The Dancer–Drummer–Drum Body: Expanding corporeal experiences through improvisation in black dance

Abstract

This article examines how the dancer–drummer–drum body can expand corporeal experiences through improvisation in black dance. Since the late 1990s, black Brazilian dancer-choreographer Edileusa Santos has argued for a multisensorial engagement in her Dance of Black Expression methodology, as a way to deepen the relationship between drums and bodies. According to Santos, as in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé, the drum is fundamental in African-rooted dance classes; once ‘the drum’s sound emerges in the [dancer’s] body, encouraging the vibrations and sensations; it suggests new possibilities, corporeal experiences, and new attitudes’ (Santos 2015: 53; my translation). Concomitant to Santos’s emphasis on drums’ power to enhance dancers towards new corporeal experiences, organization and identity, Santos invites drummers to perceive dancers’ bodies as musical scores for their compositions. This full way of perceiving others’ expressions and sensations allows dancers and drummers to access personal and collective memories in the context of their ancestry. In this article, I draw from authors in dance and music studies, black performance theories, phenomenology and philosophy of sound and perception to argue that by working with improvisation and advocating for multisensory engagement in a black dance class that is not exclusive to black bodies, Santos expands corporeal experiences by encouraging the exploration of dancers’ and drummers’ body-movements as extensions of drums’ sounds and vibrations. Furthermore, I contend that she decentres notions of the ‘black dancing body’ (Gottschild 2003) by suggesting the emergence of a drum/body and body/drum identity, which is anchored in the notion that dancer, drummer and drum are complementary. Moreover, I borrow from my own bodied experience acquired in Santos’s workshops and conducted interviews to posit the Dance of Black Expression classroom as a space for the creation of self-referenced movements—a space for expressions of blackness that are anchored in black bodies’ experiences but not restricted to them.