Dance Rooted in the Movements of Bedford-Stuyvesant

Abstract

Reinterpreting the works of choreographers Kariamu Welsh and Ronald K. Brown as ethnographies of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Indira Etwaroo situates Welsh’s and Brown’s respective bodies of work from two historical periods as artistic expressions shaped by the Great Migration, the Black Arts and Black Power movements, and the daily realities of mid and late 20th Century African-American urban life. As examples of “Neo-traditional African dance,” Etwaroo explores how Welsh and Brown recalibrated traditional African dance aesthetics for North American and European performance contexts that were quite distinct from those rooted in traditional African societies. As Welsh and Brown addressed current African-American political events in their works, they secured a contemporary relevance for the historically rooted dance aesthetics they pioneered. Etwaroo also places Welsh and Brown within a long tradition of African-American dance choreographers and explores Welsh’s influence on Brown as evidence of an established neo-traditional African dance ethos in the United States, which constitutes a tradition in its own right.