Abstract
Screendance is a hybrid art in which choreographic and film techniques are necessary for creating texts where the body dialogues with camera. Ghanaian dance film is best understood within the context of postmodern discourse. This article argues that indigenous and foreign cultural practices are convoluted by morality and hegemonic influence of western culture. Moving from orthodoxy, the Ghanaian dance film re-contextualizes dance practice and film techniques into a composite construct with a tinge of Afrocentrism. Framed by *critical sankofaism*, screendances in Ghana are discussed as being influenced by individual musician's ideas with western biases. Dances for television are shaped by institutional guidelines gleaned from Ghanaian culture. Using *Heyba* and screendance at TV3 Network and GTV, this article discusses dance films as an emerging aesthetic that re-interprets the function of bodies, their relationships with the camera, and concludes that more than being a hybrid site, screendance in Ghana is a 'polybrid'.
Highlights
Screendance is a hybrid art in which choreographic and film techniques are necessary for creating texts where the body dialogues with camera
In this article we have argued that screendance in Ghana is constituted by dances in music videos and those performed in television institutions
We have argued that globalization has introduced technological advancement and other foreign cultures, Western culture that sometimes subverts some Ghanaian indigenous moral codes
Summary
Globalization has exposed Ghanaians to various media technologies, equipment, and screen-based images. Kwame Gyekye refers to such indigenous philosophies as national orientation or public philosophy, which represent the body of knowledge of a people.[14] The identity of Ghanaians will be informed by the different cultural practices of the various ethnic groups contributing to the development of national cultural values. Our argument in this article relies on what Gyekye refers to as “critical sankofaism,” which is the retrieval of specific old practices to blend with contemporary approaches to new oeuvres It is distinctive from “naïve sankofaism,” which Gyekye defines as “a wholesale revival of the cultural past, irrespective of the functionality or moral worth of particular elements of our (Ghanaian) cultural heritage.”[25] The following section analyzes the different levels of ‘sankofaistic’ blending that characterize individual ‘images of dancing on TV’ such as music videos and those produced by television institutions. We discuss the music video Heyba (You Are Not on My Level), by the dancehall artist Edem, and Dance Fever Reality Contest by TV3, a private television station in Ghana, as well as GTV’s (Ghana’s national television station established by former president Kwame Nkrumah) approach to screening dance
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