Women Dancers Research Articles

Choose Life: Three Creative Women Dance with Death

Choose Life: Three Creative Women Dance with Death

Guardians of Culture: The Controversial Heritage of Senegalese Griots1

The low‐caste Griots of Senegal's Wolof community, traditionally employed as singers of histories and praises, earn their keep today by playing sabar drums at private women's dance parties. Although these gatherings are publicly scorned for the sexually expressive dances they involve, they are nevertheless immensely popular behind closed doors. Many Griot drummers justify their participation in sabar performances by linking the activity with the work of their historically marginalised ancestors, though this connection is disputed by elderly Griots, who view it as departure from their occupational tradition. While sabar is criticised for subverting both Griot heritage and public standards of decency, the ethnographic data suggest that it nevertheless reproduces traditional patronage relationships based on the interdependence and mutual benefit of the low‐status (caste) and high‐status (noble) sectors. Research is based on eleven months of participant observation in Senegal in 1996 and 1997, during which time the author trained as a sabar drummer in Dakar and Saint‐Louis.

Urban Bush Women: Finding Shelter in the Utopian Ensemble

Urban Bush Women are an African-American women's dance ensemble that have repeatedly sought the utopian ensemble — a collective that forms alliances through community rather than through the notion of the hero — in their performance of African diaspora experiences. The Urban Bush Women collectively create an idealized space, realized in their dances by physical contact between the performers' bodies. The company, founded by lawole Willa Jo Zollar, began presenting work in 1984 and has continued to develop an extensive and evocative dance repertory. At times overtly political, the dances embody the black female experience in a way that "invites critical interpretive readings largely because of the way in which aesthetic and political agendas are intertwined". While recent articles about the Urban Bush Women discuss the political nuances of their work, the repeated use of the collective ensemble is a unique feature of the company's dance style that merits further discussion.

Transacting Obasinjom: The Dissemination of a Cult Agency in the Cross River Area

AbstractDuring the twentieth century, Obasinjom became one of the best known and most effective cult agencies in the Cross River area of Cameroon and Nigeria. This paper aims at reconstructing the history of Obasinjom and some of its variants. Unlike many other witch-hunting cults, Obasinjom usually did not disappear after accomplishing the immediate job for which it was acquired. The owners additionally desired to possess the institution because it created wealth, influence and prestige for them as well as their village as a whole. Obasinjom and other cult agencies (as well as women's and men's societies and dance associations) spread from village to village across ethnic or language boundaries. Along with their dissemination, something of their identities and agency diffused and was incorporated into their histories over time and space. As intellectual property they were owned by the buying village and at the same time remained the property of the selling village. Obasinjom, as well as more important institutions, created decentralised networks of owners who had no definite knowledge of all the other participants. The recently formed pan-Obasinjom association, however, has changed this situation and, at least among some owners, created a feeling of identity and a greater sense of unity.

The Traditionalization of Women's Dancing, Hegemony, and Politics in Malawi

The Traditionalization of Women's Dancing, Hegemony, and Politics in Malawi

The Traditionalization of Women's Dancing, Hegemony, and Politics in Malawi

Gilman explores the idea of by teasing out some relationships between contemporary scholarly notions of tradition as process and more conservative ideas about tradition as reified, superorganic, authentic artifacts that are passed through time and space relatively unchanged. Through an exploration of how tradition has been perceived and used in Malawi's political sphere, Gilman argues that though tradition does exist as a selective process—people choose to endow certain cultural practices with special meaning because they link them to the past—they often do so unconsciously. It is because people think of traditions as directly linked to the past that they have a deep-felt commitment to continue them into the future. It is this distinction between the reality of tradition as process and the idea of tradition as authentic and static that makes it powerful hegemonically. In Malawi, political leaders have exploited women as political dancers and praise singers in the name of local notably during the dictatorial rule of Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda (1964-94) and throughout the contemporary multiparty era. Because many people in Malawi have come to accept women's political dancing as their tradition, many endow it with special meaning and feel committed to continuing it into the future even when it contributes to the perpetuation of political and economic inequities.

