Contemporary African Dance Theatre

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. This Is Not a Book About African Dance

   • Sabine Sörgel

   Pages 1-13

3. Sources and Vocabularies of Contemporary African Dance Theatre Aesthetics

   • Sabine Sörgel

   Pages 15-49

4. White Supremacy, Necropolitics and Anti-Capitalist Dance

   • Sabine Sörgel

   Pages 51-87

5. Mistaken Identity: Deconstructing White Beauty and Gender Politics

   • Sabine Sörgel

   Pages 89-128

6. Collaborative Blindness: Funding, Failure and the Ethics of Collaboration

   • Sabine Sörgel

   Pages 129-151

7. This Is a Book About Whiteness and the Gaze

   • Sabine Sörgel

   Pages 153-157

8. Back Matter

   Pages 159-174

   PDF

This book is the first to consider contemporary African dance theatre aesthetics in the context of phenomenology, whiteness, and the gaze. Rather than a discussion of African dance per se, the author challenges hegemonic perceptions of contemporary African dance theatre to interrogate the extent to which white supremacy and privilege weave through capitalist necropolitics and determine our perception of contemporary African dance theatre today. Multiple aesthetic strategies are discussed throughout the book to account for the affective experience of ‘un-suturing’ that touches white spectatorship and colonial guilt at their core. The critical analysis covers a broad range of dance choreography by artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Canada, Europe, and the US as they travel, create, and show their works internationally to global audiences to contest racial divides and white supremacist politics. 

• Dance
• African Dance
• Theatre
• Capitalism
• Necropolitics
• white supremacy
• white privilege
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Ivory Coast
• South Africa
• Canada
• USA

“Contemporary African Dance Theatre: Phenomenology, whiteness, and the gaze offers a model of interweaving the histories, philosophies and movement practices of Europe and Africa through the lenses of both performers and viewers of contemporary dance. … It also thoughtfully addresses gender and its intersection with race in colonial paradigms of visual culture and embodiment. … Contemporary African Dance Theatre carries a through-line that continually interrogates the suppositions of audience members and the ways that African artists address prejudice.” (Rainy Demerson, Performance Research, May 24, 2021)

“Contemporary African Dance Theatre attests to the powerful artistic voices from Africa and the diaspora that invite white audiences into confrontation with the politics of their white gaze, even as white people hold significant financial and curatorial power in the circulation of works by African artists. … Her work is testimony to the urgent need for consumers of dance to deepen their literacy of African and diasporic dance cultures and aesthetics.” (Amy Swanson, Dance Research Journal, Vol.52 (2), August, 2020)

• London, UK

  Sabine Sörgel

Sabine Sörgel was Senior Lecturer in Dance and Theatre at University of Surrey, UK, from 2013 until 2019 and she now works as an independent scholar, writer, and dramaturg. Her previous publications include Dancing Postcolonialism: The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (2007) and Dance and The Body in Western Theatre: 1948 to the Present (2015).

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