Context:
A
vibrant contemporary dance scene developed in the swift
currents of urbanization and globalization in late 20th
century Africa. Rooted in the National Dance Company movement
beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, the scene was accelerated
by international exchanges, and a range of national and
Pan-African competitions, often levered by foreign—particularly
French—investment. Far from reinforcing (or inventing)
a status quo of tradition or nationhood, the fast-track
artists who people this “movement (r)evolution”
continue to reframe rapidly shifting relationships and
identities as they create and perform in Africa and abroad.
“Movement (R)evolution Africa” explores the
emerging movement through the voices and performances
of a selection of its trendsetters. The film is intended
to expand and invigorate contemporary dance by illuminating
critical innovations of African artists.
A realistic
portrait of Africans who actively create the stories of
their own lives is sorely lacking from many views of Africa.
“Africa”—as portrayed by disaster-focused
media—is populated by an ill-fated humanity consuming
aid and contributing little in return. Familiar images include
men, women and, mostly hungry children, engulfed by poverty,
illiteracy, debt, desertification, HIV/AIDS, and political
turmoil. A generalized numbness regarding African concerns
renders invisible much African achievement. Meanwhile, a
view of Africans artists as keepers of unchanging traditions
further undermines full recognition of who African artists
are today. Although the press may not promote the story
of African artistic agency on its front pages, select continental
choreographers render profoundly personal approaches with
which to express their contemporary lives.
The
continent’s new dance movement is small but varied
and dynamic. It reaches, at this point, a growing cadre
of fellow artists and interested audiences in Africa, Europe,
and North America. Rooted in the National Dance Company
movement beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, international
exchanges, and spurred on by internal and international
competitions, Africa’s new dance movement developed
in the swiftly changing currents of urbanization and globalization
of the late 20th century. Far from reinforcing (or inventing)
a status quo of tradition or nationhood, contemporary dance
grew with increasing diversity and youthful vigor in a response
to internal and external artistic, cultural, and political
influences. The movement has emerged in mostly urban hot
spots, performing for, mostly, urban audiences. Rural audiences
are increasingly exposed to the work through the efforts,
for example, of choreographic centers such as L‘Ecole
des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, or through such enterprising
cultural movements as Festival Kaay Fecc which draws huge,
diverse, and enthusiastic audiences in Dakar and beyond
through ever-expanding networks and partnerships. As a form,
contemporary African dance continues to upset and challenge
multiple conventions and stereotypes, reframing rapidly
shifting relationships and identities in its wake. Today
the best of this scene unpacks a fresh set of perspectives
on the inner and outer realities that Africans—and
the world—face.
For
example, the contemporary dance movement of the late 1990s
included the creation of such leading-edge companies as
the Ivorian all-women’s ensemble TchéTché,
and the Senegal based Compagnie Jant Bi. Today, TchéTché’s
performances continue to define a powerfully reconceived
notion of womanhood through a hurtling, almost shocking
physicality that denies any notion of subservience. Based
upon a technique of breath and weight juxtaposed with a
reinvention of the Bété motifs choreographer
Béatrice Kombé learned in her youth, TchéTché’s
work packs extraordinary physical power within the intimate
parameters of breath-filled self-revelation. Other work,
such as the dance theatre of Compagnie Jant Bi renders complex
cross-cultural dance theater portraits of upturned cultural
encounters, war, and alienation. Jant-Bi’s staging
of racism and genocide has challenged the postcolonial gaze
causing strong reactions in audiences and critics worldwide.
These
exceptional artists see themselves as part of the whole
world, not the “Third World,” and, while proudly
African, refuse to be marginalized as “African Dancers.”
They are artists who seek first to investigate and communicate
their ideas, through dance, with the world. Germaine Acogny,
founding mother of Senegalese contemporary dance, sums up
the importance of the movement when she passionately states
on camera, “(African) Contemporary dance is overturning
the global concept of contemporary dance, and I sincerely
believe that this is only the beginning…we are bringing
a new breath to dance.”
With
the support of the French government (AFAA), the biannual
contemporary dance platform, Sanga: the African and Indian
Ocean Choreographic Competition (also translated as Choreographic
Encounters of Africa and the Indian Ocean), held first in
1995 in Luanda, Angola, has now become a hothouse, however
contested, for the development of the art form. The Fifth
Choreographic Encounters of Africa and the Indian Ocean
was held in Antananarivo, Madagascar in 2003. That 2006
edition was set in Paris (2006) indicates the political
tugging and conflicting notions of “ownership”
accompanying the lighting-fast proliferation of this art
form over the past decade. Europe has continued to provide
the mainstay of touring for many of these companies. In
fact, winners of the Sanga Choreographic Encounters of Africa
and the Indian Ocean are awarded a tour in multiple venues
across Europe, and some in Africa. In 2002, Belgium created
a celebration of African culture entitled “Africalia,”
which featured a weeklong festival of African contemporary
dance. The Montpellier Dance Festival, arguably one of the
most celebrated dance festivals in Europe, presented a panoply
of African contemporary dance in 2000 for the first time
in the festival’s history. Rather than rely on the
rarefied encounter of the (mostly, European) tour, a number
of African artists and producers have worked to create infrastructures
that support the recognition of African artists in Africa.
