered on top of the freshly cut long- stem green grass, which covers the floor of the preparation area. In some capacity, these elements of a buna ritual assisted in constructing the atmosphere that was set for my production YeBuna Alem.46 To reinforce some of the intended socio-cultural influences of Ethiopia, I incorporated Ethiopian inspired movements into the choreography and I used Ethiopian incense as a part of the performance setting. I was also inspired by the Ethiopian tradition of the person who brews the buna, serves three cups to the drinkers, and each serving is brewed separately. Yoseph (2013) states: The first round abol is thought to originate from the Semitic “awl”, meaning “first”. The second round, tona…is believed to originate from the Semetic word “itnin”, meaning second, while the third round, bereka, means blessing.47 (Yoseph 2013:23)
These three cups or rounds of buna servings were represented by the three structural stages of the YeBuna Alem (2015) performance. Each stage was symbolised by the three positions in which I placed the girgira (a small clay pottery) which held the burning etan (incense). At different moments during the performance, I moved the etan along the buna bean arc, which divided the performance space from the audience (See Figure 17).
(Figure 17) Mid-Performance image of Myself in YeBuna Alem (2015)
46 Although popcorn was not scattered across the floor of the performance space, it was used for the post-production Ethiopian buna ceremony which took place in the foyer of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, and was prepared by the Ethiopians residing in the Limerick area. 47 I believe that the number three has significance because of its importance within the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian faith, representing the ‘Holy Trinity’ or the ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’.
65 As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the narrative behind Herdu (The Herd) (YeBuna Alem 2015) was inspired by the folklore story of Kaldi, and the discovery or ‘birth’ of Arabica coffee and certain ritual practices of an Ethiopian buna ceremony. To further this illustration of the embodied ritual influences within the performance setting and choreographic works of YeBuna Alem (2015), I will use my analysis of the audio-visual documentation of this performance, to examine ritual as a concept in relation to the choreographic work Herdu (YeBuna Alem 2015), which was the first section of this Ethio-Modern Dance production.
As the creator, choreographer, director, and performer of YeBuna Alem (2015), it was important for me to set a performance environment for YeBuna Alem that resembled a ritual space, through its visual and aromatic atmosphere. It is for this reason that I had the audience enter the Tower Theatre of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance as the space filled with the smoke and smell of frankincense and myrrh. On the floor, the coffee bean arc demarking the stage divided the performance space and the audience who were given the choice of chairs or small stools on the floor for seating (See Figure 18).
(Figure 18) Pre-show image of performance space for YeBuna Alem (2015) in Tower Theatre, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick
These symbolic rituals that set the atmosphere for the performance space represented my embodied knowledge of an Ethiopian Orthodox Church services as well as aspects of a traditional Ethiopian buna ceremony, both of which involve the burning of incense. To this end, some of the choreographed movements in Herdu (YeBuna Alem 2015: 00:00:00) represented my embodiment of spiritual, religious, and ritual practices of the world, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. For example, I would argue that the stage lights
66 illuminating out of the dark theatre and casted on to my character, Buna, metaphorically represented the biblical beginning of ‘creation’ and the seed of life being awakened by the sun (Herdu in YeBuna Alem 2015: 00:00:22). I, Buna, begin on my knees bending forward in a shape that generally resembles a position of prayer for different religious or spiritual practitioners, most notably Islamic. As I lift my body, the movement of my floating arms resemble the quality of natural elements such as air and wind. At this moment in the performance I somatically put myself in a state of peace and meditation by focusing on my breath’s connection to my body’s movement, which is something I embodied from my experiences with the spiritual/religious practice of Buddhism (Herdu in YeBuna Alem 2015: 00:00:25). I use my breath to channel the energy of the space into my character’s emoting performativity. The collective choreographed movements of the female performers, Nina, Riika, Fiona, Sorcha and Lisa48, behind me support my independent ritual-like meditation. These performers stand on two feet, bent over at the waist, with their fingertips lightly skimming the floor as they sway from side to side, like the leaves of a willow tree grazing the surface of a pond while blowing in the breeze. I adapted this type of ritual movement imagery into choreographed movements from my embodied knowledge of somatic practices such as Tai-Chi and Yoga. Their flowing arm movements suggest the grazing ritual of the goats that, later in this section, discover coffee (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:00:30). These symbolic ritualised movements helped to set the atmosphere for Buna’s journey through the performance environment of YeBuna Alem (2015). Ritual associations can be attached to other choreographed sections of YeBuna Alem (2015) as well. For instance, certain gestures of the arms performed by Jazmyne Koch in the section Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015), were inspired by the ritual imagery in hula kahiko traditional dancing culture of Hawaii. I will discuss other elements of inspiration for Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015) in a later section of this chapter. In the following section I draw on memory recall, the review of the documented performance, and personal narrative writing as methods to analyse and capture part of my experience during the performance of YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015). Due to word
48 At the time of this performance Lisa and Sorcha, both of Irish descent, were completing their final year of the BA in Voice and Dance (BAVAD) programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Riika was also in her final year enrolled in the BAVAD programme but as an Erasmus exchange student from Savoina University, in Kuopio. Fiona, also Irish, was a graduate of the BAVAD programme as well as a graduate from the MA in Festive Arts programme. Nina, from the United States, had recently graduated from the MA in Contemporary Dance at the Irish World Academy and was also the rehearsal director for this section of the performance.
67 limitations for this doctoral thesis this next section will focus on the second choreographic work of YeBuna Alem (2015), Kewich Hager wede Markato (From Abroad towards Markato) and the musical segues which proceeded Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015).
In the Midst As I have mentioned earlier in this chapter, throughout this production my character plays the metaphorical embodiment of buna (coffee) and in the section Kewich Hager wede Markato (From Abroad towards Markato) (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:07:55), my character, Buna, becomes the guiding light for the traveling trader characters in this section, performed by Lucy Dawson, Nora Rodrigez and Kristyn Fontanella49. Lampadina50, by contemporary Ethiopian singer Teddy Afro (2005), is the first song in this section, which reinforces this notion of a guiding light. My character, Buna, attempts to entice the travelers, but as the music transitions into ‘Metche New’51, by Aselefech Ashine & Getenesh Kebret & Army Band (1976), the three travelers become resistant (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:12:00). They execute a series of hammering gestures that drives Buna, away from them, to the outside rim of the buna bean arc (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:13:20).
(Figure 19) The three travelers (Rodrigez, Dawson, Fontanella and myself in YeBuna Alem (2015)
At this moment, Buna has broken the metaphorical ‘fourth wall’ of the performance/audience divide, which surprises some of the Ethiopian children seated on the floor cushions around the outside of the buna arc. Before this section ends, Buna re-enters
49 Dawson and Rodrigez are both contemporary dancers from Scotland and Mexico, and Fontanella is an Irish Traditional/contemporary dancer. All of these performers are graduates of the Master of Arts in Contemporary Dance Performance programme, at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. 50 A Lampadina in Amharic means an oil lamp. 51 Loosely translated from Amharic to mean ‘When is it?’
68 the performance space only to be ‘processed’ by the traders. This is represented by the three performers passing Buna around to one another, then, collectively standing Buna on his head, to spin him like a draddle (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:14:24). When they send Buna off into the world again, or in this case to the audience, my character moves the etan (incense) to its third and final downstage left side position along the buna bean arc (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:15:42). Buna then reenters the performance space again only to exit the stage in a sweeping gesture with the other performers (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:16:16). This sweeping gesture suggests a clearing of the space for the next narrative to take place. At this point the show is now halfway completed, and after a brief discussion by the emcee Sol52, a Classical Ethiopian song The Shepard with the Flute (1968), originally written by Ethiopian composer Ashenafi Kebede53, is performed by classical pianist Xin Meng54 (YeBuna Alem 2015 00:18:35). This piano version of The Shepard with the Flute (1968), was arranged by Girma Yefrashewa55 in 2014, and is well known within the Ethiopian community. Meng connected with the song on a personal level including her own improvisatory interpretations in the performance. While Meng plays, I am backstage changing my clothes in preparation for the last two sections of the performance. Following Meng’s performance there is an instrumental interlude, a soundscape composed and recorded by Turkish musician and singer Ozan Deniz56. This audio track uses recorded sounds that are associated with the modern-day preparation of coffee in various parts of the world. This instrumental includes sounds of a spoon hitting a coffee cup, the shaking of coffee beans in a can, coffee brewing in a kettle and other sounds as well. These sounds were compiled into a rhythm that we called Buna Beats57 (YeBuna Alem 2015 00:24:01).
52 Dr. Solomon Gizaw is an Ethiopian friend of mine who has his PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Limerick. 53 This song was originally written by prolific Ethiopian composer, ethnomusicologist, and poet Ashenafi Kebede circa 1968. Kebede was the designated National Ethiopian composer during the time of Emperor Haile Selassie I and he founded the Saint Yared School of Music at Addis Ababa University (then Haile Selassie University) in 1963. Kebede was selected to study in the United States where he was the first to receive a PhD in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. 54 Originally from China, Xin is a graduate of the Masters in Classical Music programme, at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. 55 Girma Yefrashewa began his training in music with the traditional Ethiopian harp-like instrument, the krar, and at age 16 he was introduced to the piano. Yefrashewa studied at the Yared School of Music before receiving a scholarship to attend the Sofia State Conservatory of Music in Bulgaria. He lost his scholarship after three years, due to the Ethiopian politics in 1989, but he later returned in 1991 after receiving support from the Christian Brothers in Italy. Since that, time he has studied and taught piano internationally and works to promote Ethiopian and Classical music globally. Ironically a short time after the premiere of YeBuna Alem (2015) I was able to meet Yefrashewa when he performed at the launch of Ethiopian Airlines connecting flight, in Dublin Ireland. He played his version of The Shephard with the Flute during that performance. 56 A graduate of the Masters in Ritual Chant and Song programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. 57 This soundscape was originally designed with the intention of creating a choreographic collaboration with ethnochoreologist and African-American Traditional step dance expert, Jakari Sherman. Due to time and other circumstances we were unable to develop the choreography for this section, but I used the soundscape as segue from one section of choreography to the next. Jakari was a featured collaborator and performer in Common Threads (2016), my second Ethio-Modern dance choreographic work.
69 This instrumental interlude plays as the stage assistants are readying the performance space with props for the next choreographic work Buna Kona (Common Threads 2015). As Hawaiian-American contemporary performing artist Jazmyne Koch enters the performance space from the backstage doors, the light slowly illuminates on her as she walks downstage towards the audience. She reaches her starting position for Buna Kona as the soundtrack of Buna Beats has now completely faded out (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:26:33). Koch drops down to scoop up roasted buna beans out of a clay bowl that surrounds the clay burner (girgira) which is holding the burning kesel (coals) and etan (incense). As she does this, the soundtrack for Buna Kona begins with Yesew-sew (2006) by Ethiopian tizeta (remembrance) singer Aster Aweke (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:26:36). Jazmyne raises her buna-filled hands above her head towards the skylight of the Tower Theatre, which is equipped with cloud-like structures hanging from the ceiling. Jazmyne claps her hands together over her head, and is showered by the excess buna beans that will not fit between her two palms as she slowly brings her hands down in front of her in a gesture that suggests prayer. For the following section I will focus on the creative process and strong narrative presence in the performance of Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015), a choreographic collaboration performed by Koch and myself.
Narrative in the Creative Process Narrative and self are inseparable in that narrative is simultaneously born out of experience and gives shape to experience. Narrative activity provides tellers with an opportunity to impose order on otherwise disconnected events, and to create continuity between past, present, and imagined worlds. (Ochs and Capps 1996:19)
This notion of the inseparable connection between the self and a desired narrative to be presented was profoundly evident in the section of YeBuna Alem (2015), entitled Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:26:33). In many ways, the name of this piece sets the stage for the cross-cultural narrative presence which was presented in this choreographic work. As I have stated, buna is the Amharic word for coffee, but kona is the Hawaiian name given to the Arabica strand of coffee cultivated there. My role was as the embodied metaphor of buna as
70 well as the cultural broker for Ethiopian culture, coupled with Koch’s role as the metaphorical embodiment of the characters associated with Buna’s journey and as the Hawaiian cultural broker. For both myself and Koch, this concept of ‘the self’ and our embodied lived-experiences play major roles in the narrative of the Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015) performance. The strong narrative for this choreographic collaboration was inspired by historical Hawaiian folkloric stories, which Koch learned from the elders of her community on the island of Maui, Hawaii. In an email correspondence, Koch states: For Buna Kona, we were looking at the journey of coffee from Brazil to Hawai’i, and the stories attached to it. We started at the border of Brazil, where the legend of Fracisco de Melo Palheta takes place. He is sent, by the Portuguese, on a diplomatic mission to French Guiana, where coffee has already been acquired through shipment of the Transatlantic Slave traders. The Portuguese also wanted in on the coffee market, so Francisco also had in mind to find a way to smuggle some coffee seeds across the border. He ends up seducing the greedy governor’s wife, and she gives him seeds hidden in a flower bouquet. (Koch 2017: email correspondence)
In order to illustrate this narrative through choreographed movement, during the creative process of Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015) Koch and I had several Skype call meetings to discuss how we would present this story. We agreed that it would be difficult to tell all the details, but we could suggest ideas, through improvography of our embodied cultural heritage and recurring gestures within the choreographic phrases, which are reinforced by certain sounds or music that accompanies these gestural movements. For instance, Arabica coffee, or the character of Buna being smuggled from Brazil by a Portuguese slave trader (Koch 2017), is represented in the sound of shackles, chains, and the berimbau58 (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:29:17). My character begins to convulse, which leads to a stylised movement of my arms that resembles a person swatting bugs that are flying over his head. At this moment, my character embodies not only Arabica coffee, but also my ancestral connection to the African slaves who used capoeira59 as a form of resistance against European slave masters and colonial invaders (Browning in Dils and Albright 2001). Behind
58 An Afro-Brazilian stringed instrument that is an integral part of Capoeira music. 59 An Afro-Brazilian dance and martial arts, brought to Brazil by the slaves from Angola, Congo and other parts of Western Africa. Historically Capoeira was used by the slaves to resists the oppression of the Portuguese colonials. Today Capoeira represents part of Afro- Brazilian culture and is practiced in schools and clubs globally.
71 me, Koch performs a variation of a basic capoeira movement known as the xinja60. Koch moves closer toward me and my convulsions immediately stop as soon as she embraces me from behind (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:29:53). Blended with the sounds of crashing ocean waves, the music of Aster Aweke’s slow tizeta (remembrance) song Kabu (Sacred Rock) (1991) becomes the soundtrack as Koch cradles Buna and places me in the direction of our next destination, Hawaii. We both slowly begin to execute choreographed movements that suggest the rowing of a boat as we move from one side of the stage to the other (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:30:11). In the final section of the choreography, our characters have arrived in Hawaii and Koch’s character plants, Buna, into the volcanic soil (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:31:56). According to Koch (2017), in Hawaiian folklore it states that “It took a few tries before it was successful, but it eventually took off in the volcanic soils of the islands,” (Koch 2017: email correspondence). As the music transitions to Aba Alem Lemine, by Ejigayehu ‘Gigi’ Shibabaw (2003), Koch proceeds to perform hula-inspired arm and hand gestures around the volcano, that speaks to the spirits of the water, earth, and the sky (Koch 2017), which are significant elements in the journey as well as the cultivation of Arabica coffee (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:32:18). Koch states: The closing is a meeting and harmony of coffee and Hawaii, it’s new home, using references of movement from Ethiopia, but incorporating it with Hawaiian movements. (Koch 2017: email correspondence)
When my character emerges from the volcanic soil, it symbolises Buna’s rebirth, now as Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:33:13). In the final moments of the choreography our characters walk upstage with one arm interlinked as the other arm flaps like the wings of a bird, symbolically representing the Ethiopian buna and the Hawaiian kona cultural connection through this journey of Arabica coffee. The above description exemplifies the strong narrative resonance in the choreography and performance of Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015). As mentioned earlier in this chapter, embodied ritual elements can be found throughout the performance of YeBuna Alem (2015),
60 I would consider the xinga as a primary movement of Capoeira. Standing with legs parallel and about hip withe apart, one leg steps backward and returns to the parallel position followed by a repeat of this same movement on the opposite leg in a 3/4 meter. The arms swing from the side to front of the face for protection, in relation to the leg that is stepping backwards.
72 as well as other narratives which are also present in this choreographic work. I would argue that by the end, the overall narrative of YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015) is one of a multicultural community connection through the journey of Arabica coffee from its discovery in Ethiopia to its subsequent dissemination around the world. This multicultural connection is also reflected in the Ethio-Modern Dance choreography of the finale entitled Dancé Dancé (YeBuna Alem 2015). In this next section, I will briefly discuss the representation of this multicultural community connection in the finale of YeBuna Alem (2015).
