‘African dances are valid knowledge’: Dance teachers’ de/construction of meanings from cultural heritage dances in Uganda

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhat constitutes African dances as valid knowledge? Do the learning processes of African dances in local communities entail rational consciousness and epistemological interpretations of the learner? How do the processes of dance practice double as frameworks of construction of meanings? The foregoing questions provided parameters for critical examination of pedagogy of cultural heritage dances as epistemological domains. Drawing on the stories, reflections, and practices of teachers of cultural heritage dances in nonacademic settings in central Uganda, the article reveals the different mechanisms through which these dance teachers acquired competences in content knowledge of the dances. The theory of constructivism is engaged to illuminate the content knowledge of the dances as a constructed reality that is anchored in the Afrocentric worldview. The individual learners claim agency in embodied, reflective, participatory, and communalized learning processes as knowers, thinkers, doers, and collaborators. Immersion into pedagogic processes cultivates interface with dance as an object and subject of knowledge. The article offers insights into the complexities entailed in pedagogic processes of African dances as epistemological and ontological foundation of human life and experience. This analysis critiques reductionist notions that objectify, fetishize and exoticize the learning processes of African dances as just instinctive, innate, and imitative.