Making Dance Work in West Africa: Women Artists in a Shifting Landscape of Institutional Patronage

Abstract

This article considers the stakes articulated by French-speaking West African women who claim dance as work opens up critical perspectives on the global political economy of concert dance. African states encouraged creative dance work following independence, but in the era of structural adjustment, French state-affiliated institutions took the lead as foreign patrons for African contemporary dance. Juxtaposing these women’s reflections on their trajectories as dance artists with an account of the institutional politics surrounding patronage in the region, I argue that these women reenvision the value of cultural labor as a substantive contribution to their societies and economies in West Africa.