An Addis (New) Community Connection Traditionally, the Ethiopian buna ceremony is a direct reflection of the community engagement among people of different social and cultural backgrounds, such as the coming together of students and businessmen or people from Northern and Southern regions of the country. From what I have experienced within Ethiopian communities, there is a coming together of people with one accord to form their own experiential community through a buna ceremony. I wanted to convey this experiential community through a semi-formal performance (Gray 2003) of an Ethiopian buna ceremony, which followed the finale of YeBuna Alem (2015) and included the intergenerational audience participants. I also aspired to illustrate this coming together through the formal performance of the finale Dancé Dancé (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:37:24). Set to the song Dancé, Dancé, Dancé (2012), by contemporary Ethiopian Reggae singer Jah Lude, this was the only choreographed section in YeBuna Alem (2015) which featured the entire cast of culturally diverse performers. Dancé Dancé (YeBuna Alem 2015) opened with a type of shalela, which is a variation of the Ethiopian shoulder, neck, and torso dance eskista. Shalela was traditionally used to boost the morale of the Ethiopian warriors as they prepared for battle61. Sol, the emcee, and I used this stylised eskista variation to perform an improvography of a mock competition between the two of us (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:37:30). Toward the end of our mock competition, the other performers entered the stage with basic synchronized stepping movements (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:37:47). Out of these steps arose small duets from some of the principal
61 I have embodied this information from conversations with various people of the Ethiopian community.
73 performers of the show and myself. Each duet reflected characteristics of the different cultures that were involved in the show. For instance, although she is Scottish, Lucy Dawson and I performed movements of the hips that represented our embodiment of a traditional Southern region Ethiopian Woliata dance, often performed by women of this region for various occasions such as weddings or celebrations (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:38:09). Later, Nora Rodrigez and I performed embodied salsa steps, which are very closely connected to her own dance culture in Mexico (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:39:42). There was also a part in the ‘bridge’62 of the song, which inspired what I call my “Ethiopian Macerena”. In this section, the performers formed a circle, facing each other, and executed four separate gestures with the hands, neck, hips, and legs, all of which derived from my embodiment of Ethiopian traditional dances from the Amhara and the Southern regions of Ethiopia (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:38:43). As the bridge appears three times in the music; these gestures were repeated three times in the choreography - twice facing the audience and once facing each other in a circular formation. In many African cultures, the use of circular formations, in performance and even in the positioning of houses, can represent a communal aspect within the culture (Welsh-Asante 2010). In my opinion, the circle in Dancé Dancé was a physical representation of my manufactured ‘YeBuna Alem’ multicultural community, which was established by this diverse group of performers and audience participants. The moments where the ‘Ethiopian Macerena’ variation is repeated facing the audience symbolises the performers’ connection to and gratitude for the audience participants as a part of this established YeBuna Alem community. This gratitude continued during the Ethiopian buna ceremony that took place following the performance. As I entered the foyer of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, immediately following the performance, I was pleased to see the intercultural and intergenerational community that had been constructed among the audience and performer participants. The young and older members of the Ireland, Ethiopian, and local Limerick communities were intermingling as they conversed about the show while sipping their small cups (sini) of robust Ethiopian buna, which was prepared by my wife, mother, and close Ethiopian family
62 The bridge is a contrasting section in music and signals the return to the original material section. [www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_(music)]
74 friends. In this moment, the question of whether I could use dance as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange, was answered with an astounding, “Yes!”
(Figure 20) Post-performance image of buna Ceremony participants
Embodied Interpretations The notion of interpretation is key to a creative process, and product of any performance. The background knowledge of the subject or discipline that is presented will assist in one’s interpretive understanding of a work or body of works. During the creative process of YeBuna Alem (2015), the varied cultural backgrounds and embodied knowledge among the participants was a factor in their interpretation and transmission of these works. Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley have stated: The notion of interpretation requires that the character of the dance, its subject matter, the treatment of the subject matter and the qualities that might be ascribed are also understood. (Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley 12:1988)
One of my intentions with YeBuna Alem (2015) was to create an environment of Ethio- Modern Dance in which the audience could experience stories of Buna’s (coffee) journey from the Kaffa province in Ethiopia to the far regions of the world, such as Hawaii. The concept of creating a staged environment for the audience to experience a live performance stems from my time performing with Pilobolus Dance Theatre and with my own company F.I.V.E. Productions LLC. For me, this allows room for interpretation by all participants, performers and the audience alike.
75 Regarding the various performers in YeBuna Alem (2015), their own habitus (Bourdieu 1972, and Wainwright, Williams, and Turner 2006) played a role in their understanding of these works and the meanings behind the movement. The fourteen performers in YeBuna Alem (2015) originated from different parts of the US, Europe, and Asia.63 With various cultural backgrounds as well as artistic disciplines, the performers’ interpretation of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works was influenced by the embodied experiences of their birth countries, as well as their embodied experiences of Ethiopian culture. In order to accumulate qualitative research data that reflected the viewpoints of those involved in the creative process and performance of YeBuna Alem (2015), I asked all the performers to keep reflexive journals. These journals were intended to give myself and the participants a written method of reflecting on this journey from creative process to final performance. I anticipated the fact that not all of the performers would produce a reflexive journal and I also created a questionnaire for these participants to provide more refined qualitative research data that could give insight on each person’s understanding of their involvement in this production. The following section is a synthesis of my interpretative analysis of the qualitative recorded data received from reflexive journals of the performers and from the participant questionnaires, which were given to the audience members and the performers of YeBuna Alem (2015).
Reflections of Performer Participants I would argue that in order to perform in YeBuna Alem (2015), each performer participant was required to develop her/his own intimate connection to my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. In the Musical Analysis Journal, popular cultural theorist and Philosopher Theodor Adorno (1982) addresses the experience of the performer. He states: …if he does not get to know the work intimately, the interpreter…will not be able to interpret the work properly. ‘To get to know something intimately’… means in reality to investigate what is essentially contained within the composition. (Adorno 1982:171)
63 There were three performers from Ireland, which is the country where the performance was developed and presented, and only the emcee was from Ethiopia, which is the culture that is most prominently highlighted in my Ethio-Modern dance projects.
76 The reasons for participation and the roles of various performers in the YeBuna Alem (2015) choreographic production will be the starting point for this section. In the YeBuna Alem (2015) performer-participant questionnaire, I ask, “Why did you want to involve yourself with this project?” (See Appendix 3). The general performer response to this question was one of intrigue in learning a different style of movement while exploring the theme of coffee as a metaphor for Ethiopia’s cultural connection to other parts of the world. Mexican-born contemporary dancer, Nora Rodriguez responded: Firstly, to support my friend and colleague Ras Mikey in his PhD practice, and to relate myself [to] his vision and exploration [of] Ethio-Modern Dance. (Rodriguez 2015: question number 1)
Although, the performers’ identification with their birth country played an important role in the development of these Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, the performers’ comprehension of Ethiopia and Ethiopian culture also played a significant role in the performers’ interpretation of the meaning in the movements. As the performers were exposed to the music, dance, language, and folklore of Ethiopia, they also learned about Ethiopian culture. In a later question of this performer questionnaire contemporary dancer from Scotland, Lucy Dawson (2015), commented: The traditional Ethiopian movements we studied carry with them the history of their origins...As a result you acquire cultural information throughout. The same applies when exploring the music, costumes, etc… (Dawson 2015 performer questionnaire: question number 8)
Although many of the performers had worked with me in some capacity, Dawson was the only performer who had participated in an Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work prior to YeBuna Alem (2015).64 I would argue that the amount of embodied knowledge of Ethiopian culture that each performer acquired affected their interpretation of YeBuna Alem’s Ethio- Modern Dance movements and their meaning. This affect was reflected in their journals, their responses to the participant questionnaire, and in their performance of these choreographic works. In a reflexive journal entry, Dawson addressed the affect her previous involvement with me had on her performance in YeBuna Alem (2015). She states:
64 She was part of my Master of Arts in Ethnochoreology performance work, ‘Kerb Gen Ruk/Close But Far: An Autoethnographic Investigation into the Creation of an Ethio-Modern Dance Choreographic Work’ (Courtney 2013).
77 Having previously participated in Ras’…MA work, I was revisiting some of the concepts, movements and rhythms…which Ras continues to develop. I enjoyed the sensations of these rhythms and actions in the body. (Dawson, L. Reflexive Journal, Feb. 12, 2015)
I would argue that each performer of YeBuna Alem (2015) embodied aspects of Ethiopian culture in their own way, although, it was our collective understanding of Western contemporary performing arts that was the nucleus of the embodied knowledge acquired through this project. American contemporary dancer Nina Pongratz recalled: …there were a few times when Ras mentioned that he was catering his choreography to bodies that significantly understood modern/contemporary language and movement rather than Ethiopian language and movement. (Pongratz 2015 performer questionnaire: question number 7)
The transmission of any pertinent information for this project about embodied Ethiopian culture would have been my responsibility. Dawson remarked: Ras is always clear to contextualise his understanding of Ethiopian movement styles, as …a western contemporary performer, but he does absorb the movement styles…with clarity and precision. His knowledge is thoroughly considered and defined. (Dawson 2015 performer questionnaire: question number 7)
The embodied knowledge of Ethiopian culture by the performers was interrelated to the individual and institutional habitus of each performer (Wainwright, Williams, and Turner 2006). For instance, the classical pianist from China, Xin Meng, who performed a classical Ethiopian song The Shepherd with the Flute (1968) stated: … I feel there was something that connected with my Chinese cultural background. Such as, in Ethiopia and China, they both used pentatonic scales in the music, they contain [a] related body movement pattern, and they have the similar coffee and tea service sets. (Meng 2015 performer questionnaire: question number 2)
This exemplifies my motivation for the incorporation of performers from different cultural backgrounds into my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, such as YeBuna Alem (2015). This idea of a cultural blending or a cross-cultural connection between Ethiopia and other countries relates to my central research questions and is what I aspire to illuminate with
78 this doctoral research. The following section will examine a few identified challenges that arose through the creative process of YeBuna Alem (2015).
The Stumbles and Building Blocks A newly emerging discipline inevitably, and rightly, faces the challenge of identifying its central concerns, demonstrating its methods of procedure and clarifying how achievement in the subject is to be judged. (Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley 5:1988)
For the analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015), as well as for the completion of this thesis, it is imperative that I articulate what my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance is. Although my understanding of the characteristics associated with this movement concept are still being refined, with YeBuna Alem (2015) I made clear choreographic choices to only include certain aspects of my embodied Ethiopian culture, some of which I expressed earlier in this chapter. In attempting to assess my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works and its use as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange, one of the biggest challenges is my close personal relationship to the work. I would argue that my assessment of YeBuna Alem (2015), as well as my second major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production, Common Threads (2016), is predominantly based on whether I believe I have or have not answered my research questions. Because of my personal connection to Ethio-Modern Dance, I argue the importance of acknowledging the perspectives of other participants involved in my Ethio- Modern Dance choreographic works. For this reason, I incorporate the compiled qualitative research data materials, from questionnaires given to the performer and audience participants, into this analysis of my bodies of work. As Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley have stated: What is to count as knowledge and how this is to be evaluated is a vital concern, not in order to achieve ‘academic respectability’… but to be seen to be academically viable and publicly accountable. (Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley 1988:6)
Some researchers and scholars have argued for the notion of ‘dance as knowledge’ (Ness 1995, Royce 2002, and Foley 2013). My knowledge of and close connection to Ethiopia, as
79 well as my knowledge and expertise in Western contemporary dance, provides me with an awareness and accountability for my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. With my ethochoreological training (Foley 2013), I aim to portray my choreographic works in a fashion that uplifts and educates communities, as opposed to demeaning or negatively propagating them. My success in this endeavour is reflected in the responses of the various participants. One Irish audience participant described YeBuna Alem (2015) as: A warm, festive, Ethio-Modern Dance work that transported the audience to Ethiopia through the story of coffee. Its ritual-like structure of coffee making and incense burning…introduced the audience to the smells of Ethiopia. (Participant 1, 2015Audience Questionnaire: question number 1)
I argue that by creating a performance environment that stimulated an ‘anthropology of the senses’ (Stoller 1989), this production provided performer and audience participants with a sensual personal experience. Setting the atmosphere with smell, sound, touch, and not just visual iconography, was very important to me. It pleased me to read one audience participant’s response, which stated that the show was, “An Aromatic Experience, Phenomenologically” (Participant 2, 2015 Audience Questionnaire: question number 1). This is an illustration that the production of YeBuna Alem (2015) was interpreted as a more sensual community experience than merely a choreographed performance of Ethio-Modern Dance. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, the different personal lives, various circumstances, and diverse levels of contemporary performing arts expertise affected each participant’s embodiment of the work. According to Dawson, “My personal challenges were facilitating the project around long work hours and ill health” (Dawson 2015 performer questionnaire: question number 9). Often times within the creative process of a work, dancers may get injured and are unable to physically execute the movements in rehearsal. This, I would suggest, opens up the space for the dancer to embody more of the cerebral knowledge associated with the work. Riika Tolonen, a Finish contemporary dancer, was challenged by injuries throughout the creative process of YeBuna Alem (2015). On one occasion in her reflexive journal, Tolonen stated: [I] felt really annoyed to be sitting again. But…I started to notice more things from the choreography like counts and accents related to music. Just by watching, it…started to make sense.
80 (Tolonen 2015: reflexive journal entry March 9)
As a dance researcher and practitioner, I understand the importance of embodied knowledge through participant observation. I would argue that this embodied cerebral knowledge is what Tolonen is acknowledging in the above statement. In YeBuna Alem (2015) the performers participated and assisted me with many aspects of the creative process and performance; no one was just a performer. In the words of one performer/technician participant, Alec Brown65, “Not only was I the light and sound engineer, but I was also an actor” (Brown 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 4) (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:34:32). To some capacity the performers played the role of choreographic collaborator, rehearsal director, and assistant costume designer. In YeBuna Alem (2015) it was important to me that all the participants extended beyond their role as performer, cooperatively reinforcing the ethos of the project, which was to exchange embodied cultural knowledge through the medium of Ethio-Modern Dance. As a choreographer, I do not generally ask anyone to do more than what they are capable of doing. However, even in the doing, there can be challenges that are overcome throughout the creative process. For example, when asked to describe the creative process of her participation in YeBuna Alem (2015), Xin Meng replied, “The creative process of my work with this project was a challenge, but full of fun,” (Meng 2015 participant questionnaire: question no. 2). Although the title of my genre is Ethio-Modern Dance, the ‘movement’ stems beyond the Western concept of dance. Meng had an important role as mediator of music’s movement, which was played and heard in YeBuna Alem (2015). As a trained classical pianist, I trusted that she was capable of playing most types of music, but she was challenged when we could not find The Shepherd with the Flute (1968) on sheet music. Meng mentioned: I never learned a piece of music by ear…I had to learn the piece by listening, and then wrote my own ‘numerical sheet music’ to help me to remember. (Meng 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 2)
65 Alec is an American professional musician and my PhD colleague, focusing on the incorporation of the Cello into Irish Traditional Music Performance. He not only was the lighting and sound technician for YeBuna Alem (2015), he was a featured performer, along with Dutch vocalist Femke Van Der Kooj, in Na Boo, BuNa, a vocal performance section of this production that due to word limitations was not included in this analysis. (YeBuna Alem 2015, 34:32)
81 Meng not only had to learn the music by ear, but I also asked her to add elements of her own Chinese culture into how she played, and to play the song differently with every practice. Meng added: Based on the idea of creativity, I didn’t only try to play along with [the] piece, but also used freely improvisation around the original piece. And every time I played and improvised the piece was dissimilar than another time. So it’s actually the first time in my life, I was able to use my creativeness to play a “unique” piece based on a classical song. (Ibid.)
YeBuna Alem (2015) provided Meng with a platform where she could explore and discover a new dimension in her own practice. Learning to play ‘by ear’ turned a challenge into an opportunity for Meng. Other performers had different challenges. For example, Irish freelance musician/singer/dancer Fiona Booth did not have extensive movement training prior to her participation as a performer in this production. She identified her challenges with embodying the choreography of Herdu (YeBuna Alem 2015), stating: The main challenge for me was the disconnection that I felt within my own body… Although I felt technically disconnected, I did not feel restricted within my body. (Booth 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 9)
I would argue that Booth’s level of awareness allowed her to improve in areas she saw as shortcomings. When asked about what she gained from her experience in YeBuna Alem (2015) Booth stated: I have definitely gained more perspective on myself and my body as a dancer and performer which was well needed – what my capabilities are and the potential for building up technique again. (Booth 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 10)
The Impact of YeBuna Alem I would argue that YeBuna Alem (2015) impacted its participants by increasing their embodied cultural knowledge of Ethiopia, while broadening their experience with Ethio- Modern Dance. To illustrate my argument, I will further examine questions from the performer participant questionnaire.
82 Question number 10 asked, “What do you feel you have gained from being a part of this project?” (See Appendix 3). Meng replied: It’s a good different experience for me, which helped my personal development, such as getting new skills (learning by ear). Also, I’ve discovered some interesting differences and similarities between Ethiopian and Chinese culture and I may have some future exploration of it. (Meng 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 10)
In Dawson’s questionnaire, she added: The performance itself integrated a collection of artistic styles and nationalities…connecting them with the Ethiopian community…I feel I have deepened my embodied experience of Ethiopian movement styles, as well as achieving an increased connection and fondness for the culture. (Dawson 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 10)
When asked Do you feel that your knowledge of culture has broadened as a result of your participation in the project? (See Appendix 3) Koch mentioned: I’ve learned more about Ethiopia culturally, through music, movement, food…It’s been a cultural immersion.” (Koch 2015 participant questionnaire: question number 7)
The other performer participants had very similar responses and these, along with all the responses received from audience participant questionnaires (See Appendix 4), reaffirmed my success with this Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work, YeBuna Alem (2015). One audience participant stated: I think my cultural awareness of Ethiopia has increased through the following devices: the lovely narrative of the journey of coffee from Ethiopia to the western world told through the choreography and music selection; the smells of incense and coffee from Ethiopia; the community interaction in Ethiopia illustrated at times through the intentional breaking of the divide between performers and audience and the intergenerational makeup of the audience; and the iconography. (Participant 1 2015 Audience Questionnaire: question number 5)
My desire to share embodied knowledge of Ethiopian culture, in a production that not only entertains the participants but also educates them, is affirmed by the above statement. It is for this reason I invest in the creative process of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, in order to discover various ways of engaging with the participants on physical,
83 emotional, and sensory levels. Before I conclude this chapter, I will briefly discuss one more important component of my analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015): my various uses of documentation as a method during the creative process and the performance.
