The emergence of contemporary dance in Africa. A history of Danse l’Afrique danse! biennale

Abstract

This essay focuses on the history of the Danse l’Afrique danse! biennale. Created by the French Cultural Cooperation in 1995, this festival is now considered the most important pan-African contemporary dance event. It constitutes a privileged site through which to examine the development of such a choreographic discipline on the African continent, from both political and artistic perspectives. Based on an analysis of the French Ministry of Cooperation’s records, in-depth interviews with professionals and artists involved in the festival and the ethnography of two festival editions, this paper reveals how Western institutions have left their mark on the production of African contemporary dance. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the ‘field’, I argue that, to conquer the international market, dancers have to connect the dominant and legitimate aesthetic currents of the field of contemporary dance that were created in the West with the staging of an urban African identity, in order to distinguish themselves in this very competitive art field. The effect of this, I show, is that African dancers were at times the anonymous instruments of the renewal of French contemporary dance.