Since the late 1990s entrepreneurial producers and artists
have sought to develop viable dance festivals. Kaay Fecc
Festival in Senegal, which met for the third biennial in
June of 2005, Abok i Ngoma in Cameroon, Atour Africa in
Benin with Koffi Kôkô, Dialogue des Corps in
Burkina Faso directed by Compagnie Salia Nï Seydou,
among others, provide platforms for performers and opportunities
to build new African audiences.
How
the film came about:
The 2000 Montpellier performance of Compagnie TchéTché
was my original inspiration for the film. TchéTché’s
performance so startlingly rocked me, including the unforgettable
realization that I had never, ever seen women—anywhere—move
with such daring and physicality, I was catapulted into
a new area of the research I dance I had conducted in Africa
and the United States for almost thirty years at that point
(since 1973). In addition to Béatrice Kombé
of TchéTché, I met other
extraordinary artists, Germaine Acogny, Salia Sanou,
Seydou Boro, Boyzie Cekwana, among them. Returning
to the U.S. energized and inspired, I embarked on a mission
to include this movement as quickly as possible in my work
at the Center for World Arts at the University of Florida.
I wanted to learn more, see more, educate the public and
my students about this invigorating vision of Africa, and,
mostly, ensure that the work become more broadly known,
appreciated, and supported in the U.S. and elsewhere. In
spite of some excellently coordinated work in New York (Inroads
Africa in 1996) and Montreal (Festival International de
Nouvelle Danse in 1999), many students, scholars and audiences
in the United States were, by and large, unaware of the
developments of this art form. Americans’ lack of
exposure coupled with prevalent notions of how Mother Africa
“should” dance could make it difficult for such
artists to show their work and to take part in the larger
U.S. conversation about contemporary dance. Furthermore,
economic challenges for artists and arts presenters on both
sides of the Atlantic could seriously limit interaction,
and since public performance and critical attention is key
to artistic livelihood, both needed a foundation for growth.
Finally, the xenophobic excesses of visa officers and new
government regulations regarding immigration could threaten
the most solid of artists’ contracts, particularly
post 9/11.
Linking
concerns about the American (near) tabula rasa regarding
this work, with an opportunity to collaborate with U.S.
presenters in creating a U.S. tour for the three winners
of Sanga II, I decided to shape a scholarly conference/arts
festival/documentary film featuring, in part, the prize-winning
companies. I engaged diverse African artists and Africanist/arts
scholars living in and outside of Africa interested in positioning
African contemporary dance in a context for discussion and
examination, and created an open call for papers, as well.
UA Presents of University of Arizona, 651 Africa and Lisa
Booth Management in New York, and University of Florida
Performing Arts, and Center for World Arts, partnered to
create the first US tour of the 2001 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize
winners of Sanga II: the Fourth African and Indian Ocean
Choreographic Competition – Rary (Madagascar), Konga
Ba Téria (Burkina Faso), and Sello Pesa (South Africa).
If the artists had won a pan-African competition and had
subsequently, and successfully, toured 26 venues in Africa
and Europe, the work would surely provide a valid example
of the companies’ own individual aesthetics, and provide
an indication of the aesthetic of the competition, as well.
Would the work mean a revolution in the sense of totally
new, a break with what had come before…or an evolution
unfolding from the vast (if under-studied) history of dance
that embodies the continent…or was it to be both,
as the etymology of Movement (R)evolution suggests?
Revolution or evolution—or both—the form could
provoke new dialogue and interaction among artists and their
audiences. While co-presenters and I believed that the form
merited increased attention, now U.S. artists, scholars
and audiences—often distanced from global developments
in the arts—could decide for themselves. Thus a conference/festival/film
was born.
In fall
2003, I also met my co-director and editor Alla
Kovgan. Together with Ken Glazebrook, Alla had
co-directed and edited the documentary “African Dance:
Sand, Drum and Shostakovich” that premiered in New
York at Lincoln Center in January 2003. She is a filmmaker
and through her work on the earlier film was familiar with
the subject matter. Jeff Silva joined the Movement
(R)evolution team as the director of photography.
The
film "Movement (R)evolution Africa"
is dedicated to all those who look to Africa as a source
of heritage and inspiration, and to all those who seek to
understand dancemaking in the 21st century, and, most particularly,
to the artists of the film who have told and danced their
stories for history and for the future. Ultimately, Africa’s
“movement (r)evolution” invigorates the world
contemporary dance community, and, as Germaine Acogny advises
us on camera, “…this is only the beginning.”
–
Joan D. Frosch, Producer/Director
Movement (R)evolution Africa