The Emic and Etic of Documentation Documenting the choreographic process was an important step in my interpretive analyse of YeBuna Alem (2015). Audio-visual recording was used to document the creative process as well as the performance of YeBuna Alem (2015). I would argue that an audio-visual recording does not compare to the experience of viewing the live performance of this choreographic a work. This is due to the corporal and sensory experience of a live performance; which recording is not able to capture. Audio-visual documentation does, however, allow for the replay of the work, an examination of the choreographic images, and the identification of qualities or characteristics of a work that may not have been apparent during this live performance. Through the use of audio-visual recorded documentation, I was able to take a somewhat detached – etic (Pike 1954), look at my creative process and final performance of YeBuna Alem (2015). These recordings enabled me to analyse the production in its entirety and to elucidate potential meanings from both the etic and emic perspectives (Pike 1954). The emic, or insider perspective, relates more to my performer perspective of the live performance of this choreographic work. Being a major performer in the production does not allow much time for out-of-body analysis of the live performance as a whole, even though I was able to capture an onstage autoethnographic perspective through the personal memory recall writing of ‘In the Midst’, which appeared earlier in this chapter (See above section). The etic, or outside perspective, connects more to my detached analysis of the performance from the observation of the video recording. Both perspectives have had overlapping effects on my analysis of this choreographic work, and both perspectives have been exemplified in this chapter. For instance, in the early stages of my creative process I was aware of certain performance concepts that I would be exploring, such as embodiment, identity, and cultural integration. But in seeing the video recordings of the choreography I have been able to refine some of these concepts as well as highlight other concepts that became prevalent through viewing the video recordings. Some of the other concepts such as ritual, narrative, and cross-cultural community engagement, have refined my post-production
84 analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015). Other concepts that emerged but have not been fully articulated in this chapter were my engagement with phenomenology, somaesthetics, the role of the senses, iconography, gender, sound, and text. Due to word limitations with this thesis, I do not examine the depth of how these other concepts are represented in my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work YeBuna Alem (2015), but these concepts may resonate with those who view the video recording of the performance.
Chapter Summary To conclude this chapter on the analysis of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015), I would argue that it was successful in achieving my desired intentions. Through my analysis of the development and presentation of this production, I was able to refine and articulate the embodied Ethiopian cultural knowledge that I used as inspirational tools in my creative process of YeBuna Alem (2015). This production exemplified my understanding of my metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin, representing more of the ‘Ethio’ side, which emphasises my embodied cultural knowledge of Ethiopia. As I have stated above, Ethiopian folkloric, religious, spiritual, and ritual practices, as well as characteristics of the traditional dance movements, were major influences in this Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work. Other aspects of Ethiopian culture are represented through the iconography of performance space, sensual experiences, and the transmission of embodied knowledge by the YeBuna Alem (2015) participants. I attest that because of these Ethiopian cultural representations, myself and the performers, were able to use this Ethio-Modern Dance production as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange with all the participants involved. This is evident in the reflexive journaling of the participants, as well as in the responses to participant questionnaires. I would also argue that the methods I employed to gather my research data provided me with effective resources for analysing YeBuna Alem (2015), and with the theoretical concepts that arose through the creative process and performance, I have enhanced my own understanding of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. My method of investing in the process with this practice-led body of work, means that I would be unable to determine what would happen differently if I were to produce YeBuna Alem for a second time. The creative process of this Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic
85 work was unique due to the artistic environment of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, the international cast of performers, and the intergenerational audience participants. Although this production did present some challenges, I am grateful for the efforts of all who participated in the creative process and completion of YeBuna Alem (2015). I would argue that my significant role as the metaphorical embodiment of Buna in the performance, aided in YeBuna Alem’s ability to represent stories associated with the journey of Arabica coffee. With Ethio-Modern Dance I have become a cultural broker for Ethiopia and YeBuna Alem (2015) provided its participants with an educational as well as entertaining experience. I would argue that I was successful in planting the metaphorical seed of intrigue about Ethiopia, in the hearts and minds of those who were involved. In the analysis of my second major doctoral Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work, Common Threads (2016), I will illustrate a different approach towards my creative process and emphasise more of the ‘Modern’ side of this metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin.
86 Chapter Four Performance Two: Common Threads
(Figure 21) Promotional Flyer for Common Threads (2016) designed by: Dagmawi Mesfin
87 Introduction In the previous chapter I provided an analysis of YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015), which reflected my choreographic interpretation of the journey of Arabica coffee from Ethiopia to other parts of the world, in particular Hawaii, as a socio-cultural phenomenon. YeBuna Alem (2015) emphasised the ‘Ethio’ side of my two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin and exemplified a creative process in my development and presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. With my second major Ethio-Modern Dance production, Common Threads (2016), I aimed to illustrate the metaphorical ‘common threads’ of ‘movement’ across cultures and borders, connecting Ethiopia to other cultures of the world, specifically the United States, Ireland, Brazil, South African, Jamaica, India, and China (See Figure 21). This second body of choreographic works, I would argue, reflected more of the ‘Modern’ side of the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin. As artistic director/choreographic collaborator, I focused more on transmitting my embodied knowledge of Western contemporary performing arts production to the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia dance community. Common Threads premiered at 2:00 pm on July 2, 2016 at the Ethiopian National Theatre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This ninety-minute production was free and open to the general public and was attended by over 1,200 people of all ages from Addis Ababa and beyond. In this chapter, I will synthesise some of the research data accumulated for Common Threads (2016), through reflexive journaling, audio-visual recordings, and participant responses, in order to provide a contextual analysis of the creative process and performance of this Ethio- Modern Dance production. Due to word limitation requirements of this thesis, I will provide a partial analysis of three of the twelve choreographic works featured in Common Threads (2016). I will not mention in depth the other choreographic works, but will briefly describe how these works were ‘woven’ into the theme of the production. I will engage with the choreographic perspectives of authors such as Ann Cooper Albright (1997), Lynn Ann Blom, L. Tarin Chaplin (1982), and others to illuminate some of the methods employed, the cultural influences, and the thematic concepts developed throughout the creative processes of these twelve choreographic works in the Common Threads (2016) production. This chapter addresses my central research questions (See Chapter 1) as my analysis of Common Threads (2016) further refines my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept and
88 its use as a conduit for cultural knowledge exchange. It also explores the cross-cultural influences that were a part of the creative process and highlights some of the socio- educational impacts Common Threads (2016) has had on the Addis Ababa dance community.
Ethiopia: The Backstory The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is a culturally diverse landlocked nation whose history dates back to the time of the earliest hominids66 and through to the establishment of traditional Judeo-Christian67 and Muslim68 religions. Historically referred to as the ‘Kingdom of Abyssinia’69, Ethiopia is located in the ‘horn’ of Eastern Africa and occupies approximately 1.13 million square miles of land (Adejumobi 2007 in Courtney 2013). With a population of over 90 million people and more than 80 nationalities split into nine general regions70, the depth of Ethiopian culture has yet to be fully examined. It is the opinion of this author that many aspects of Ethiopian, and more so, African culture have influenced and been influenced by other nations/regions of the world. Ethiopia has been referred to as the ‘heart’ of Africa for being the home of the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and other international organisations. I would argue that Addis Ababa, with a population of more than 8 million inhabitants, is a microcosmic blend of the regions and cultures of the Ethiopian people, which is why I chose it as the locale for my field research and for the performance of the Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production Common Threads (2016).
The Reasons As I mentioned earlier in this thesis, metaphorically speaking, there are two sides or perspectives to my Ethio-Modern Dance coin: ‘Ethio’ and ‘Modern’. Both perspectives are
66 An Australopithecus afarensis, founded in 1974, is known to foreigners as “Lucy” and to Ethiopians as “Deqenash”. She was discovered in Hadar in the Afar desert and is the female ancestor of the human race, who lived 3.5 million years ago. (Adejumobi 2007) 67 4th century AD Coptic Christianity is introduced via Egypt. (Ibid.) 68 The first Muslims arrived in the Axumite Empire as early as the 7th century, migrating from Mecca. They were instructed by the Prophet to protect Axum and live in peace with the Christian natives. (Ibid.) 69 The Ethiopian Monarchy dates back to the time of King Solomon of Israel and the Queen of Sheba of the Axumite Empire. Their love child David (Menelik I) was the first king of the Solomonic Dynasty (Kingdom of Abyssinia), which ended with the deposition of Emperor Haile Selassie I (formerly Ras Taferi) in 1974. (Brooks 1995) 70 The Amhara; Tigray; Oromia; Afar; Somali; Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People (SNNPR); Gambela; Benishangal-Gumaz Regions
89 reflected in both choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016) but to a varying degree, based on the context in which the work is produced. Common Threads (2016) emphasises more of the ‘Modern’ side, in that, when I am in Ethiopia I aim to promote my embodied knowledge and expertise in Western contemporary performing arts productions and direction. The choreographic inspirations for Common Threads (2016) were not only influenced by my lived-experiences with Ethiopian culture, but also with African- American step dance tradition, Hip Hop culture, Afro-Brazilian capoeira, Jamaican Reggae culture, and the Chinese Martial Arts. With Common Threads (2016), my inclination was to illustrate my embodied connection of Ethiopian culture to other cultures of the world through the medium of movement. Globally, for over twenty years, I have aspired to cultivate the talent and skills of generations through production and education in the performing arts. As Fraleigh has stated: To cultivate is to till the earth, to prepare for new growth…also to instill fervor and to persuade: to advance points of view; ways of touching that are tender, violent, trilling, or comforting; and ways of moving… (Fraleigh 2004:56)
I have committed to facilitating educational entertainment activities or edutainment (Colace, et. al., 2006) for the youth demographic of Addis Ababa. With Common Threads (2016), I aspired to provide productive outlets for creative expression, mentors for performance production, and opportunities to showcase the talent of the youth, that would experientially enhance the lives of all involved. Another reason for this production was to illustrate through choreographed movement my impression of Ethiopia’s ‘common threads’, which connects it with the abovementioned cultures of the world. In an early reflexive journal entry, I state: I want this show to be dynamic, entertaining, and educational, while also touching on elements from my past, present and future understandings of who I am as a human of the African diaspora who was born and raised in the Americas… influencing and being influenced by the [world]. (Personal Journal March 31, 2016)
90 Inspiration in the Creative Process In most cultures around the world music and dance have a deep-rooted connection (Blacking and Kealiinohomoku 1979, Welsh-Asanti 2010). The inspiration for the title Common Threads came from a song ‘Common Thread’, which was produced by two American-, yet Ethiopian-based musicians Kenny Allen71 and Sileshi Demissie72. The song blends Ethiopian and Western instrumentation and language, expressing that: “Muzika, friends and family are the things that keep us together, common thread, we connected and yes we’re committed to making a difference today.” (Allen & Demissie 2012)
This song embodies the message that I wanted to convey with the Common Threads (2016) participants at Ethiopia’s National Theatre: ‘we are all connected through music and movement.’ Establishing the title and motivation for the show were just a few parts of the pre-production of Common Threads (2016). In the following sections I draw from my memory recall and my reflexive journaling to examine other elements involved in the production of this Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work. I will highlight some of the general methodologies employed, the cultural influences, movement characteristics, and concepts that arose out of the creative processes of three choreographic works from the Common Threads (2016) production, One Tribe, Dark Trade, and Pulse. These three choreographic works reflect aspects of my current conceptual understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance, and exemplify the versatility in my investment into the creative processes of each choreographic work. I begin this analysis with One Tribe (Common Threads 2016, 5:59), the first choreographic work in Common Threads, and examine some of the challenges and successes associated with this choreographic work.
71 Kenny Allen is a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist from Washington, DC who has lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for more than 10 years. He has released 6 independent albums and is also an active music producer, responsible for producing the 2014 Ethiopian Album of the Year, Yameral Hagare by Gash Abera Mola. 72 Sileshi Demissie (aka Gash Abera Molla) is a highly respected Ethiopian singer, musician, and humanitarian with a complex vocal singing style in Amharic. He is known as the ‘Master of the Krar’, the six-string traditional Ethiopian lyre instrument he often uses as his musical accompaniment. His album, Yamral Hagere (2013), was co-produced by Kenny Allen and featured the song Common Thread, which inspired the name for RAS Mikey’s choreographic production Common Threads (2016).
91 One Tribe: Embodied Ritual Culture The choreographic work, One Tribe (Common Threads 2016, 5:59), incorporated the methodologies I generally employ in my creative processes of Ethio-Modern Dance. These methods include thematic selection, development of movement phrasing through improvisation, and music selection. (Figure 22) Photo of One Tribe performers during Common Threads (2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh In the early stages of the creative process for One Tribe, I began with an initial narrative theme of the ‘Transatlantic Slave Trade’ (Thomas 1997). In a personal journal, I state:
I feel the story for me will connect with my journey and with African liberation. As much as I don’t like to begin with the African story of the enslavement of human beings, I think the notion of African bondage…being liberated by Ethiopia is a historical reference, as well as a literal metaphor for my relationship to King Haile Selassie I and the Kingdom of Abyssinia.
(Personal Journal entry March 31, 2016)
In this entry, I address my apprehension about beginning the journey of Common Threads (2016) with a piece of choreography about enslavement, as I wanted the first body of work to leave a sense of ambiguity as to what the entire production would entail. This ‘enslavement’ theme was therefore developed into a narrative of a collective journey through adverse conditions, and this became the backdrop for Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016), a different Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work in the Common Threads (2016) production, which I will analyse later in this chapter. The development of an original idea in order to place it in another part of the production, is one example of my investment in the uncertainty that is my creative process. Throughout the process of developing Common Threads (2016) I attempted to maintain a sense of possibility in how the choreographic works might weave together to make its diverse cultural tapestry.
In ‘The Intimate Act of Choreography’ Blom and Chaplin 1982 state:
92 The intimate act of choreography is an inner process, begun in a creative encounter with movement and pursued and refined with aesthetic sensibility. (Blom and Chaplin 1982:7)
I would argue that most of my choreographic processes begin with an inner feeling, sometimes guided by a preconceived theme or impulse, which leads to movement phrase development, through the method of improvisation. I align with Blom and Chaplin (1982) in that:
The improvisations serve as preparation, a mental-physical-emotional “seeding of the bed” out of which your choreography will grow…The improvs…are a way of putting the analyzed, theoretical material into the soma-psyche (body-spirit). (Blom and Chaplin 1982:5)
The theme, movement, and music of One Tribe, set a tone of percussive intensity as the opening choreographic work in Common Threads (2016). The choreographed movements of One Tribe (Common Threads 2016, 5:59) were created with and performed by Ethiopian dancers: members of Ethiopian National Theatre73; Addis Ababa City Hall74 Modern Dancers; members of HaHu Dance Entertainment75; and Minesinot Getachew76. Four female and seven male performers represented the beginning of the Common Threads (2016) journey as part of ‘one tribe’ in this collective unit of our Ethio-Modern Dance Common Threads community. The Ethiopian performers were professional dancers residing in Addis Ababa and were between the ages of 19 and 34.
Chapter One of this thesis discussed the importance of music in my life and my choreographic process as it is often a motivational tool in the development of movement phrases through the method of improvisation. One Tribe (2016) was influenced by the piece
73 Formerly known as the Haile Selassie I Theatre, this theatre hall located in Addis Ababa was first constructed during the Italian occupation and contained some 350 seats. It was completed by Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1955 for the celebrations of his Silver Jubilee, and expanded to seat 1260 people. The theatre group was founded by the government in the late 1940s, with the main objective of presenting Ethiopian folk traditions in a contemporary setting. 74 This building was part of Haile Selassie’s vision that such grand structures could be built in Ethiopia. Completed in 1964 it stands atop Churchill Avenue in Addis Ababa’s Piasssa sub-city. It houses: the hall, boardrooms, a cinema-theatre, restaurant, 4 bars, library and a panoramic terrace. 75 HaHu is a prominent Ethiopian ‘Modern’ Dance group, whose members have participated in several of my dance workshops prior to their involvement in Common Threads. Many of its members also work for Ethiopian National Theatre as modern dancers. 76 Mintesinot Getachew or ‘Minte’ as he is more commonly known has been a student of and collaborator with RAS Mikey since 2008 and has collaborated on several dance projects with him since that time. Minte was a major contributor to the Common Threads productions, as a performer, choreographic collaborator, production assistant, and rehearsal director. RAS Mikey considers Minte as a major ‘common thread’ in Common Threads, for his role in the production.
