Dance matters: dancing in Tunisia

Abstract

A Tunisian youth movement, Dancers Citizens South (DCS), founded on 31 May 2015, encourages young people to find agency in their communities by creating in music, dance, or theater. DCS invited an American choreographer to create a dance in a collaborative environment with nine young people addressing violence against women from 4–11 January 2023 in Tataouine, Tunisia. All but two of the young people were from the south of Tunisia where there is little dance to no dance, and if there is dance, it may be frowned upon due to sociocultural reasons. This article examines the process and ethics of creating a dance in a cross-cultural context where for the most part, both the verbal and movement languages were not shared. Using an autoethnographic approach, the choreographer chronicles the process through discussions, research, the sharing of cultural dance (Martha Graham, breakdancing, Tunisian folk songs and dances), improvisations, and the creation and performance of the piece. Through these exchanges, it is argued that the collaboration encouraged levels of understanding and feeling that went beyond the surface interactions of everyday life and learned choreography because these exchanges required new choreography, and thus new connections. Even though the dancers and the choreographer came from different artistic and pedagogic practices, they aspired towards a kind of ‘hybridised aesthetic’ (Mitra 2015, xiii), blending cultural references in the body, realizing what they created was unique to them coming together.