Considering the Issue of Sexploitation of Young Women in Dance K-12 Perspectives in Dance Education

Young dancers, girls most particularly, are subject to subtle and not-so-subtle messages of exploitation based on sex. What are the implications for dance educators who are trying hard to advocate for dance and who are trying to encourage appropriate pedagogical practices? Due to the hegemonic pervasiveness of “objectifying” dancers for entertainment as encouraged by the media, costume catalogs, and other sources, educators need to pause and consider their assumptions and practices. The issue of “sexploitation” is more critical for women in dance due to pervasive cultural beliefs and to the fact that more women are involved in dance than men. This article considers the issue of sexploitation of young women dancers, examines the role of educators, parents, the media, and the public in the dance education of children, and examines the notion of appropriate practices in dance education and performance. It is intended to challenge increasingly blasé attitudes about what is developmentally appropriate for children in dance.

Dance and Gender in Ancient Jewish Sources

Dance is often represented in ancient texts and iconography as an activity in which the two genders have specific, defined roles. In ancient Hebrew there are even different terms to denote men's dance and women's dance. Does this mean that the term itself is gendered and it merely describes in different words the same thing when men perform and when women perform, or does it also suggest that there was a formal distinction between the way men danced and the way women did? The author suggests that the distinction was one of strictly delineated gender differences in the dance.

Latter-day emancipation! Woman, dance and healing in Jamaican dancehall culture

BETH-SARAH WHITE reflects on the potential for healing that women's dance and performance in Jamaican dancehalls holds

Between Theater and Philosophy: Skepticism in the Major City Comedies of Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton by Mathew R. Martin (review)

174 Reviews that there is no English language text, no British art work or other cultural artefact, and no event in recorded British history that is not being scrutinized somewhere across the Atlantic with the prior determination offinding evidence of latent imperialism and racial prejudiceand/or anxiety' (LRB, 19 July2001, p. 23). Rebecca Ann Bach's book, with its readings of such unlikely 'colonial' texts as Spenser's Amoretti and Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, is an impressively successful example of the approach Colley describes. For Bach, colonialism is like pitch, leaving itsmark on everything ittouches. The title, Colonial Transformations, refersat once to England's effortsto transform alien lands into comprehensible colonial landscapes and to the reciprocal transforma? tion worked on the colonizers themselves?including those who never set foot out of England. The introduction, focusing on the early years of the Jamestown colony, reveals how national and class identities alike could be undermined and transformed by the colonial experience. Succeeding chapters examine the literary traces of that expe? rience in Spenser's Ireland, Bermuda, and the London ofJonson's plays and masques. In some instances?notably that of Jonson's late plays?the readings may come across as slightly forced, but the overall effectis to convince the reader that few texts, and fewer authors, were entirely immune to colonialism'stransformative impact. The great strength of this book lies in Bach's willingness to enter generic and lin? guistic territories from which like-minded critics have tended to shy away. Anyone who still contends that New Historicism has nothing to say in the face of the lyric should be directed to her chapter on 'Colonial Poetics in Spenser's Amoretti'. Equally welcome is the author's determination to listen to the (Gaelic and Algonquian) voices of colonialism's victims. Encountering the bard Eochaidh 6 hEoghusa's verses alongside Edmund Spenser's is a refreshing, eye-opening experience. While the book's focus is geographically very broad (the northern Atlantic world), historically itis fairlynarrow (sixty years). Such an approach inevitably leads to certain omissionsand distortions. Equating Wales and Ireland with Bermuda and Virginia as sites of early modern English 'colonialism' has the effectof glossing over many centuries of prior contact and conflict in the British Isles. The English had long been bent on transforming their nearest neighbours, and had in many ways been transformed by them in turn. But the book gives no indication ofthe extent to which English imperial iconography relied on Welsh sources, nor even of the fact that James VI and I was Scottish. (James's Daemonologie, published in Scotland six years before he became England's king, is described as a repository of 'English fantasies' (p. 207).) The final and most innovative chapter treats of Captain John Smith's account of A Maske' performed by Pocahontas and thirtyIndian women. While the true meaning of the women's dance is forever lost, Bach forcefully criticizes Smith's reinterpretation of it as an English courtly ritual, with himself in the role of a colonial King James. An interesting epilogue then shifts the focus from the seventeenth century to the present, in which the ideological assumptions ofthe earliest English colonists are discovered alive and well at the Jamestown Settlement Museum. University of Exeter Philip Schwyzer Between Theater and Philosophy: Skepticism in theMajor City Comedies ofBenjonson and Thomas Middleton. By Mathew R. Martin. Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 191pp. ?28. ISBN 0-87413-739-x. As his introduction states, Martin's rather densely written monograph is not a study of the influence ofthe Pyrrhonist revival, but a deconstructive reading, supported by ref? erence to Foucault, Bakhtin, Derrida, Edward Said, and J.L. Austin as well as to Plato, MLRy 98.1, 2003 175 Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, and Wittgenstein, ofJonson's four major comedies and of Middleton's Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Martin views these plays as sceptical because they dramatize 'the epistemological difficultiescreated by the reconfiguration ofsocial reality by the forces ofex? change' (p. 21). His exploration of the 'problematics' of City Comedy synthesizes and extends recent work that challenges earlier interpretations ofthe 'moral vision...