93 of Ethiopian contemporary music to which is was performed. In an early reflexive journal entry for Common Threads (2016) I noted:
I know that I wanted to use the Gigi song Golle (2003), as I have been workshopping movement for it over the years, almost since I created the term Ethio-Modern Dance [while teaching dance in Atlanta, Georgia in 2010]. Now is the perfect time to showcase something related to this music.
(Personal Journal entry March 31, 2016)
Golle (2003) is a song in the Agew language77, performed by contemporary Ethiopian singer Ejigayehu ‘Gigi’ Shibabaw. In regard to One Tribe (Common Threads 2016) this piece of music spoke to me rhythmically and melodically in such a way that I was compelled use it for choreographic inspiration. Gigi’s song Golle (2003) became the sonic backbone to how I would develop the choreography. I mentally divided the song into sections and improvised movement phrases in relation to the timing of the musical sections. These improvised movements incorporated embodied, Ethiopian traditional dances such as; eskista’s shoulder, neck and torso movements; and movement of the hips influenced by Ethiopia’s Southern Wolaita region. These embodied percussive Ethiopian movements were blended with other movement forms such as: the flowing arm movement meditation, which was influenced by my somatic practices such as Tai Chi; and the placements of the legs and feet were a reflection of my Western contemporary dance knowledge. This is how the choreographic elements of One Tribe (Common Threads 2016) were developed, and these phrases were taught to the Ethiopian performers in sections, although I did not begin to analyse the meaning of the movements until I viewed the video recordings of the performers in rehearsals. This analyse of rehearsal footage aided in the refinement of the collective theme and title for One Tribe. Through this choreographic/analytical process, much like dance anthropologist Sylvia Glasser, I recognized that there is a necessity for “sensitive handling…[of] choreographic works based on transcultural borrowing” (Glasser 1996:288). It is my ethnochoreological training, as well as my knowledge of, and respect for, the Ethiopian culture, that informs the embodied cultural material transmitted in my Ethio- Modern Dance works. In the piece One Tribe, the free-flowing choreographic arm and hand
77 An Ethiopian dialect spoken by the Agew people located in the Amhara region of the low highlands Ethiopia’s Semien Mountains.
94 gestures (Common Threads 2016, 6:15) accompanied by the rhythmic movements of other body parts (Common Threads 2016, 6:27), were inspired by how I felt when I listened to the song Golle (2003).
In Chapter Two of this thesis, I elude how dance is a fundamental ‘indicator of musical meaning’ (Brandt 2015), and when I listened to Golle (2003) I felt many emotions move through my mind and body, which I cannot fully describe in words. As I mentioned earlier the song was a big inspiration in my early development of Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept. The ambient flute, melodically playing over a driving percussive rhythm, blended through the sound and syncopation of the vocals, were inspirational even without a comprehensive understanding of the words being sung. Gigi’s Golle (2003) cultivated a needed energy that guided some of my choreographic decisions (Blom and Chaplin 1982). For instance, the movement motifs that appear in the first two minutes and fifteen seconds of the One Tribe (Common Threads 2016) performance were influenced by the rhythm and vocal ornamentation of the music as well as by my embodied lived- experiences with the Ethiopian Orthodox religious culture. Blom and Chaplin define a motif in contemporary dance as “a single movement or a short movement phrase…that is used as a source or spark of development…” (Blom and Chaplin 1982:102). One of these movement motifs I will now examine.
Throughout the creative process of One Tribe, I made conscious decisions that my cultural body (Csordas 1990) would be a means to represent influential elements of Ethiopia that I have been exposed to, such as the traditional and social dances as well as various cultural elements from liturgical communities. In Ethiopia, amongst the congregation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church,78 there is a ritual type movement referred to as shebsheba. It is characterized by arms extended in front of the torso, bent at the elbows and palms facing upwards towards the sky. Generally, shebsheba is presented from a standing position with the legs comfortably parallel, the elbows maintaining a light connection to the torso, the arms gently swaying from side to side in relation to the syncopated rhythm of the kebero,79 as the knees periodically bend and flex to the hymn being sung. I have previously
78 The largest of the Oriental Orthodox Christian Churches pre-dating colonial church in Sub-Saharan Africa. With approximately 50 million members most of whom live in Ethiopia. (Girma 2013) 79 Ethiopian Traditional Drum
95 mentioned how our understanding of movement like the shebsheba is based on the context in which it is viewed and on the cultural habitus (Bourdieu 1977) of the viewer (See Chapter 3). As a person educated in the West, I would define this shebsheba movement as liturgical dance and the vocals as a song. But in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the movement is referred to as akwakwam, not chefera, which is the word for dance in Amharic. Much like the vocal ornamentation in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would be referred to as zema and not a song (zefin) or music (muzika). The Geez80 terms used to describe these aspects of the church are indigenous and only applicable to the church.
At approximately one minute and thirty-four seconds into the choreographic work One Tribe (Common
Threads 2016, 7:33), I consciously use shebsheba- (Figure 23) Performers of One Tribe in shebsheba inspired movement (Common inspired soft qualitative arm gestures that flow through Threads 2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh the light vocals of Golle (2003), while connecting to the steady percussive drum rhythm, which drives the fluctuating intensity of the choreography. This shebsheba-inspired motif reflects my cerebral and my corporal embodiment of Ethiopian Orthodox ritualistic movements. This movement motif appears twice within a ten-second period of the choreography and was performed in a collective unison by the performers. The movement is varied from its liturgical origins by an incorporation of the head, which sways in a half circle motion in relation to the gestural motion of the arms from side to side. The feet begin in a parallel position, but as the arms open and extend from the elbows while still attached to the torso, which is not a common gesture in the church version, the legs and feet open to ‘first position’81. The intention was to represent to some capacity a part of Ethiopia’s culture that many of the performers and audience participants would recognize, while exposing the gesture to those who may have no knowledge of shebsheba, in order to open the space for interpretive discussion. In essence, if an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian sees my work and makes a correlation to their religion, whether they are offended or elated, it was not my intention to misrepresent. I see this as my way of reflecting the embodied influences of my
80 A liturgical language of Semetic origin, used by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church 81 One of the positions of the feet commonly used in ballet and contemporary dance, in which the feet are planted firmly on the floor, heels are connected, and the toes are extended in opposite diagonal directions.
96 lived-experiences in Ethiopia. Regardless of whether my choices are conscious or not, I have no control over how my art will be interpreted by the audience although it is presented with an intention. This shebsheba inspired movement is just one example of embodied Ethiopian ritual culture, which I use as tools of inspiration in my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works.
There is one other movement motif that appears at the beginning of One Tribe (Common Threads 2016, 6:16), and just seconds after the shebsheba inspired arm gestures (Common Threads 2016, 7:54). This movement motif is an arm variation, which is guided by breath, internal imagery, and vocalised rhythmic sound. This motif stems from my embodied ritual experience with somatic practices such as Tai Chi and Yoga, both of which attribute to the ‘modern’ influences in my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. Some form of this arm variation or ‘moving mediation’ (Ricketson 2011), has become a signature movement motif in many of my choreographic works as well as part of the warm-up exercises in the movement classes I instruct. It is characterised by a lifting of the arms to the sides of the body almost as an eagle would gather air under its wings as it soars through the sky. As the arms drop, the elbows draw a line in towards the torso and back out to the sides of the body, while the forearms move along the stomach causing the lower back to contract. The arms then move through the winged position again, and as the arms reach shoulder level, the elbows twist the hands with the palms facing up towards the sky. The hands then move backwards circling over the top of the head with fingertips pointing in towards each other. From this position, the hands continue their circular pattern until the arms open and the fingertips of the hands point away from each other. As the arms maintain a slight bend at the elbows, the chest and torso initiate a lift up towards the sky as the hands and arms continue to lift until the palms touch overhead. At this moment, the arms release and slide down the sides of the body like a shower of water, as the body sequentially collapses towards the ground. This movement motif variation appears very quickly in One Tribe and it is initiated by a particular vocal within the Golle (2003) song, which is later repeated by selected performers in relation to the repetition of these vocals within the song (One Tribe in Common Threads 2016, 6:16 and 7:54).
Although I feel that the choreographic work One Tribe (Common Threads 2016), was
97 successful in representing my embodied influences of Ethiopian and other ritual cultures of the world, I was confronted with a few challenges during the creation and presentation of this Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work. Although I would argue that the final performance of One Tribe (Common Threads 2016) could have been executed better by the performers, my greatest issues with its presentation was not with the performers, but with the lighting technician who faded out the final light cue before the choreography was completed. These types of technical errors would appear in other parts of this production, but I would argue that it was myself and the performers who were most affected by these miscues. The audience did not know the bodies of work well enough to have known when these cues were mistimed. Despite these challenges, One Tribe set the tone for the cross-cultural collective of the Common Threads (2016) production. The following choreographic work I wish to discuss and analyse is Dark Trade, which appeared after the intermission of Common Threads (2016), and adopted my initial theme for One Tribe.
Dark Trade: Embodied Narrative In her book Choreographing Difference (1997) author Ann Cooper Albright (1997) expresses her interest in theatrical dances that can: …both enact and rework mythic and historical images of slavery, colonial power, and religious faith within a contemporary parable that allows individual dancers to infuse the story with their own histories and physicalities. (Albright 1997:150)
With the choreographic work Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016), I attempted to reinscribe (Albright 1997) an integral part of my embodied cultural heritage (Ibid.), while infusing my story with the embodied history of the 5 male and female professional contemporary performers from the Destino Dance Group82. Earlier in this chapter I discussed how my initial thematic narrative for One Tribe was the ‘Transatlantic Slave Trade’ (Thomas 1997). This choreographic concept is a part of my embodied ancestral heritage (Albright 1997) and exemplifies one of the many ways African people have thrived through adverse situations. I would argue that Ethiopia’s history of resisting Italian
82 Destino is the premiere Ethiopian contemporary dance company based in Addis Ababa, the founders are former members of Adugna Community Dance and Theatre Company/Dance United and have worked extensively in the UK and US as performers and choreographers. I have known the founders since their time in Adugna and Common Threads (2016) was my first collaboration with the company. I have since taught public and private dance classes at the Destino dance studio in Addis Ababa.
98 colonization83 is another example of African peoples’ perseverance. This metaphorical ‘bond’ of Africans in a post-colonial world became an inspiration for the narrative in the choreographic work Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016, 44:56), and would also become, I would argue, the concept that metaphorically ‘bound’ its performers together. The choreographed movements for this Ethio-Modern Dance were also inspired by my lived- experiences within African, Caribbean, European, and American cultures. The enslavement of African people was led by Europeans who brought these Africans to the Caribbean and the Americas to labour and build their ‘new world’ (Thomas 1997). To aid in the analysis of Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016, 44:56), I employed my memory recall and I reviewed the recorded video footage of the performance in relation to the ‘enslavement’ theme. This narrative analysis breaks the choreographed movement into sections in connection to the narrative within the recorded musical accompaniment. I will now examine the use of space, movement motifs, costuming, and most importantly the lyrics of the Slave Song (Sade 2000). It is important to mention that the use of rehearsal video documentation was a main methodology utilsed in the development of the choreography for Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016). After creating improvised movement phrases on my own body, I would then teach and record the performers doing these movement phrases to various parts of the recorded music. After a few rehearsals of recorded movement phrasing, I used my IMovie programme on my Apple laptop computer to cut and paste these sessions into a rough outline of the entire choreographic work. I would argue that it made the process of retaining the choreography much easier for the performers as they always had a visual reference to refer to throughout the creative process of Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016). The costuming from YEFIKIR84 (See Figure 24) and the music mix of Slave Song (2000) from R&B/Jazz singer Sade blended with natural sounds of the ocean, helped to set the scene of these African characters that were uncertain about their journey ahead. As the lyrics of Slave Song (2000) embodied the story of the narrative-driven choreographed movements, I will now illustrate this lyric and movement connection.
83 Ethiopia was never colonized although there was an Italian invasion in 1935-1941 (the second Ethio-Italian War). (Adejumobi 2007)
84 YEFIKIR is a design company based in Ethiopia, renowned for utilizing sophisticated Ethiopian fabrics to create clothing that merges modernity and culture into everyday fashion. The owner is a personal friend of mine and after training in my public dance classes she and her daughters participate in the Encore of Common Threads (2016).
99
As the lights slowly illuminate the stage, the five performers are placed in different parts of the stage, representing the different parts of the African continent from which the slaves were taken. Dressed in tattered white clothing, each performer searches through the darkness with the sounds of the ocean waves and sea birds in the background. Each performer, looking outward into different parts of the performance space, they reach into the darkness while walking backwards. They gradually creep towards the centre of the stage and with looks of fear and uncertainty they create a circular formation. Facing away from the centre of circle, they join arms giving a sense that they are not alone on the journey for which they are about to embark, and that they have reached “the door of no return”85 (Mussi 2007). Supported by the weight of each other, they collectively sit with their backs to one another, with arms linked, representing how the slaves were bound together by chains and shackles. While in this seated position they collectively cross step in a clockwise circular pattern visually exploring the dark space as much as they can. As the collective circular pattern revolves one hundred and eighty degrees the stepping halts and the performers rise. Arms still clasped together and feet planted firmly on the floor in centre stage, they lean away from the centre without falling; symbolising the strength that they have as a unit. As they pull back in towards the circle, the two women are positioned behind the three men who form a symbolic barrier of protection with their arms and bodies. The women repeatedly extend their arms in various directions, reaching for the forces of nature to save them from the eminent perils to come. As this formed barrier of the men falls, all of the performers begin to lift their chests towards the sky with open arms, then they reverse this motion collapsing the chest and arms back towards the earth. The stage is filled with yellow lights revealing the dilapidation of the dingy costumes with various holes, rips, and tears that have been haphazardly sewn together in certain spots. As the Dub Reggae music rhythm of Slave Song (2000) gradually fades in atop the ocean soundscape, the performers collectively perform a variation of the moving meditation, mentioned in the One Tribe section of this chapter (See page 93). They extend their arms towards the heavens, then with a sharp impulse collapse down towards the floor, while bent at the waist. The hands scoop up the air
85 This is a dungeon build by the Portuguese in Elmina Ghana around 1482 later held by the Dutch and the British, where enslaved Africans were keep before being shipped off to the Americas.
100 like water as the arms extend forward and initiate the rising of the body through an elongated flat-back position. After the arms and hands have reached their heights, the hands then splash the face as the body sequentially collapses again. With knees flexed and bodies bent over at the waste, the performers have formed two horizontal lines with the two women in the gaps behind the three men.
