Choreographic Performance and Politics in 20th century Urban Senegal: a Cosmopolitan History

Choreographic Performance and Politics in 20th century Urban Senegal: a Cosmopolitan History

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (Anthropology, Oxford University)
Thursday, January 23 / 2:30 PM
SSMS 3145

Drawing on her recently published monograph (Dance Circles: Movement, Morality and Self-Fashioning in Urban Senegal), this presentation traces
the development of the performing arts in Dakar, Senegal, from the 1930s to the contemporary period. The transformation of expressive cultural forms
like dance, music and theater is shown to be shaped by individual innovation within regional genres and by colonial school theater in Francophone West Africa, transnational connections between Africa and the US, post-colonial cultural policies, migration, and the strategic funding of “culture and the arts” by French cultural agencies.

Hélène Neveu Kringelbach is a social anthropologist, a researcher with the Leverhulme-funded Oxford Diaspora Programme and a research associate at the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. She is currently a visiting professor at UCLA.

Sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies RFG,  the Dept. of Film and Media Studies Department, and the Dept. of Theater and Dance.