Modern Dance Alla Turca: Transforming Ottoman Dance in Early Republican Turkey

This essay looks at the works of Selma Selim Sırrı (b. 1906) and her father Selim Sırrı Tarcan (1874–1956), who wrote on dance in the 1920s, a period that marked the transition from the Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey. The Ottoman Empire ruled across the Mediterranean world between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, collapsing after World War I. The Republic of Turkey was declared in 1923, distancing itself from the Ottoman tradition to adopt a westernization reform program. Written in the early Republican era, the works of Selma Selim Sırrı and Selim Sırrı Tarcan mark the shift from Ottoman dance traditions to a more Western approach to dance. Inspired by Isadora Duncan, Selma Selim Sırrı (1926) explored the idea of modern dance for Ottoman women in a booklet entitled Selma Selim Sırrı Hanım'ın Bedii Raksları (The Aesthetic Dances of Miss Selma Selim Sırrı, see Fig. 1). Her father was the author of Halk Dansları ve Tarcan Zeybeği (Folk Dances and the Tarcan Zeybek, see Fig. 2), a book that focused on the process of refining folk dances, in particular the zeybek genre, to suit the tastes of an educated, urban audience.

Comprehensive Index to Asian Theatre Journal: Vols. 1-19

Comprehensive Index to Asian Theatre Journal:Vols. 1-19 David V. Mason This comprehensive index to Asian Theatre Journal, Volumes 1 through 19, consists of six parts. The first part is a listing of all journal items—articles, reviews, letters, notes, and the like—alphabetized by author. The type of material indexed is indicated by the words "Article," Report," or "Review." The next two parts list journal items by subject and by geographical focus. The fourth part lists the plays published in ATJ. The last two parts list the reviews printed in ATJ—organized first by the names of reviewers and second by the names of the authors of reviewed works. All titles are spelled and punctuated as in their original appearance. Authors' names, too, are given as they originally appeared. Entries are presented in reverse chronological order—most recent contributions first. For the past two years, David Mason has manned the Web site for the Association for Asian Performance (AAP). He holds an MA in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and his dissertation work in UW Madison's Theatre Research program concerns ras lila performances in India. Abbreviations adapt. = adapter annot. = annotation comment. = commentary ed. = editor intr. = introduction trans. = translator [End Page 261] Authors Abbitt, Erica Stevens. "Androgyny and Otherness: Exploring the West Through the Japanese Performance Body." Debut Panel Paper. 18.2 (2001): 249-256. Ananya. "Training in Indian Classical Dance: A Case Study." Article. 13.1 (1996): 68-91. Ariyanto, Marianne. "Gambuh: The Source of Balinese Dance." Report. 2.2 (1985): 221-230. Ariyoshi, Sawako. "From Kabuki Dancer: A Novel by Sawako Ariyoshi." Book Excerpt. James R. Brandon, trans. and intr. 11.2 (1994): 290-305. Arjo, Irawati Durban. "Women's Dance Among the Sundanese of West Java, Indonesia." Article. 6.2 (1989): 168-178. Armstrong, Elizabeth L. Rakugo: The Popular Narrative Art of Japan. Review. 10.2 (1993): 216-217. Armstrong, Hamilton. Concerned Theatre Japan: The Graphic Art of the Japanese Theatre, 1960-1980. Review. 