The first verse of Slave Song (2000) reads: See them gather, see them on the shore, I turn to look once more But he who knows me not, takes me into the belly of darkness. Tears run swift and hard, and when they fall Even, even the comfort of a stone would be a gain. There was a time when I thought I would have to give up. But I’m thankful that I’m strong as I am and I try to do the best I can. Tears run swift and tears will come and pour like rain, I pray that it’s swift cause tears will fall as cold as pain I pray to the Almighty, let me to him do, as he has done to me Teach my beloved children who have been enslaved, to reach for the light continually… (Sade ‘Slave Song’ 2000)
As the first words of contemporary R&B singer Sade’s Slave Song (2000) “See them gather, see them on the shore, I turn to look once more,” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads 2016, 46:31) are heard, the performers collectively lift their heads up to face the audience and begin a side-to-side rocking motion with the upper body that then gradually flows into a full counter-clockwise circle of the body, which is followed by the right arm circling over the head in the same direction. As the words “But he who knows me not takes me into the belly of darkness,” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads 2016, 46:39) are heard, the right arm drops towards the chest and the head looks back over the left shoulder towards the extended left arm. The left leg steps across the body towards the side of the stage and as it lands, it quickly steps back to an open lunge position and is immediately followed by the right foot stepping in place as the left arm extends forward from the heart. The left hand then retracts towards the body, the right elbow swings over the right shoulder causing the body to twist left. The performers pivot on the balls of the foot towards the opposite side and end the phrase with the right hand
101 on top the left as both palms and fingertips touch in opposition. This same lunging step with an elbow swing variation is repeated in a gentler manner on the opposite side, except the performers end facing the audience and the hands raise up the centre of the body to cover the eyes. Led by the elbows and with an echoing clash in the music, the arms pull towards the side of the body and the hands reveal the eyes of the performers as they lift their chins up towards the sky. The performers’ arms open like the opening of petals of a flower in the sun, and with palms facing up towards the sky the arms continue to fall by the sides of the body as the legs drop into a deep fold or grand plié position. The performers face the side stage and as they rise, the right leg steps across in front of the left leg and the upper body twists in opposition to the legs, so that their chests and heads focus towards the audience. With “The tears run swift and hard, and when they fall” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads 2016, 46:47), the arms slowly rise up the sides of the body with clinched fist and ninety degree bends in the elbows. As the clinched fists reach about shoulder level, the bended elbows swiftly tug in towards the sides of the chest twice, and as the arms hold this position the performers do a full counter-clockwise circle ending on the downstage right diagonal. They then leap into the air, first the men then the women, in the direction of the diagonal, and with the right leg leading the legs assemble in the air as the body is erected through the extension of the arms reaching towards the sky while the legs pull towards the ground in polar opposition. They land and collapse the body again but as they bring the body to a standing position they excute a three step turn that brings the women in front of the men. As the performers step forward on the diagonal, their arms carry an imaginary boulder above their heads that is then released, as Sade sings “…even, even the comfort of a stone would be a gain” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads, 46:55). “There was a time when I thought, I would have to give up, but I’m thankful that I’m strong as I am and I try to do the best I can” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads, 47:03) plays as the performers face the audience again, then step forward with the right foot while pushing the right hip forward into two clockwise hip circles and the arms swimming out to the sides of the body with palms facing towards the ground. The movement is repeated with the left foot and hip in a counter-clockwise circle, but as this variation ends the right arm strikes down in front of the body like a machete to a sugar cane stalk, and the left leg simultaneously sweeps around to the left direction on the floor. The performers briefly stand
102 erect facing the audience before they begin four more sharp chopping variations, which travel downstage towards the audience. After the forth chop, the performers stand strong with arms up, like a body builder flexing their biceps, before circling the arms in a backward motion to release their clinched fist and collapse the body forward again. As they raise the body, they jump backwards twice, first with the right leg bent in front then with the left, as the arms do full circles toward the front in the timing of the jumps. They spin out upstage on the left foot and stop facing the audience again with arms raised, right leg crossed, and hips facing the side as described earlier. (This variation is one of the recurring movement motifs in this body of work.) From this clinched fist and twisted body position, the performers’ movements relate to the words heard in soundtrack, “Tears run swift and tears will come and pour like rain, I pray that it’s swift cause tears will fall as cold as pain” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads, 47:19). With their fists to the side, just above head level, the performers open their hands with fingers spread, as if to release the tension for the moment. Their hands drop swiftly as the bodies change direction with a catch step of the feet. The left arm contracts to the right side of the stages then another catch step turns the performers to the opposite side of the stage as the right arm mirrors the prior movement of the left. Following the contraction of the right arm it begins to open to the right side of the torso, the performers spin behind themselves and step out downstage as they leap forward assembling the legs in the air. As they land, the torso collapses forward and their bodies quickly roll up stacking the vertebrae of the spine vertically. As they reach an upright standing position they abruptly execute the earlier chopping motion of the right arm and take a large step that transitions the females upstage and males downstage. As the fourth chop and step are completed, they stand upright as arms drop to the sides then rise towards the sky with the palms outstretched and facing upwards. With the chin lifted and eyes focused up, the arms open above the head allowing the overhead light to shine on their lifted chests. While reaching high, then swaying low while repeatedly stepping from side-to-side, the lyrics in the music state “I pray to the Almighty, let me to him do, as he has done to me,” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads, 47:35). The first verse of the song concludes with, “Teach my beloved children who have been enslaved, to reach for the light continually,” (Sade 2000 in Dark Trade in Common Threads, 47:44), as the performers complete a circular pattern with their arms over
103 their heads then down around their waists, they reach with their right arm to the right side of the body and as if holding the ‘light’ mentioned in the lyrics, they pass their hand across in front of the body around to left side. They then gather the energy of the imagined light through the roll of their right shoulders backward as they turn and proceed to the next point in their collective journey. Before I proceed to my brief description of the cross-cultural relationship of Pulse (Common Threads 2016, 1:11:58), there is one other aspect of Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016) that I would like to point out. Early in this section I use Albright’s (1997) statement that addresses how a performer can and should infuse their embodied history into a narrative driven choreographic work (Albright 1997). There was one particular choreographic moment in Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016, 49:55), which the Ethiopian performers connected to their own socio-political culture. During the creative process, this gesture of the arms raised above the head and crossed at the wrists, sparked a group discussion about the interpretation of this particular choreographed movement (See Figure 24). My intention as an African-American using this gesture was to symbolically represent bondage of Africans during their enslavement. Ethiopia is not a country that identifies with the ‘Transatlantic Slave Trade’ since most of the African slaves were taken from Western and Central Africa (Thomas 1997), but Ethiopia is no stranger to bondage or this particular choreographic gesture. In the rehearsal, when I set this part of the choreography on the Destino dancers, they informed me that the gesture had become a symbol of solidarity used to show support for the protests of Ethiopia’s Oromo people against the Ethiopian government. I assured the performers that if there were any questions about the intention of this gesture, then we would refer to my African American interpretation. In the performance of Dark Trade, the performers held this position for (Figure 24) Dark Trade performers with owner of approximately four seconds and then opened their arms abruptly YEFIKIR owner/designer at costume fitting for Common as if breaking the chains of colonial bondage (Dark Trade in Threads (2016)
Common Threads 2016, 50:05). During the performance, a slight silence can be heard in the audience when this gesture appears and shortly afterwards you hear a few members of the audience applauding. At the time of the Common Threads (2016) premiere, I was aware of
104 the socio-political associations with the gesture, but felt that it spoke to different people in different ways. In December 2016, I was asked by D.Y.M.D.C.86 and the International Organization of Migration87 to perform a version of Dark Trade for the opening of an art exhibition at the Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa. By this time the socio-political association with this arm gesture had been heightened and I decided to change the gesture for this new performance to avoid any unwarranted controversy, as I understood the political climate of the country at the time.88 My ethnochoreological training and personal connection to Ethiopian culture is what compelled me to change this gesture in the second performance of Dark Trade (2016). As is illustrated with the above partial narrative analysis, the main theme of the ‘Transatlantic Slave Trade’ (Thomas 1997) was illuminated by various components of the choreographic work Dark Trade (2016). This included the lyrics of the music, the intended meanings behind the movement and the costume design. In both performances of Dark Trade (2016), the overall resolve of this choreographic work was that the struggles of these African slaves, was easier to endure as a collective who “reached for the light” (Sade 2000), recognising that there was a greater purpose to their existence. I would argue that this recognition of purpose is how the African people have persevered through different trials of adversity. In the following section I will give a brief analysis of the choreographic work Pulse, (Common Threads 2016, 1:11:58), which was another example of a cross-cultural connection between African-American and Ethiopian cultures, through rhythm and vocalisation.
86 Desta Yeshimbet Meghoo Development and Consultancy and Associates is a boutique creative consulting firm based in Addis Ababa of which I am an associate, the company was hired by IOM to curate and art exhibition at the Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa, I was brought in to reconstruct a version of the choreographic work Dark Trade (Common Threads 2016). 87 The International Organization for Migration is an intergovernmental organization with offices in Addis Ababa, who provides services and advice dealing with migration. They commissioned D.Y.M.D.C. and associates for the abovementioned project. 88 In August of 2016 during the summer Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Ethiopian runner Feyisa Lilesa, displayed this symbol in solidarity of the protester in Ethiopia and soon after this the Ethiopian government declared a state of emergency for the country and outlawed the gesture as a symbol of protest.
105 Pulse: A Cross-Cultural Connection The six male professional Ethiopian traditional performers of Wendata Dance Group89, four female Modern Dancers from Destino, and Addis Ababa City Hall collaborated with ethnochoreologists and African-American step dancers Jakari ‘JkCo’ Sherman90 and LaQuinda ‘Que’ Grimes91, and myself, on the choreography for Pulse (Common Threads 2016, 1:11:58). I met Sherman and Grimes at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where they had both completed the MA Ethnochoreology programme. They both came to Ethiopia to work with me on the choreographic work Pulse (Common Threads 2016). This body percussive (Figure 25) Sherman, Myself choreographic work illustrated a ‘transcultural’ borrowing of and Grimes in a pre- production photo at Ethiopian National Theatre movement elements from Ethiopian traditional dances, such as Common Threads (2016) Gurage, and Wolaita, (Vadasy 1971, 1973, and 1973) and African-American step dance tradition and Hip-hop cultures. According to dance researcher Ann Axtmann (2002), the African-American step dance tradition or ‘Stepping’ exemplifies: A sense of the transcultural and transnational borrowing of dance aspects through history, across geography, and between diverse peoples prevailed alongside multiple issues related to the body in motion: race, identity, community, empowerment, and agency. (Axtmann 2002:126)
I regard the ‘pulse’ to be our metaphorical and literal human connection to the movements of life. Pulse in Common Threads (2016) represented a movement or rhythm of life that begins with our heartbeat and pumps blood, our lifeline, through the body. Prior to the arrival of Sherman and Grimes in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from the United States, approximately seven days before the show, I had several dialogues via telephone, emails, and social media with both artists about the possibility of collaborating on a choreographic work. I explained how
89 Wendata is a traditional Ethiopian dance group based in Addis Ababa, whom was suggested to me by one of the directors of the HaHu group, who had worked with them in the past. Wendata has been feature in many Ethiopian music videos and they perform frequently at various locations in Addis Ababa and other cities of Ethiopia. 90 Jakari Sherman is a passionate choreographer, ethnochoreologist, and performer who experience extends over 20 years. Rooted in the African American tradition of stepping, his work has sought to push the boundaries of percussive dance as a communicative medium by challenging conventional paradigms and exploring the use of technology, storytelling, and diverse musical scores. 91 LaQuinda "Q" Grimes is a multi-talented creative and explorer. Her collaborative research methodology combines fifteen years of dance training and professional performance; an academic background in ethnochoreology, ethnology, mass communications, journalism, and documentary film; with a passion for story-telling.
106 the conduit between the abovementioned traditions would be rhythm, and that the two of them would work with the traditional Ethiopian dance group Wendata along with myself to develop the choreography. Both Sherman and Grimes agreed to the idea, and I began to send them clips of early rehearsals with Wendata, in which I taught my basic embodied knowledge of African-American step dancing92. Sherman sent me clips of his works, which I shared with Wendata, in order to give them a better idea of what they would be learning once Sherman and Grimes arrived in Addis Ababa. Upon their arrival, Sherman and Grimes immediately began to develop ways of overcoming the cultural and language gaps through over exaggerated expressions of their bodies and faces. They also relied on the person in the group who could speak the most English to make sure that the rest of the group stayed on track93. Because of this the group was able to reach our desired goal of finishing this choreographic work in a short period of time. In his own field-notes Sherman expresses one of the challenges he faced, stating; It was challenging to get the dancers to express themselves through the chant and vocalization typical in stepping…94 (Sherman 2016:1)
Sherman further alludes that vocalization was only a major issue during the ‘stepping’ parts of the choreography as he later admits: …the members of Wendata performed traditional Gurage dance steps without musical accompaniment and…used vocalization in the form of a deep grunt emanating from the throat. In much the same way as male steppers this type of powerful vocal ‘gesturing’ departs from discernable language, yet communicates intensity and unity among performers. (Ibid.)
This is yet another example of the conceptual collective intention of the choreographic works in Common Threads (2016), as well as the cross-cultural connection of Ethiopia to African- American culture through rhythm-driven movements and vocalizations. Sherman stated, “In stepping, we record and perform the history and ritual of our culture through movement and
92 Although, I would not consider myself a professional, I have had experience in Step Dance, as I was the male captain of my secondary school’s Step Team. 93 Mintesinot Getachew was also there to assist with the language barrier although he did not perform in this choreographic work. 94 See Sherman’s Masters thesis I See You!: An Ethnochoreological Exploration of the Construction and Performance of Identity Through the Practice of Stepping (2015)
107 spoken word,” (Sherman 2016:2). Therefore, rhythm and vocal expression were key factors in the collaboration and effectiveness of Pulse (Common Threads 2016) as a choreographed performance. The second step dance choreographic collaborator in Pulse (Common Threads 2016), LaQuinda Grimes, expressed how ‘nourishing’ the experience of being part of this type of cultural exchange through movement was and how important it was for her to share her Drum Majorette experiences with the dancers as well. She stated in her reflexive journal: I was nourished physically by the task of being an ambassador for the movement culture I was there representing. I wanted the amazing dancers in the piece to love and enjoy the styles of stepping of HBCU Majorettes95 as much as I did. Our bodies were not accustomed to moving the same but the groups I got to work with picked it up with enthusiasm and skill. Rethinking the way, I taught and communicated the basics of the styles and the rhythms we were working with, gave me a greater appreciation for my craft. (Grimes 2016b:1)
Although the performers of Wendata only had five days to develop this choreographic work with Sherman, Grimes, and myself, their professionalism and dedication to the project shone through in their performance. Sherman stated: In the end, the dancers learned stepping as well or better than most students I have taught and were able to perform with such enthusiasm that it seemed we had practiced longer than the week we had available to us…Where there were challenges early on, stemming from cultural differences, by the end of the final performance we developed a kinship that grew not just out of shared time and experience, but also from multifaceted cultural connections. (Sherman 2016:3)
I my opinion Pulse was the perfect work to end the Common Threads (2016) production, as it was a great example of Ethio-Modern Dance through an Ethiopian and African-American cross-cultural connection of rhythm and movement.
95 See Grimes Master’s thesis entitled Jazz, Sass, Class, and Ass: An Ethnochoreological Exploration of Danceline Majorette style at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in United State of America (2016)
108 Other Cultural Influences and Performer Participant Collaborations With my second Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production Common Threads (2016), my role was more of an artistic director who collaborated on several choreographic works with young male and female performing artists and groups from the Ethiopian dance community and abroad. I would argue that 95% of the performance participants would have been involved in dance or some type of movement practice in Addis Ababa, engaging in different aspects of learning, teaching, and presenting various traditional Ethiopian, modern/contemporary dance and martial arts movement forms. For example, the professional male and female zemenawi or modern/contemporary performers from Hahu Dance Entertainment, Destino Dance Group, and the Ethiopian National Theatre Modern Dancers, usually create choreographic works of their own, within the Ethiopian dance community, that I would consider Western contemporary dance. In contrast to the more Western contemporary dance works featured in Common Threads, some performers and other choreographic works were rooted in particular styles of Ethiopian traditional and other cultural movements such as Chinese as well as Afro-Brazilian martial arts. For example, Ja Beza96 was one professional male dance group in the Common Threads production, with which I utilized Ethiopian traditional dance movement vocabulary to build the two choreographic collaborations, YeBeza Trad (Common Threads 2016, 12:10) and Modern Day Mash Up (Common Threads 2016, 58:26). This traditional vocabulary included: eskista, the shoulder neck and torso dance generally associated with the people of the Amhara and Tigray regions; the rhythmic stepping, hopping, gliding of the feet; and jerking gesture of the hips, which is more rooted in the Oromo and the SNNP regions of Ethiopia (Vadasy 1970, 1971, and 1973). Under my direction and with the assistance of Getachew the Ja Beza dancers were led through six two-hour improvisational sessions. During these sessions, we drew from traditional Ethiopian dance vocabulary in order to develop the movement phrases that were later shaped into the choreography that corresponded with the various rhythmic components of the recorded music. Fraleigh (2004) comments on this style of choreographic collaboration. She states:
96 A traditional Ethiopian dance group that has performed with several Ethiopian singers in video and live on stage. I was introduced to the group on Facebook, when one of the members sent me a message after hearing about the type of work I do with Ethio-Modern dance. When I returned to Ethiopia I contacted the group to be a part of Common Threads (2016) and they agreed.
109 Sometimes we create contours and durations for others to perform through their own lived dynamic, or we make time/place structures that others may play and dance within. (Fraleigh 2004:57)
I would argue that this statement describes the two choreographic works, YeBeza Trad and Modern Day Mash Up (Common Threads 2016). With both works I created the ‘contours’ or structure of the choreography based on the dynamic rhythmic structure of the two pieces of African-inspired Hip Hop music tracks97 to which the choreography was performed. I also suggested formations, rhythmic timings and qualitative intentions based on my vision for the choreography as a director. Yared Kene98, the professional male soloist performer in Ahun (Now) (Common Threads 2016, 20:53), illustrated a variety of embodied cultural influences, including: Ethiopian traditional and contemporary dance and music; American Hip Hop dance movement; Caribbean Reggae and Dancehall culture; and Indian Bollywood cultures. Ahun (Common Threads 2016) is an Amharic word that loosely translates as ‘now’ in the English language. Although I did make a few appearances in the choreography, the narrative focused on Yared playing the character of a ‘shoe shine boy’99. This piece was universal in its theme of a day worker who is moved by music to the point that he forgets about his job, and becomes enraptured in the music through his dance movements. Ahun was yet another reflection of the intercultural nature of Common Threads (2016), illustrating how Ethio-Modern Dance can connect different cultures through movement. The professional male and female performers of Afro Sweet (Common Threads 2016, 53:26) featured Getachew and members of Addis Ababa’s City Hall Modern Dance group. This choreographic work was influenced by Ethiopian, American and South African cultures. The Ethiopian cultural influence in Afro Sweet’s was evident with the tilet100 trimmed original costuming designs by YEFIKIR as well as my incorporation of some Wolaita101 inspired
97These two tracks Love at Last Light and Modern Dance Confusion (2006) were a part of an unreleased African and African Diaspora music compilation. The original music by Aster Aweke and Ali Farka Toure was sampled and mixed in the style Hip Hop music by an independent group known as GB Productions of Philadelphia 98 Kene is a young versatile Ethiopian dancer with a background in traditional dance but specialises in contemporary dance forms. Kene has been featured in many music video clips, commercial advertisements, and was the winner of the Contemporary Solo Dance performance on Balehager Idol, 2015 (A realty based performing competition on Ethiopian television). 99 Shoe shiners are a very common profession in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They can be seen lined along the streets of various parts of the city. 100 Traditional Ethiopian textile used as rimming or a pattern on in traditional as well as contemporary Ethiopian fashion design 101 A tribe in the SNNPP region of Ethiopia whose dance is generally characterised by isolated movements of the lower half of the body.
