|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
“Shifting Centres” Questioning dominant cultural politics and one-dimensional perception in kenyan contemporary dance
| Panel |
21. Visions and Voices from East Africa - Initiatives of cultural production in Past and Present
|
| Paper ID | 347 |
| Author(s) |
Siegert, Nadine
|
| Paper |
No paper submitted
|
| Abstract | Contemporary dance in Africa is a part of the negotiation of multiple quotidien realities. The artists stress the importance to develop this way of artistic expression, which is inspired by modern media and global interfaces between the world’s cultures. In the same way are they concerned of the requirements and demands of their local communities. Developing infrastructures for contemporary dance is one of the aims of the contemporary dance centres that are recently founded in several African cities.
This is also part of the concept of the Nairobi based “Gaara Dance Foundation”, which is an excellent example for an “African alternative” in the cultural sphere. Achievement of independent artistic freedom and exchange with European cultural institutions where it seems to be appropriate are central elements in their manifesto. Their newest production “Shift Centre” questions spatial presentations and monopols of truth. The cooperation of artists from different origins and disciplines confronts the questions of corporealities and the dominant performance structures of onedimensional discourses. By doing so, “Shift Centre” evokes also a political and social reality: The multiciplicity of realities and ways of living in contemporary Africa.
Activities including choreographic research, artist residency, choreographic exchange and support for creation and diffusion of work are elaborated here. The choreographic encounters “Encoding Identities” will take place in September 2007 for the second time. Regional and pan-African exchange are also part of the aims, which provokes the question, if networking in contemporary African dance is still initiated only by European cultural support organisations like AFAA (France) or Africalia (Beligium) did in the 1990s (Kästner 2003). Thus, the paper will also focus the question, which impact cultural exchange and recognition of European institutions and media have for the artists own acceptance and evaluation of their productions. The mobilisation of fundings for production through networking with Europe could be read either as ongoing domination of African cultural production or as transgression of borders in means of cultural exchange.
Thus, by presenting this example from East–Africa this paper will discuss, if the opening of independent centers for dance and performance art in the African metropolis are really a possibility to shift centres of cultural hegemony in production and distribution and to counter the tyranny of one-dimensional perception, which is imposed by dominant conventions of presentation.
|
|