19.1 (2002): 248-250. Asmara, Cobina Gillitt. "Tradisi Baru: A New Tradition of Indonesian Theatre." Debut Panel Report. 12.1 (1995): 164-174. Ault, Thomas. "Tonight Amar Singh Rathore: Marwari Khyāl in Transition." Article. 8.2 (1991): 142-167. Awang, Usman. "The Death of a Warrior." Play. Rahmah Hj. Bujang, trans. 5.2 (1988): 175-197. Awasthi, Suresh. Bangsawan: A Social and Stylistic History of Popular Malay Opera. Review. 11.2 (1994): 313-314. ———. Classical Dance and Theatre in South-East Asia. Review. 11.2 (1994): 312-313. ———. Puppetry and Lesser Known Dance Traditions of Kerala. Review. 10.1 (1993): 118. ———. Kalidasa: The Loom of Time. Review. 10.1 (1993): 119-120. Bach, Faith, trans. and intr. "Takatoki: A Kabuki Drama." Play. 15.2 (1998): 155-180. ———. "Breaking the Kabuki Actors' Barriers:1868-1900." Article. 12.2 (1995): 264-279. ———. "New Directions in Kabuki." Report. 6.1 (1989): 77-89. Baier, Randal. Javanese Shadow Puppets. Review. 12.2 (1995): 355-358. ———. Javanese Gamelan: Traditional Orchestra of Java. Review. 12.2 (1995): 355-358. Bakshi, Sri Ram V. Theatres of the Mahabharata. Review. 9.2 (1992): 263. Banerjee, Arundhati. Author's Note. 8.1 (1991): 102. ———. "Brecht Adaptations in Modern Bengal Theatre: A Study in Reception." Article. 7.1 (1990): 1-28. Banu, Georges. "Mei Lanfang: A Case Against and a Model for the Occidental Stage." Article. Ella L. Wiswell and June V. Gibson, trans. 3.2 (1986): 153-178. Barba, Eugenio. "Ingmar Bergman's King Lear: A Discussion with Eugenio Barba." Report. 3.2 (1986): 261-269. [End Page 262] Barucha, Rustom. "A Reply to Richard Schechner." Letter. 1.2 (1984): 254-260. ———. "A Collision of Cultures: Some Western Interpretations of the Indian Theatre." Article. 1.1 (1984): 1-20. Baumrin, Seth. The Actor's Way. Review. 14.2 (1997): 281-289. ———. Towards a Third Theatre. Review. 14.2 (1997): 281-289. ———. The Paper Canoe. Review. 14.2 (1997): 281-289. ———. The Performers' Village. Review. 14.2 (1997): 281-289. Beichman, Janine. "Drifting Fires: An American Nō." Play. 3.2 (1986): 233-260. Berberich, Junko S. "The Idea of Rapture as an Approach to Kyōgen." Article. 6.1 (1989): 31-46. ———. The Voices and...

Purchasing Praise: Women, Dancing, and Patronage in Malawi Party Politics

Political parties in contemporary Malawi organize their female members to dance and sing songs of praise at their public functions. One of the characteristics of the political environment that produces women's praise singing and dancing in Malawi is the unequal relationship between politicians and the people they lead, which can generally be characterized as patron-client. Politicians enact their roles as patrons at public functions by giving material gifts to women performers, giving them an incentive to join the party, dance in its service, and ultimately vote for its politicians. This article explores the institution of women's political praise dancing and singing in Malawi party politics, especially during the campaigning for the second multiparty elections that took place in 1999. I situate this practice within the context of patron-client relationships and question whether women are acting as conscious agents when they dance or whether they are strategically manipulated and exploited by politicians.