110 jerking hip movements. The American and South African cultural influences also were reflected in the movement of the performers as well as in the song “Sweetie” (2015) a recording of Afro-House music102, which accompanied the choreography. Ethip-Hop (Common Threads 2016, 50:25) was another choreographic work, which further explored Ethiopia’s connection to America through Urban American Hip Hop culture, with the pre-professional all male performers from Ethio B-Boys103. The choreography was set to an unknown Ethiopian Jazz sampled Hip Hop music track and they performed choreography which reflected the ‘old school’ American Hip Hop culture of break dancing. I also include the movements of martial arts in some of the choreographic works of Common Threads (2016). Given the contemporary performance context of the Ethiopian National Theatre, these Chinese and Afro-Brazilian cultural movement styles may be framed as forms of dance. The characteristics that describe these movements such as dynamic, force, intensity, and flow can also be used to describe dance. For me this aligns with anthropologist Judith Lynne Hanna’s (1988) notion that “Dance is an eye-catching, riveting way for humans to identify themselves and maintain or erase boundaries” (Hanna 1988: xiii). The Teachings (Common Threads 2016, 1:01:50), performed by the male and female students of New Dragon Martial Arts School104, showcased the choreographic movement of the Chinese martial arts, which are practiced in Addis Ababa. Konjo Joga (Beautiful Play) (Common Threads 2016, 26:48), presented by Maculele Capoeira Addis Ababa105, allowed me the opportunity to collaborate on capoeira inspired choreographed movements and showcase this Afro-Brazilian war dance. According to Barbara Browning, capoeira was used as a form of resistance against the Portuguese colonials, by the African slaves in Brazil (Browning in Dils and Albright 2001). The title of the work, Konjo Joga106, is a blend of the Amharic and Portuguese languages, and it featured: male and female; amateur and professional; Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian capoeiristas107, who live, train, and play capoeira collectively in Addis Ababa. The following section of this thesis further examines the
102 This music genre with roots in South Africa, is considered a sub-genre of American ‘House’ music, it blends tribal rhythms with house beats and is often referred to as ‘Deep House’ or ‘Soulful House’ music. 103 A small collective of Ethiopian youths who produce works that reflect the Urban American Hip Hop b-boying culture. 104 New Dragon’s director Addisu, has been closely connected to RAS Mikey since 2013, when introduced to him by Getachew, RAS Mikey began to use the New Dragon school as location for his community workshops. Because of this relationship with Addisu and his New Dragon’s, RAS Mikey chose to showcase the school and its students as part of the Common Threads production. 105 A community based capoeira group of local and international participants, who has open training sessions twice a week at a local sports club in Addis Ababa. 106 Konjo meaning ‘beautiful’ in Ethiopia’s Amharic language and Joga meaning ‘play’ in the Brazilian Portuguese language. 107 This name is a generally refers to people whom play/train in capoeira.
111 community engagement of Common Threads and discusses some of the participant responses provided by the performers, audience members, and others involved in this choreographic production.
The Community Engagement and Participant Responses As I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, one of my intentions with Common Threads (2016) was to raise awareness in the diversity of dance as a profession and artistic discipline within Ethiopia, in particular the city of Addis Ababa. With Common Threads (2016), it was important for me to honour those in the (Figure 26) Abdu Ethiopian dance community who paved the way for me to thrive and receiving his award Common Threads (2016) photo by: explore my embodiment of culture through my Ethio-Modern Dance Aaron Simeneh choreographic works. When Mintesinot Getachew first introduced me to Negash Abdu108 six months prior to the premiere of Common Threads (2016), we developed an immediate understanding because of our like-minded visions for dance in Ethiopia. I would consider Abdu to be a father of contemporary dance in Ethiopia (See footnote 103), and because of his contributions and our mutual understandings of dance, I created and presented the first Gash Negash Abdu Common Threads Scholarship Award (See Figure 26), which was sponsored by Tomoca Coffee109. The director of Addis Ababa University’s School of the Visual and Performing Arts, along with myself, presented the inaugural award to Abdu at the intermission of the Common Threads production (Common Threads 2016, 33:40). This moment was significant in that for many years Abdu has advocated for the development of dance at the university level, because it is currently one of the only fine arts, which does not have a programme of
108 Negash Abdu or Gash Negash graduated from the Yared Music School in Addis Ababa in 1973 with a diploma in violin, masinko, and Ethiopian Folk Dance. During his time there he also studied ballet with Hungarian researcher/practitioner Tibor Vadasy, whom to date has some the only written documentation on the Ethiopian traditional/folk dance culture. Upon completing his diploma Gash Negash was selected by then Emperor Haile Selassie I to got to Russia and train at the Bolshoi Theatre, where he would receive a Master’s diploma in ballet direction and production. When Gash Negash returned to Ethiopia, the monarchy was no longer in rule and his choreographic works focus more on the promotion of Ethiopian folk traditions within and outside of the country. Since that time Gash Negash has shared his knowledge of the Ethiopian Folk traditions with the world. He was the first dance teacher of the Adunga Community Dance group, whose two prominent members formed Destino Dance Group. Negash also trained the performers of the Beta-Israel, an Ethiopian Jew dance company based in Haifa Israel. 109 The first coffee company in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (1953) and is still one of the leading coffee brands of the country. They sponsored approximately $3000 (USD), which funded the first Gash Negash Award.
112 study at Addis Ababa University. Since my move to Addis Ababa in 2006, I too have advocated the same and only now are there steps being taken to bring dance into higher education in Ethiopia110. In a general participant questionnaire (See Appendix 6) the former director of the Yared Music School, spoke to the importance of Common Threads and its effect on the academic community. She stated: …since our institution is in the process of developing a new MA music curriculum / MUSIC AND CULTURE…it (Common Threads) gives us many ideas on how we could develop the curriculum with dance courses. (Samuel 2016 participant questionnaire: question number 3)
I would argue that it made perfect sense to that the first recipient of the Gash Negash Abdu Common Threads Scholarship Award, was a major ‘thread’ in Common Threads (2016) and the person who initially introduced me to Abdu. The first awardee was Mintesinot Getachew and he became a full tuition scholar for the Master of Arts in Contemporary Dance at the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, and our scholarship assisted him with some of the (Figure 27) Abdu presented the award to Getachew photo by: Aaron Simeneh added expenses outside of his tuition. Towards the end of the production of Common Threads (2016), Abdu presented Getachew with his scholarship award, and Getachew knelt down to kiss the feet of Abdu, which I understand to be a sign of respect and honour within Ethiopian culture (Common Threads 2016, 1:30:12). In a general participant questionnaire, David Aarons111 a PhD candidate, spoke to the impact this award has had in relation to dance as a profession in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Aarons stated: Honouring Gash Negash also exposed us all to the existence and history of professional dance in (Addis Ababa) Ethiopia. (Aarons 2016 participant questionnaire: question 5)
110 Gash Negash and myself are playing major roles in the development of dance on HEI level as module coordinators for a new Masters in Music and Culture programme at the Yared Music School scheduled to begin in the fall of 2017 at Addis Ababa University. 111 David Aarons is a Jamaican steelpan player and a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from the University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, a Master of Music degree in steelpan performance from Northern Illinois University (NIU), and a Master of Arts degree in Ethnomusicology from the University of Washington.
113 In a post-production written correspondence, Abdu gave his own impression of this award, (See Appendix 8). Abdu stated: The award that was named in my name, Gash Negash Abdu Common Threads Award, made me feel happy and proud and also it should not be a onetime thing it should continue regularly.
Ras Mikey and the show have depicted a good professional work in the dance industry towards the right direction for the future. I am encouraged to do more and share more of my knowledge and experience to the current generation and leave documented records for the future generations.
Ras Mikey works does reflect the Ethiopian culture and tradition in a right way. It paves the way to the future of dance in Ethiopia through laying a good foundation for the industry.
(Abdu questionnaire 2017: questions number 4, 6, and 7)
Getachew spoke about the general impact of Common Threads (2016) on the Addis Ababa dance community (See Appendix 7). He stated: Common Threads was a successful production, it was not only pleasing the Addis Ababa community but also provided a chance for the new young dancers to present their work and talent to the community. I admire RAS Mikey’s commitment and generosity of sharing his experiences, in order to change the dance scene in Ethiopia. (Getachew 2016 performer questionnaire: question number 8)
Another aspect of Common Threads’ (2016) community engagement that I wish to discuss relates to the choreographic work entitled Encore (Common Threads 2016, 1:33:10), which was presented after the performers’ Final Rise or bows and the presentation of the award scholarship to Getachew. The choreography for Encore was originally created as the International Culture (Figure 28) Encore full-cast (Common Threads 2016) photo by: Aaron Simeneh Week Flash Mob 2015 for the International Education Division at the University of Limerick. The Flash Mob (2015) consisted of an international cast from the University of Limerick’s student body; very few of them were from Ireland and even fewer still would have considered themselves
114 to be dancers. This notion of different types of people with different levels of ability coming together to share and experience a work as a community was the aim for resetting this choreography for the Encore performance of Common Threads (2016). This version incorporated male and female non-professional performing audience participants from the age of 5, my youngest son, to those in their mid-40s, who were students from my public and private community classes. The other performers were some of the participants from different choreographic works in Common Threads (2016). I wanted the audience participants who desired to be on stage to have that moment of being a performer in this Ethio-Modern Dance production. Based on post-performance discussions with participants it was clear that they developed new bonds with each other through their embodiment of the dance. Before I conclude this analysis of Common Threads (2016), I will further exemplify how the show impacted the Addis Ababa dance community, by listing responses to a questionnaire from some of the participants and also from some of the sponsors and other audience members (See Appendix 6).
When asked, “Why did you choose to involve in this project?” (See Appendix 6) the former Cultural Affairs Attaché for the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, who played a major role in securing sponsorship for Common Threads (2016), replied: The project incorporated the key elements of community engagement and inclusion and targeted at the US Embassy’s key demographic both as performers and the audience; young people from 15-35. (Former US Embassy Cultural Affairs Attaché 2016 participant questionnaire: Question number 2)
I was grateful that he was able to assist me in getting the US Embassy support, as I would argue that I may not have been able to provide an honorarium for the performers had it not been for their sponsorship. When asked, “Were you pleased with the product produced?” (See Appendix 6) He noted: The show was a unique example of a multicultural event, which brought together strands of local and international actors. It was the best most inclusive dance show I have ever seen in Ethiopia. (Former US Embassy Cultural Affairs Attaché 2016 participant questionnaire: Question number 4)
115
One audience participant, an Ethiopian investment analyst, responded to the same question (See Appendix 6). He noted: I was very pleased with (the) show because it included different dance companies, different influences (Ethiopian, world) and different movement arts (dance, martial art, capoeira, stepping). At times, the performance fused and mixed dance styles, music and the different dance companies, which illustrates common threads and sends a message of openness and unity in diversity, which is an important message for Ethiopia and the world. (Audience Participant 1, 2016 participant questionnaire: Question number 4)
It is comments like these that validate why the production of Ethio-Modern Dance is important to me. The acknowledgment of multicultural ideals, a type ‘unity in diversity’ and Common Threads’ (2016) ability to entertain, reaffirms its success. When asked directly “Do you think that Common Threads and Ethio-Modern Dance were successful in sharing cultural knowledge? How?” (See Appendix 6) Audience Participant 2, a communications professional, responded: With my view, Common Threads and the Ethio-Modern Dance were successful. The cultural dance movements of Ethiopia were nicely interwoven with contemporary and western dance moves. The songs selection was very nice and the mix was done well that I was able to see the smooth transition from the modern to cultural dances. The movements were carefully selected and related. It generally proved to me that dance is indeed a universal language. (Audience Participant 2, 2016 participant questionnaire: Question number 5)
The owner of YEFIKIR, who sponsored costumes, was an audience member, and a community performer participant in Encore (Common Threads 2016), responded in length to the question, “How did this production represent professional dance in the community?” (See Appendix 6) She stated: It showed that there are a number of people interested in dance as a professional career. Having Mintu (Getachew) in many pieces and announcing his acceptance into the Master’s program also showed that Ethiopians are taking it seriously. The high quality of the production also represented professional dance well. Honouring Gashe Negash also exposed us all to the existence and history of professional dance in Ethiopia. (YEFIKIR owner 2016 participant questionnaire: Question number 6)
116 The above participant responses further illustrate the effectiveness of Common Threads (2016) as an Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production which addressed and refined the answers to my central research questions: What is my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio-Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Furthermore, these responses as well as my analysis of Common Threads (2016), exemplify my use of Ethio-Modern Dance as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange within our global community.
Chapter Summary In summary, the Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works of Common Threads (2016) provided a platform for cross-cultural exchange between youth, elders, and artists of Addis Ababa’s dance community, while also exposing young Ethiopian performers to professional African-American ethnochoreologists who provided them with an educational and entertaining experience. Although all of the choreographic works in Common Threads (2016) were created in collaboration with the performers, each work was conceptualised and directed by myself. The extent of my own choreographic input varied with each choreographic work in the production. Having professional performers, choreographers, and ethnochoreologists who could expand further on my original choreographic ideas, illustrates further Common Threads’ cross-cultural connection through movement. My professional colleagues, as well as myself, were able to provide training for young performing artists seeking a career in dance while raising awareness for dance education and performance opportunities abroad. I also provided the performance participants of the production with a ‘Certificate of Participation’ in case it would assist in enhancing their own professional dance credibility as performers in Ethiopia and beyond. Further, by presenting aspects of Afro-Brazilian and Asian movement cultures in the productions of Common Threads (2016), it assisted in blurring the boundaries of what Addis Ababa and Ethiopia might have considered to be a dance performance, while further exemplifying our human cross-cultural connection through movement.
117 Not only did Common Threads (2016) illustrate Ethiopia’s global connection through movement and music, but certain choreographic works such as The Teaching (Common Threads 2016) and Encore (Common Threads 2016) also highlighted my engagement with non-professional youths and adults within the Addis Ababa dance community. I would suggest, however, that more post-production research is needed to acquire more data on the actual impact of the integration of community-based and professional dance performers within the Common Threads (2016) production. I would argue that Common Threads (2016) added to the current education and profession of dance in Addis Ababa, while creating a bridge for knowledge exchange and enhanced communication between dance professionals in Africa, her Diaspora, and beyond. It is my hope that I will be able to generate more funds for the Gash Negash Abdu Common Threads Scholarship Award in the coming years, as there are many more dance artists in Ethiopia who deserve the opportunity to expand their cultural knowledge and education through the study of dance and culture in other countries. Common Threads (2016) further refined my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance and through its reception by the Addis Ababa dance community, it helped to exemplify why producing works like this are important to me and to my research into world dance cultures. In the future, I aspire to use this Common Threads (2016) production as a model that can be adapted in other countries or cultures to extend knowledge and understandings of different cultures through dancing bodies.
118 Chapter Five
Final Reflections and Conclusions
Introduction The written component of this arts practice research has explored the aims, rationale, and challenges associated with my development and presentation of two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). This final chapter concludes my critical analysis and reflections on this doctoral investigation. I will revisit some of the methodologies and theoretical framings presented in Chapter One, and discuss their effectiveness in providing me with the qualitative data needed to answer my central research questions. This chapter will also include my final thoughts on embodiment as my primary concept, as well as the other interconnected concepts which emerged throughout the creative processes of my choreographic works. In later sections of this chapter, I will synthesize my analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016) (See Chapters 3 and 4) and reaffirm the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin, which was represented by these choreographic works. These sections will also discuss some of my successes with these bodies of work, as well as the impact they have had on the dance communities of the University of Limerick, Ireland and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I will close this chapter by stating some of my future aspirations for Ethio-Modern Dance as a movement concept and medium for cultural knowledge exchange.
Methodological Effectiveness In Part One of Chapter One I discussed Arts Practice Research as a field of study, and examined the research methods that I employed in order to develop, present and analyse my two Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). I expressed that my rationale for conducting this practice-led research was grounded in my central research questions: What is my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio-Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia? Embodiment was the main theoretical concept used to frame and contextualise the
119 analysis of my two Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. Embodiment was also integrated with my theoretical understanding of the Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) and Schechner’s (1988, 2003) ‘broad spectrum approach’. This understanding of embodied metaphors and of what can be ‘framed’ as a performance allowed me to invest in the creative process of my practice-led choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2016) and Common Threads (2016). Throughout the creative process I was able to trust in my lived-experience as a professional artist for over twenty years, to ensure that a performance product would be produced according to the doctoral schedule. In Part One of Chapter One, I examined my applied understanding of my choreographic Starting Points, Aesthetic values and the importance of Documentation (Kershaw in Smith & Dean 2009). I argued that my theoretical understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance works could only be explored through embodied artistic practice, autoethnographic narrative written forms (Pelias 2004, Chang 2008) and documentation of my creative processes and performances (Nimkulrat 2007). Together, these methods addressed the ‘paradoxology of performance’ (Kershaw 2009) and played important roles in conducting a thorough analysis of YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). These methods also aided in my rigorous investigation of my research questions (Nelson and Andrews 2003:3) and assisted in illustrating how integral my embodied intentions with Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works was to my evolving sense of self in relation to my artistic practice.
