Moving through dance between New York and Dakar : ways of learning Senegalese 'Sabar' and the politics of participation
Abstract
This thesis explores a network of participants, dance students and teachers, who
travel between New York City and Dakar, Senegal, around the practice of West African
dance forms. Focusing on the Senegalese dance-rhythms Sabar, I joined this movement
and my fieldwork methodology included apprenticeship as a student. I explored
different learning environments of Sabar in New York and Dakar: the understandings
involved, how this movement is maintained and how it affects dance forms. The
methodological move enabled a comparative approach to research questions of learning
and performing, local aesthetics and notions of being.
This thesis discusses the role of the imagination in mobilizing students and
teachers to travel within this network. I explore how participants navigate through the
political geography of this movement, sustain the network, and how in turn the cultural
flow of Sabar is ‘punctuated’ by socio-economic relationships. Secondly, I explore the
understandings involved in each learning context, how these are negotiated and
contested on the dance floor and how they relate to broader socio-cultural discourses
and relationships that they reinforce or subvert. I argue that while different Sabar
settings cannot be understood as ‘bounded’ in as much as people and ideas circulate
through them, they are also distinct in that they produce different forms of Sabar.
The learning contexts provide the meeting grounds for alternative conceptions
of ‘dance’ and pedagogy. I explore how these notions are negotiated in relation to the
specific socio-cultural and economic environments in which they are located.
Specifically I analyse some common problems New York students face in learning and
performing Sabar and explore the reasons behind them: the complex connection
between movement and rhythm and the achievement of a specific kinaesthetic in
movement. I delineate the relationship between movement and rhythm in Sabar and the
importance of the aesthetic of improvisation. I argue that the prevalence of certain
paradigms of learning and ‘dance’ over others is related to the specific socio-economic
relationships of the participants. Specifically, an over-emphasis on movement distracts
from other important aspects in the performance of Sabar and I argue that skills need to
be understood as environed processes, malleable and shifting in relation to the
broader socio-economic settings that link the participants together.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
Rights
Embargo Date: 2025-04-07
Embargo Reason: Thesis restricted in accordance with University regulations. Print and electronic copy restricted until 7th April 2025. Video appendices restricted permanently
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