The Death of Mganda: Continuity and Transformation in Matengo Music

In the Matengo highlands of southwestern Tanzania, musical changes reflect broad economic and political changes as well as local and gendered decisions made by men and women dancers. By analyzing the important realm of group dances over the preceding century a clearer picture emerges of the frequently unintended consequences of actions and the various ways that Matengo dancers employ music in their strategies to comprehend and command the modern. In Matengo music choices to pursue divergent goals for new performative resources led to radically different outcomes for two group-dance genres. In the one case, dancers' decisions coupled with shifting economic and political realities led to fl uorescence, and in the other, to almost certain abandonment.

Welcome to the Robbiedome

Welcome to the Robbiedome

"We Saw We Could Do It Ourselves": Koorie Cultural Regeneration Project

The Koorie Cultural Regeneration Project was the result of a partnership between Women's Health Goulburn North East and Mungabareena Aboriginal Corporation. The project was located in Wodonga and aimed to strengthen the community in terms of its Aboriginal identity. A range of activities provided opportunities for elders to share traditional skills and knowledge about Aboriginal culture particularly beliefs, men's business and women's business, dance and bush knowledge. A further dimension of the project was education of the mainstream community through presentations and workshops at schools, childcare centres, workplaces, festivals and universities. Immediate outcomes of the project included clear evidence of the power of experiential learning, a deepening understanding of culture, and the importance of story and connectedness. Eighteen months after the conclusion of the project, members of Mungabareena Aboriginal Corporation met with Women's Health Goulburn North East workers to reflect on the long term outcomes of the project. The value of cultural regeneration was affirmed and it was identified that the project raised the profile of the Koorie community in Wodonga and beyond. While the Koorie Cultural Regeneration Project has increased community understanding and pride in Aboriginal heritage and is working well, the lack of continued funding means it is not ongoing. The challenge now is to move forward with cultural regeneration with respect, integrity, care and wisdom.

From Interculturalism to Historicism: Reflections on Classical Indian Dance

At the MTV awards show in September 1998, Madonna performed a spiritual song in a transparent white T-shirt with three Indian Odissi dancers in their classical regalia. Within two days of this event a representative of a Hindu religious sect, the Vaisnavs, condemned Madonna for debasing Hinduism and Indian women. A significant intercultural event, which had been generating pride for some sections of the Indian-American community, had once again exposed the lack of context and historicity in interculturalism. Odissi is not merely an aesthetically pleasing dance form from eastern India; its history is embedded in various ancient fertility cults tied to ritualistic Hindu temple worship by women dancers known as “mahari(s).” The dance was also performed by young male dancers known as “gotipua(s),” who performed outside the temple. Frederique Marglin traces Odissi to the powerful cult of Chaitanya (a Vaisnavite saint reformer) in the sixteenth century (1985). She explains that, like many indigenous dance forms, it was simply called nacha before its revival in the 1950s by dance scholars and male teachers. Thus, the dance is a product of a complex mix of Hindu nationalism, regional chauvinism, and national revivalism and is embedded in patriarchal views of the role and function of women in society. Madonna's commercial interculturalism failed to take note of this: By trying to glamorize an exotic tradition she, unsurprisingly, offended the self-appointed bearers of that tradition.

Visual cues to female physical attractiveness.

Evolutionary psychology suggests that a woman's sexual attractiveness is based on cues of health and reproductive potential. In recent years, research has focused on the ratio of the width of the waist to the width of the hips (the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). A low WHR (i.e. a curvaceous body) is believed to correspond to the optimal fat distribution for high fertility, and so this shape should be highly attractive. In this paper we present evidence that weight scaled for height (the body mass index (BMI)) is the primary determinant of sexual attractiveness rather than WHR. BMI is also strongly linked to health and reproductive potential. Furthermore, we show how covariation of apparent BMI and WHR in previous studies led to the overestimation of the importance of WHR in the perception of female attractiveness. Finally, we show how visual cues, such as the perimeter-area ratio (PAR), can provide an accurate and reliable index of an individual's BMI and could be used by an observer to differentiate between potential partners.