In Part Two of Chapter One, I expressed the importance in my discovery of my spiritual path as a Pan-African Rastafarian and how my faith has become the foundation on which my artistic career has been built. This subsequently led to my repatriation from the US to Ethiopia in 2006, when I began developing ideas for Ethio-Modern Dance. My autoethnographic investigation illustrated how my sense of self was reflected in my early experiences in theatre and dance performances. With my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, I focused on my embodied lived-experiences in American, Ethiopian, and Ireland cultures, in order to situate my artistic practice. In Part Two, I identified some of the key formative moments of my past that shaped the performing artist/researcher that I have become, and I also used narrative inquiry to incorporate the perspectives of others in my life who have impacted my artistic journey. I explained how my drive and tenacity to
120 succeed, not just as a performing artist, but in life, pushed me to cultivate my technical skills at a university level and how my time in university overlapped with my professional career, which led to experiences with various cultures of the world. I mentioned how when I returned to the US after living in Ethiopia for four years, I was inspired to promote Ethiopian culture through the lens of a Western urban contemporary performing artist, to the dance communities with which I engaged.
Chapter One exemplified how my artistic practice is an ever-evolving context driven negotiation of my cultivated experiences. Through my training in ethnochoreology at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick (2012-’13) and the pursuit of this PhD in Arts Practice Research, I have been provided with a platform to investigate my understanding of self in relation to my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). I have learned that as I create, I document and learn. As I embody, I teach, because I feel a responsibility to transmit my lived-experiences through the expressive performing arts. My performance product alone is not enough to articulate a clear understanding of my bodies of work, and by writing about my creative process and analysis I have increased my ability to verbally articulate what and how I create, although I still find it challenging to describe how music makes me feel or how certain impulses can inspire my artistic practice. As any moment in life can be framed as a performance (Schechner 1988, Gray 2003), I am always in ‘performance mode’ and I use dance and the expressive performing arts as a platform for transmitting the embodied cultural knowledge of my lived-experience. Ethio-Modern Dance is for me, my embodied amalgamation of the primary cultures that I have experienced. My perspective on the cultural context of valued aesthetics and my awareness and sensitivity to cultural representation, allows me to produce works with, I hope, a large degree of integrity. My artistic/choreographic practice is a reflection of how I view my purpose in life. This four- year structured PhD in Arts Practice Research programme allowed me to share my embodied cultural knowledge with global communities, while investigating and deepening my understanding of my life’s work, through the development and presentation of my Ethio- Modern Dance choreographic works.
121 Emerged Conceptual Understanding In Chapter Two I discussed my sense of self as a performing artist/lifist and how the concept of lifism is at the core of my artistic practice and my doctoral research. I also examined my understanding of embodiment, culture, metaphor, and other theoretical concepts and how they are integrated into my creative processes. I argued that my understanding of Ethio- Modern Dance is my embodiment of Ethiopian culture, Western modern/contemporary dance, and indeed other world dance cultures. This combined embodiment – as my habitus, I used as tools of influence in my choreographic processes. I posed the theory of my creative process, performance, and analysis of the choreographic works of YeBuna Alem (2016) and Common Threads (2016) to be about the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin.
In the following two sections I will reflect on the results of my practice-led research investigations of the two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works, as they relate to my central research questions: What is my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio-Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?
‘YeBuna Alem’ - Reflections YeBuna Alem (2015) was presented at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland and illustrated how Ethiopian Arabica coffee is a global phenomenon as well as a cultural conduit. In Chapter Three I argued that my role as Buna within the performance could be viewed as a ‘metaphor within a metaphor’, in that I positioned myself as a cultural broker for Ethiopia, a fact that was expressed by participants, performers and audience alike, throughout the creative process. For this reason, I incorporated certain embodied aesthetics, rituals, and iconography of Ethiopia within YeBuna Alem (2015) in order to reinforce the Ethiopian connection to the various choreographed narratives in this body of the work. I also performed the role of the metaphorical embodiment of Buna’s (coffee’s) journey throughout the production. My character, Buna was the ‘common thread’ within the performance, which weaved the
122 choreographed narratives together: from Buna’s discovery in Herdu (YeBuna Alem 2015: 00:00:22), to his subsequent spread to other parts of the globe, which was reflected in narrative and choreographed movements of Buna Kona (YeBuna Alem 2015, 00:26:36). With YeBuna Alem (2015), I was able to refine my understanding of the ‘Ethio’ half of the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin, the side that emphasises the works I produce outside of Ethiopia. I was able to clarify particular aspects of my embodied Ethiopian cultural influences, which I used as tools in my creative process and in the presentation of this choreographic work at the University of Limerick, Ireland. As I stated in Chapter One, my intentions with the creation of Ethio-Modern Dance were to use it as a medium for not only promoting Ethiopian culture but also as a way of integrating and connecting Ethiopian culture to other cultures of the world. I noted in Chapter Three that Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley (1988) stated: …dance may have a purpose or function primarily as an artwork or as a ritual act or as a form of entertainment…or as more than one of these simultaneously. (Adshead, Briginshaw, Hodgens, and Huxley 1988:13)
I argued that YeBuna Alem (2015) was effective in meeting these intentions as a multidimensional representation of aesthetic values, ritual, education, and entertainment. Some of the post-performance questionnaire responses supported my notion of the impact this performance had on the University of Limerick dance community. As my culturally integrative intentions reached beyond the discipline of dance, in Chapter Three I noted how classical pianist Xin Meng expressed her own embodied cultural connection of China and Ethiopia through her participation in the YeBuna Alem (2015) production. The educational and entertaining impact of YeBuna Alem (2015) was also illustrated by other performer and audience participant responses to the production (See Chapter 3). I noted that one of the Irish audience participants referred to the performance as, “A warm, festive, Ethio-Modern dance work that transported the audience to Ethiopia through the story of coffee” (Audience Questionnaire Participant 1, 2015: question number 1). These reflections illustrated the ways in which I was able to use the choreographic works of the Ethio-Modern Dance YeBuna Alem (2015) as a medium for my embodied knowledge transmission of Ethiopian culture. These reflections also supported my reasons for creating Ethio-Modern Dance and
123 why it is important to me, which was to plant the metaphorical seed of intrigue about Ethiopia into the minds of the participants – performers and audience alike. I would argue further that the performance environment created by the setting, the performers, and the audience provided an educational and entertaining experience for all the participants of YeBuna Alem (2015). From the creative process through to the presentation of YeBuna Alem (2015), my embodied understanding of contemporary art culture was also reflected in this choreographic work. Elements of embodied Ethiopian Orthodox Church ritual culture, such as gestures of prayer and the use of incense, also added to this work’s multidimensional sensual experiences. My intentions of transmitting embodied knowledge of Ethiopian aesthetic values and ritual culture in an entertaining and educational fashion, was not only effectively reflected in YeBuna Alem (2015), it was also reflected in my second major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic production, Common Threads (2016). I will now briefly revisit some of the emerged concepts that related to Common Threads (2016), which was performed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
‘Common Threads’ - Reflections
My intentions with the choreographic works presented in Common Threads (2016), was to showcase a cross-cultural diversity of modern/contemporary and traditional movement styles, which are currently being practiced within the Addis Ababa, Ethiopian community. I therefore engaged with a variety of professional and non-professional performers from the Addis Ababa community and collaborated with international artists on certain choreographed works, in order to integrate people of different backgrounds, various technical abilities, and skill sets. With this production I was able to refine more of the ‘Modern’ half of the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin. This body of choreographic works focused on my embodied knowledge and expertise in Western contemporary performing arts and production. With Common Threads (2016), there was less of a desire to promote my embodiment of Ethiopian culture because most of the audience and performer participants had general background knowledge about the country in which they resided. My role in this production was, again, that of the cultural conduit, but also of an artistic director who incorporated many voices and talents of people in the field of dance/movement. I aspired to share this collective space and not take it over. Although it was not my focus for Common
124 Threads (2016), this choreographic showcase reflected my embodiment of ritual practice within the choreographed movements of particular works, such as One Tribe (Common Threads 2016, 5:59). This production also reflected Ethiopia’s cultural connection to other world dance cultures, such as Hip hop, Afro-Brazilian and African-American step dance cultures.
When I began the creative process for Common Threads (2016), I could not have imagined that it would have evolved into the massive type of production that was presented and shared by over 1,200 people at the Ethiopian National Theatre in Addis Ababa. With the support that I received from over 50 participating performers and from more than 10 sponsors, I would argue that this showcase was a success in illustrating my community engagement and a diversity of dance genres being practiced amongst the people of Addis Ababa. The success of this performance did not, however, come without its challenges.
As I mentioned in Chapter Four, most of the challenges during the performance of Common Threads (2016) were of a technical nature. Some of the critiques given about the performance from personal conversations, as well as a few post-production questionnaires, were also in regard to an improvement in technical aspects of the show such as the sound and lighting for selected choreographic works. It was also mentioned that some audience participants would have preferred broader explanations of the different bodies of work in the production. I chose to keep the explanations of the choreographic works brief during the performance, as well as in the concert programme (See Appendix 9), in order to conserve time and paper. In reflection, I do feel that an explanation of the different performance groups would have assisted the audience with understanding the range of non-professional community performers to professional performers in the production. An explanation may have also assisted with communicating the different narratives that informed the production. There was also a great challenge in acquiring Ethiopian dancer responses that could validate my perceptions of the successes or failures with Common Threads (2016), and the impact of these Ethio-Modern Dance experiences on the greater Addis Ababa dance community. I would argue that this is because many of the performers had either not had enough time, or
125 did not wish to critically engage in a response to their experience in Common Threads (2016).
Through my analysis of the creative process and presentation of Common Threads (2016) (See Chapter 4), I further refined my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works which I produce in Ethiopia. I would argue that this clarity in understanding of the metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin, which was reflected in both YeBuna Alem (2015) and in Common Threads (2016), reinforced the importance of my Ethio-Modern Dance works, not only for myself but also for Ethiopia, Ireland and beyond.
Performer Process and Audience Product Interpretations The role of the performer and audience participants in YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016), informed their embodied interpretations and responses to these bodies of work. With both bodies of work, the institutional and cultural habitus of the participants impacted how these works were perceived by the participants. The embodied knowledge of each participant was contextually specific to the locale of the creative process and performance of the work. The participants were not required to begin the creative process or to view the performance product with a specific level of background knowledge on the subjects of Ethiopian culture or Ethio-Modern Dance. In Chapter Three, I discuss how the performer and audience participants’ varying degrees of background knowledge aided in determining their perception of the creative process and/or performance product of YeBuna Alem. As there is metaphorically two sides to my Ethio-Modern Dance coin, my aspiration to promote more ‘Ethio’, to communities outside of Ethiopia, is reflected in the participant responses of YeBuna Alem (2015). The similar Western contemporary dance habitus of the YeBuna Alem performer participants allowed for more transmission of my embodied Ethiopian cultural knowledge. I would argue that after viewing the live performance of YeBuna Alem, an audience member’s embodied cultural knowledge of Ethiopia, was not as in-depth as the performer’s knowledge, due to the fact that the live performance only illustrated refined aspects of the entire creative process. The performer’s embodied cultural knowledge of Ethiopia had been informed by their exposure to the various other components within the creative process. Some of these components were not fully articulated in the
126 performance product, such as their embodied knowledge of different movement characteristics associated with Ethiopian traditional dances. Depending on the background knowledge of the audience participant, they may not have seen or connected the Ethiopian cultural dance influences to the bodies of choreographic work they viewed. On the other side of this Ethio-Modern Dance coin, I am more inclined to promote my embodied ‘Modern’ experiences while in Ethiopia, as members of the Ethiopian community would have more background knowledge on the culture they reside in. This was the case with Common Threads (2016) as I aimed to illustrate Ethiopia’s intercultural connection to the world through a diverse showcase of culturally inspired choreography. As with YeBuna Alem, all of the participants in Common Threads had varying degrees of background knowledge on Ethio-Modern Dance, but they developed a better understanding of this movement concept from their participation in the creative process and/or performance of this choreographic work. The similar background knowledge of Ethiopian culture by the participants allowed me to focus on the promotion of dance as an art form and on the transmission of contemporary performance elements to the participants. In the analysis of Common Threads (2016), the audience participant responses helped to illuminate the impact of this performance product on the greater Addis Ababa dance community. This was a central part of this work’s investigation. With both bodies of work, the background knowledge of all the participant played a significant role in how each participant interpreted these choreographic works. The transmission of a performer’s embodied cultural knowledge, from their involvement in the creative process, impacted the audience’s interpretation of each performance product. With either work, the performer participant’s perception of their embodied knowledge was more informed by their participation in the creative process and the audience participant’s perception was more informed by the performance product.
Although gender was not examined in depth in relation to the development and presentation of these Ethio-Modern Dance choreographed works, it did play a role in the creative process and products of them. The viewing of my two performance products illustrates how I engaged with male and female performers in both Limerick and Addis Ababa communities. With YeBuna Alem (2015), aside from myself, the host, and technician/performer, all the
127 other performer participants were female. In Common Threads (2016), the majority of the performers were male. In both instances, the performers that I used were based on who was available to me at the time. I would argue that one reason for incorporating myself into YeBuna Alem, was because I did not have access to any other male performers. My role in the performance also further exemplified my role as ‘cultural broker’ of Ethio-Modern Dance and illustrated my personal connection to the movement, narratives, and the transmission of the work. It is also important to mention that one of my initial themes with the Common Threads production, was the empowerment of women. Due to a lack of access to female performers of the Addis Ababa community, I was not able to explore this theme as much as I would have liked. The gender of the participants in both bodies of work did impact the choreographed movements as my awareness of gender norms within both the Ireland and Ethiopian societies influenced what was transmitted to the performers. I am positive that the interpretive impact of these two bodies of work would have been different if I had access to a more diverse gender pool of performers.
Final Discoveries I would argue that Ethio-Modern Dance is like an embodied experiential continuum with ‘Ethio’ at one end and ‘Modern’ at the other end, but both are present in the choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). The degree in which they are present in these works is dependent upon the context - where each production is performed. Hence, in YeBuna Alem (2015), presented in Ireland, the ‘Ethio’ side of the coin is more emphasised because the aspiration was to educate the participants about my embodied aspects of Ethiopian culture, with the movement as well as the performance environment. In Common Threads (2016), presented in Ethiopia, the ‘Modern’ side of the Ethio-Modern Dance coin was more emphasised because of the participants’ background knowledge of Ethiopian culture. This compelled me to use this production as way to transmit to the participants my embodied experiences and expertise in Western modern/contemporary performing arts, through a showcase of culturally diverse movement genres in a contemporary setting.
As a performing arts practitioner/researcher I aspire to integrate and educate with my
128 creative works drawing from my embodied lived-experience as my primary inspiration. Choreographer Anna Sokolow (1982) states, “I never plan a dance. I do it, look at it, and then say: ‘Yes, I see what I am trying to do…’ (Sokolow in Blom and Chaplin 1982:11). I align with this notion, as I believe that this is how I invested in the creative processes of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). I was not always consciously aware, at the time of choreographing the work, what aspects of my lived-experience inspired the choreographed movements that were developed. Many of these influences, however, became clear once I was able to see the movement transmitted on to another body or documented on to the recorded audio-visual footage. This insight allowed these two bodies of work to take on their own conceptual shape while still being grounded in my original thematic intentions for creating these Ethio-Modern Dance productions. My embodied understanding of concepts such as Shusterman’s (2006) somaesthetics and ‘bodily analysis’ aided me in the transmission of particular movements, which subsequently were embodied by the performers in these choreographic works.
Due to my aspiration to promote Ethiopia’s cultural connection to the world with my metaphorical two-sided Ethio-Modern Dance coin, I have acknowledged the hierarchy of Ethiopian culture in my multicultural approach to these bodies of work. Although, I have incorporated my cultural awareness and sensitivity into how Ethiopian culture and other world cultures have been represented in the choreographic works of YeBuna Alem (2015) and Common Threads (2016). I would argue that the notion of promoting Ethiopian culture was more evident in the first Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work YeBuna Alem (2015).
To acknowledge and articulate intercultural connections and correlations through movement, is important to my choreographic process. These connections illustrate my habitus and human commonalities, although the original intentions for the movement may differ. I would argue that Common Threads (2016) reflected more of an intercultural exchange through the various cultural aspects that were represented in this production, such as the movement, music, costumes, and even the promotional advertisements (See Chapter 4).
Although certain intentions, locale, and the end choreographic products of Common Threads (2016) and YeBuna Alem (2015) were different, the creative process of both bodies of work
129 were similar in that they evolved from an initial thematic idea and developed into an array of narrative and movement forms that reflected my research intentions with Ethio-Modern Dance. Both practice-led performance productions were effective in refining my understanding of my Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic processes, inside and outside of Ethiopia. As my research findings in Chapter Three and Four have shown, the impact of both performances on the Limerick and Addis Ababa dance communities is evidence of why creating these types of works is important to me as an artist/lifist. I would argue that the diverse localities and themes, together with the reflections of participants in both performances illustrated how Ethio-Modern Dance can be used as a medium for cultural knowledge exchange. To that affect, I firmly believe that my arts practice research was successful in addressing my central research questions: What is my understanding of Ethio- Modern Dance? What is the importance of Ethio-Modern Dance to me? And, Can Ethio- Modern Dance be used as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange by the performance participants in my two major choreographic works at the University of Limerick, Ireland and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?
Before I conclude this chapter I would also like to acknowledge that through my doctoral research I have been able to ‘bridge’ cultural knowledge ‘horizons’ between Higher Education Institutions in Ireland and Ethiopia. Because of my relationship with both the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, and Addis Ababa University’s Yared Music School, I have facilitated a student/staff educational and cultural exchange between the two schools. At the time of this writing the first two Ethiopian students have begun their six-month exchange at the University of Limerick.
Conclusion In conclusion, this arts practice-led research – a written doctoral thesis entitled, Bridging Horizons: Embodied Cultural Knowledge Through the Development and Presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance, and the two major choreographic works YeBuna Alem/A Coffee World (2015) and Common Threads (2016) have provided me with a platform to reflect upon my
130 embodied life experiences and my development as an artist/lifist. I embody my lived socio- cultural experiences made up of being a child of Civil Rights Movement activists, a product of Hip Hop culture, a Western trained contemporary dancer, and a Pan-African man immersed in the Rastafarian faith. All of these socio-cultural movements, and ways of life, are a part of my individual, institutional, and choreographic habitus. Despite the diverse cultural influences of my upbringing, I still feel a responsibility to promote my understanding of Ethiopian culture as part of my artistic practice and through my academic research. This responsibility stems from my connection to Ethiopia through my family and faith, but I also aspire to illustrate the socio-cultural connections of Ethiopia to the rest of the world, using Ethio-Modern Dance as the medium.
I acknowledge that my cultural habitus contributes to the cerebral and corporal knowledge of my lived body’s experience and is represented in my artistic practice. In looking at the focus of my doctoral research, Ethio-Modern Dance, this name alone suggests how my work may be viewed. I have consciously taken ownership of my works cultural nuances, as they highlight personal experiences that have impacted my life and possibly the lives of others. This highlighted suggestion of Ethiopia in ‘Ethio’ is intentional, in order to separate myself from the catch-all categories that most ‘African-American’ dancers are grouped in, what Desmond refers to as “black” dance (Desmond 1993-94:42). Now that I have begun to ‘think interculturally’ about my work, I am more aware of, and yet less concerned with, the perception of my work as long as the participants in them are clear about the ‘ends’ or goals of the work and the intention or reasoning for the movements chosen. Ethio-Modern Dance, is a term I created as a reflection of my reflection of my individual, institutional and choreographic habitus. ‘Ethio’ reflects my embodied lived-experiences of Ethiopia and ‘Modern’ reflects the dance genre I trained in for my undergraduate degree. I use the term modern as I would use the term contemporary in that it is not traditional and it exists in the contemporary world that I live in. I could have chosen to call my works Ethio- Contemporary Dance, but I honestly did not like the sound of it, and it is for this reason that I chose Ethio-Modern Dance as the name of the movement concept which has been the focus of this research.
131 It is through my four-year pursuit of this PhD in Arts Practice Research, that I have broadened and refined my understanding of the potentialities of Ethio-Modern Dance as a medium for embodied cultural knowledge exchange. These potentialities are what made the development and presentation of the two major Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works important to me. With physical, socio-political, and metaphorical ‘movement’ as a central theme in my life, I aim to continue to use my embodied lived-experiences as inspirational tools in my artistic practice. My artistic practice is exemplary of my integration of my embodied cultural experiences. This theory resonates with my creative process in the development and presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic works. As I continue to expand my international education and production networks between the Americas, Europe, Africa and beyond, I hope that I will further my understanding of Ethio-Modern Dance, its importance to me and to the world of dance. This research has altered my perception of myself and my creative works by deepening my awareness of my actions through reflective analysis. I will continue to explore ways in which I can integrate my embodied understanding of Ethiopian culture with my lived-experiences in Western contemporary dance, and other world dance cultures.
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145 Appendix I
Glossary of Terms
Addis- Amharic word meaning new Buna- Amharic word meaning coffee Alem- Amharic word meaning world Kesel- Amharic word meaning coal Girgira- Amharic word referring to a rock incense burner Jebena- Amharic word for a clay coffee pot Etan- Amharic word meaning rock incense Washint- Amharic word for a type of Ethiopian traditional flute Azmari- An Ethiopian social group who make their living singing and playing traditional Ethiopian Music Beguna- Traditional Ethiopian lyre instrument commonly associated with Ethiopian Orthodox Church hymns Tizeta- Amharic word meaning Remembrance Kona- Hawaiian word for coffee Netella- A traditional Ethiopian scarf Habesha- A word often used to describe Ethiopians and some Eritreans Kemis- Amharic word meaning dress Eskista- A Traditional Ethiopian shoulder, neck, and torso dance Frey- Amharic word meaning seed Sini- Amharic word meaning a small tea or coffee cup Fendisha Bekolo- Amharic compound word meaning popcorn Shalela- A type of eskista used to raise moral, traditionally in preparation for war Berimbau- A one string instrument from Brazil used predominantly for capoeira Balancé- a side to side movement of the feet and body within capoeira Xinga- the basic step in capoeira movement
146 Appendix II YeBuna Alem Letter to the Artist
Greetings and Happy New Years to you all, I hope that this year will be prosperous for all of us. With that being said I am opening this group message to begin the dialog about my first Ethio-Modern Dance PhD performance piece scheduled to premiere May 26th in Theatre 2 at the Irish World Academy. I have spoken to most of you about the possibility of participating in my work and hope that you are still considering it and just know that collaboration is imperative to any success that will come from this creative process. Here are my ideas about the work: Tentative Title: Bunna from Kaffa to Café: A World of Coffee Backstory: Bunna (Coffee) is said to have originated from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia. The legends say coffee was discovered by a goat herder wandering the hillsides of the country. One day his goats didn’t return to the call of his flute, which would normally be the case. When the herder found the goats he noticed that they were extremely active and that they had been eating the beans of the coffee plant. The herder eventually tried the beans himself and noticed the stimulation that it provided. He then took it to the utmost authority at the time, the church, to share his discovery, as he knew that this might help the priest with their long nights of reading the bible. The church took in and discovered that roasting and brewing where the best way to consume this bitter bean. Coffee became a ceremonial process and was served at least 3 times, with each cup have a symbolic meaning. This ceremonial significance still exists in Ethiopian culture today, although its symbolic meanings have evolved. Coffee was spread to the rest of the world by and Arab trader hence the name Arabica coffee. Coffee has since become a type of cultural conduit, as it is something that cultures all over the world have a connection to. In essence this seed of Ethiopia has been spread and has penetrated our global culture and has continued to evolve in significance, as it has been integrated world. Creative Process Objective: I want to illustrate the journey of coffee From Kaffe to Café. I want to create vignettes that depict aspects of coffee’s discovery and spread to the world through trade, but also how it now relates to the cultures of the world. All of these vignettes will be performed in a setting that is reminiscent to a traditional Ethiopian Bunna Bet (Coffee House) to recorded Ethiopian music and some live sounds as well, while the traditional food and Ethiopian coffee is being prepared and served to the audience. Your Contribution: I am sure everyone will not be used in a performative manner, but I welcome all suggestions as to how I might express some of these ideas. If you could think about what I have mentioned and answer the following questions, I am sure it will assist in the inspiring the storyline of some of these vignettes. 1. How do you feel about the legend on the origin of coffee? Do you agree or disagree and why? 2. How do you see coffee’s connection to the culture/country that you are from? Does it have a ceremonial, social, or cultural significance etc.? 3. What is your personal relationship with coffee? 4. How do you see coffee in relationship to the world? 5. In terms of this production, what part of coffee’s journey would you like to see created and or like to perform? 6. Are you comfortable with being interviewed and documented as part of the creative process for this work? To wrap up: I am in the beginning stages of this creative process and I have no real idea what the product is going to be, that will be determined by the level of commitment of everyone involved. At this point no one is obligated to participate in this project except me, so don’t feel pressured. Please be practical about how or if you choose to involve yourself in this creative process. I am hoping to begin rehearsals in mid February, if not before. By your response to this message I will know whom I can start working with to bring some of our ideas into fruition. I look forward to hearing from you all. Blessings RAS Mikey Courtney
147 Appendix III
YeBuna Alem Performer Questionnaire
Performer Questions:
Why did you want to involve yourself with this project?
What did you know about Ethio-Modern Dance before this project? What have you learned about Ethio-Modern Dance?
How would you describe your role in this project?
How would you describe the creative process with this project?
How would you define your relationship with the director during this project?
Did the director display an expertise in his field of knowledge and was he clear with his expectations of the project?
Do you feel that your knowledge of culture has broadened as a result of your participation in this project? If so, how? If not, why do you feel it hasn’t?
What were some of your challenges in working on this project?
What do you feel you have gained from being a part of this project?
Was there anything you would want to change about the creative process?
Would you work with this director again in the future? Why or Why not?
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your experience working on this project? (1 being not a good experience and 10 being very enjoyable experience) And Why?
148 Appendix IV
የቡና ዓለም YeBuna Alem (A Coffee World): Audience Questionnaire
Please complete the following to the best of your ability, use the backside if necessary.
Age (optional):
Country of Origin (optional):
What words would you use to describe “YeBuna Alem”?
Why did you watch this view of the performance?
What is your knowledge of Contemporary dance?
What is your knowledge of Ethiopian Dance?
Do you feel as though your cultural awareness has increase by watching this performance? (If no why, if yes give examples)
Does this work motivate you to learn more about Ethiopia or other cultures? Why?
Does this piece motivate you to learn more about dance? Why?
Would you support more work like this in the future or encourage others to do so? Why?
What aspect of this performance do you think will stay with you? Why?
149
Appendix V YeBuna Alem Show Program
!
RAS Mikey Courtney is an African-American but has resided in Ethiopia since 2006. RAS recently completed his MA in Ethnochoreology at the University of Limerick where he is currently a guest lecturer, while pursuing his PhD in Arts Practice Research. RAS has a B.F.A in Dance Performance from the UARTS in Philadelphia and has collaborated on works with Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Raven- Symone, and The Marley Family to name a few. He has taught, performed, and choreographed dance and other performing arts world-wide with his company Fore I’m a Versatile Entertainer (F.I.V.E.) Productions (www.fivedance.com). RAS is a ! current member of the board of directors for the Dance Research Forum Ireland. RAS's works are a reflection of his spirit and his passion for the performing arts as a cultural and social movement. His objective is to bridge the gaps of cultural traditions
and popular culture through education and production in the performing arts.
A Special ‘Give Thanks’
Emporer Haile Selassie I, Abeba Gebremedhin, Hattie Courtney, Dr. Frank Porter, Douige Styles, Marc Spaulding, Dr. Helen Phelan, Dr. Catherine Foley, Dr. Niall ! Keegan, Dr. Sandra Joyce, Melissa Carty, Sinead Doody & Limerick City Council, Doras Luimni, Africa Day 2015 & Irish Aid, Ethiopian
Ambassador Lela-Alem Gebreyohannas, Alec Brown, Xin Meng, Jakari Sherman, Ozan Çagil Deniz, Jazmyne Koch, Nina Pongratz, Jennifer
De Brun, Luis Ignacio Sanchez, Andre Jones, Fran McCarthy, Solomon Gizaw
And all others who made this possible...
Sponsors
! ! !
!
Back and Front Cover
Inside pages 1 & 2
150 Appendix VI
Common Threads General Participant Questionnaire
What is your current profession?
What was your involvement in the Common Threads production? (collaborator, sponsor, audience participant etc.)
Why did you choose to involve in this project?
Were you pleased with the product produced? Why or why not?
Do you think that Common Threads and Ethio-Modern Dance were successful in sharing cultural knowledge? How?
How did this production represent professional dance in the community?
Do you believe that Common Threads productively engaged with the youths? How?
What were a few of your likes and dislikes about the Common Threads production as a whole? (if any)
Would you involve in a production like this in the future?
Any further questions or comments…
151 Appendix VII
Common Threads Performer Questionnaire
How do you know Ras Mikey?
What was your role in the Common threads production?
What aspects of Common Threads reflected Ethiopian culture and how? (i.e. movements, music, costuming, setting, performers, audience etc.)
What does Ethio-Modern Dance mean to you?
Do you think Common Threads was a good representation of Ethio-Modern Dance? How?
How do you feel about the Gash Negash Abdu Common Threads award?
Do you feel that the Ethiopian community was pleased by Common Threads, how?
Did the show or Ras Mikey impact your community in any way?
What do you hope for dance in Ethiopia and what role can Ras Mikey play in it?
1. ራስ ማይኪን እንዴት ነው የሚያውቁት? 2. በኮመን ትሬድስ ዝግጅት ላይ የእርሶ ሚና (አስተዋጽኦ) ምንድን ነው? 3. የትኛው ኮመን ትሬድስ ክፍል ወይም የተሳተፉበት የዳንስ ኬሪዮግራፊ የኢትዮጵያን ባህል አንጸባርቋል? እንዴት? (የዳንስ እንቅስቃሴዎቹ፣ ሙዚቃው፣ የመድረክ ልብሶቹ፣ ወዘተ…) 4. ስለራስ ማይኪ የኢትዮ-ሞደርን ዳንስ ኬሪዮሎጂ ምን ያስባሉ (ምን ይሰማዎታል)? 5. ስለ የጋሽ ነጋሽ አብዱ ኮመን ትሬድስ ሽልማት ምን ይሰማዎታል? 6. በኮመን ትሬድስ ዝግጅት ሰዎች የተደሰቱ ይመስሎታል? እንዴት? 7. ራስ ማይኪ ወይንም ዝግጅቱ በምን መንገድ ለወደፊት ስራ አነሳስቶታል? እንዴት? 8. ዳንስ በኢትዮጵያ ወደፊት እንዴት እንዲሆን ተስፋ ያደርጋሉ? ራስ ማይኪ ምን አይነት ሚና ሊጫወት ይችላል ብለው ያስባሉ?
152 Appendix VIII
Negash Abdu Questionnaire
1. How do you know RAS Mikey?
2. What to you think about his Ethio-Modern Dance choreographic work?
3. What was your general response to the National Theatre Common Threads show? 4. How do you feel about the Gash Negash Common Threads Awards that was named after you?
5. Do you think the community was happy about the Common Threads show?
6. How did RAS Mikey or the show inspire you?
7. Do you think RAS Mikey’s works reflects Ethiopian culture? How?
8. What do you hope for the future of dance in Ethiopia? What role can RAS Mikey play?
1. ራስ ማይኪን እንዴት ነው የሚያውቁት? 2. እሱ ስለሚሰራው የኢትዮ-ሞደርን ዳንስ ኬሪዮሎጂ ምን ያስባሉ (ምን ይሰማዎታል)? 3. በብሄራዊ ቲያትር ስላዘጋጀው የኮመን ትሬድስ ዝግጅት ምላሾ ምንድን ነበር? 4. በስሞ ስለተሰየመው የጋሽ ነጋሽ አብዱ ኮመን ትሬድስ ሽልማት ምን ይሰማዎታል? 5. በኮመን ትሬድስ ዝግጅት ሰዎች የተደሰቱ ይመስሎታል? 6. ራስ ማይኪ ወይንም ዝግጅቱ በምን መንገድ አነሳስቶታል? እንዴት? 7. ራስ ማይኪ የሚሰራው ስራ የኢትዮጵያን ባህል ያንጸባርቃል ብለው ያስባሉ? እንዴት? 8. ዳንስ በኢትዮጵያ ወደፊት እንዴት እንዲሆን ተስፋ ያደርጋሉ? ራስ ማይኪ ምን አይነት ሚና ሊጫወት ይችላል ብለው ያስባሉ?
153 Appendix IX Common Threads Show Program
Back and Front Cover
Inside pages 1 & 2
154 Appendix X University of Limerick Ethical Consent Forms
FACULTY OF ARTS, HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEE INFORMATION SHEET
Bridging Horizons: Embodied Cultural Knowledge Through the Development and Presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance
My name is Michael (RAS Mikey) Courtney and I am a Doctorial candidate at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and my research will attempt to broaden the cultural understanding of the Ethiopian tradition and its influences on my creative practice as an urban contemporary artists from the West. Bridging Horizons: Embodied Cultural Knowledge Through Development and Presentation of Ethio-Modern Dance offers the opportunity to broaden our understanding of Africa with a focus on Ethiopia's cultural dance traditions and her relationship to contemporary culture. I will conduct recorded (audio/video) interviews with notable individuals within the Ethiopian and other communities in order to gain an understanding of the participant’s perspective on what traditional and contemporary dance is and how the two relate. I will also document willing participants during the creative process as well as the performance of dance and other cultural projects related to dance (via video, audio, photographic and or written notation). The locations and amount of time required of each participant will vary, depending upon the participant’s requests and availability. You, the participant, reserve the right to remain anonymous in which case a pseudonym will be given. You, the participant, will always have the option to refuse answering a question or to withdraw from the research at anytime within 30 days of completing the interview, as is expressed in the attached consent form. If you have any reservations about this research project you have the right as the participant to contact myself, or the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee with any question they might have.
Investigator: Michael L Courtney Mobile: +353873590982, +251973078203 Email: [email protected]
Supervisor: Dr. Catherine Foley Tel: +353 61 202922, Fax: +353 61 202589, Email: [email protected]
This research study has received Ethics approval from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics committee (quote approval number). If you have any concerns about this study and wish to contact someone independent, you may contact:
Chairperson Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee AHSS Faculty Office, University of Limerick, Tel: +353 61 202286 Email: [email protected]
English Version
Amharic Version
155 Appendix XI Letters of Support
Ethiopian Ambassador to Ireland Ethiopian National Theatre
United States Embassy Addis Ababa
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