Strategic essentialism and the African Renaissance

Introduction African Renaissance Cultural Festival/Symposium premiered on the 26th March 1999, at the Natal Playhouse, KwaZulu-Natal, with an evening of cultural celebration and cerebration. This auspicious occasion incorporated performances through dance, music, poetry, drama, and just good fun. participation of all in this festival was significant for a number of masons: i) it encouraged the cross-fertilisation of dialogue through performance, with no regard for age, geographic location, ethnic formation or political persuasion; ii) it created a space, for example, through the stage and discussion forums for marginalized rural communities and interested social groups; iii) and by involving relevant stakeholders in the co-creation of a framework for socio-economic empowerment, furthered the material basis of this gathering; iv) isolated key issues, procedures, structures, time-frames and individual/social input necessary for the promotion of the aims of the African Renaissance. In this respect, perhaps, it was the African Renaissance Trust chairman, in KwaZulu-Natal, S'bu Ndebele, who consistently articulated best the conception of the gathering: The African Renaissance has been emotional to intellectuals and intellectual to the masses. What he meant by this became clear on the first day of the conference. One observed, for the first time, the ideological precociousness of the organisers in staging this event at a time when this province, this country, this continent, is in desperate need of a rebirth, renewal. present problems plaguing this province, manifest in the continued political and criminal violence and the desperate scourge of the AIDS virus, have conspired to present challenges we cannot ignore. Therefore, it was by involving the so-called disempowered, like the traditional women dancers and the young that the spirit of the African Renaissance was emphasised, even if the message was transmitted through entertainment, on the first day. But the importance of the Symposium became more pronounced on the second day, when the objectives of this renaissance were carefully and comprehensively spelled out. Definitions and strategies essence of the African Renaissance, according to the ANC MP, S'bu Ndebele, is a project that should proceed firstly, by a thorough self-reflectivity. It is by people drawing strengths from themselves that the divisions, responsible for the conflict in the region, can be overcome. This is what Ndebele refers to when he speaks of promoting the project of empowerment upon ourselves by being ourselves. Secondly, the accomplishment of this, will better position the province and the country in international affairs, because if the West has had its time, and Asia is having its time, then the next century should be the time of/for Africa. This was re-articulated by the scholar and poet, Ari Sitas, who argued that, few spaces exist at present where moral and ethical considerations can be evolved. African Renaissance involved recognition of three discursive formations or, empowerment-based-functionalities; moral values and intellectual purpose, economic orientation based on people's needs, and a creative emancipation witnessed by the cultural festival on the 26th. In other words, what some of these speakers were emphasising during the launch of the African Renaissance Program on the 27th was finding what to do, rather than what to say! This, everyone agreed, was the goal of emancipation. Echoing this point, the head of the African-American delegation, Good Reverend Doctor Joseph E. Lowrie, avers that public policy, guided by the objectives and aims of the African Renaissance Conference, for example, must provide goals and programms for the poor and forge partnership with private business. But of course, the real challenge remained; how to bring these ideas to the people and how can a framework be created where people themselves engage with the issues important for changing their lives? …

Emotional and Social Contingencies Affecting HIV Risk Reduction Among Lesbians and Bisexual Women

A community-based HIV prevention project for lesbians and bisexual women was implemented in San Francisco from June 1, 1993 to June 30, 1994. The purposes of this qualitative intervention research were to (a) discover HIV risk-taking and HIV risk-reduction activities of lesbians and bisexual women and (b) offer them context-specific HIV prevention education. Twenty peer researchers conducted open-ended field interviews with a racially diverse sample of 563 lesbians and bisexual women in naturalistic settings including women's bars and dance clubs and lesbian/bisexual community events. Sexual and drug use practices reported by lesbians and bisexual women demonstrate that they are indeed at risk for HIV Content analysis revealed that emotion-driven, socially motivated practices underlie lesbians' and bisexual women's HIV risk behaviors and attempts at risk reduction. Findings about emotional and social contingencies challenge conventional cognitive approaches to HIV prevention.