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AHRB Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music
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Dance Migration: Bodies - Artistry - Identity
One-day conference in association with the University of Surrey and the AHRC Centre for Cross-cultural Music and Dance Performance.
Dance Migration will discuss how migration, artistic ownership and cultural identity affects the creation and perception of dance. A new generation of artists and scholars from Africa and Europe give presentations and show performance research to add to the debate, including Opiyo Okach (Kenya / France), Andreya Ouamba & Fattou Cisse (Senegal), Imed Jemaa (Tunisia), Kebaya Moturi (Kenya), Funmi Adewole (UK, Nigeria), Nelson Fernandez (UK), Francis Angol (UK).
This event is for dance practitioners, promoters, dance organisations, academics and people interested in international exchange.
For Further details and booking information please see the Woking Dance Festival website
Theatre March, 10am - 5pm
Cost: £20
(includes lunch and refreshments)
Tickets: 0870 060 6645 or book online via Woking Dance Festival
Dr Ananya Chatterjea - July 2005. View biography
Angika - October 2004. View the Angika residency report, October 2004 (MS Word format document)
Mayuri Boonham, Subathra Subramaniam, and Gayathri Vadivelu. View biographies...
Mavin Khoo - April 2003
The first UniS Centre residency took place from Wednesday 16th - Friday 25th April 2003. The established soloist and choreographer Mavin Khoo, with his dancers Sheena Chundee, Anthony Kurt and Benny Maslov, worked at the University of Surrey over 5 days. During this period of research and development, the artists used the piece 'Obsessing in Line' as a starting point from with they looked at issues concerning 'Transforming Classicism'.
African Dance Explored!
Exploring African Dance! Conference held at the University of Surrey in conjunction with the AHRC Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance performance on 10 th June 2006 brought together prominent UK based African dance academics and practitioners. The mini-conference organised by Jean Johnson Jones and Peter Badejo allowed a platform of discussion surrounding African Peoples' Dance, which has been long awaited. The conference was made possible through AHRC funding as part of the Transformations in African Music and Dance Performance project.
The daylong conference was well attended by academics and practitioners from leading UK universities and African dance organisations, including the Association of Dance of the African Diaspora (Adad), Roehampton University , Badejo Arts, University of London-School of Oriental and African Studies, Irie! Dance Theatre, and Regent's College.
The conference began with a practical session lead by Peter Badejo, one of Nigeria 's foremost choreographers and Artistic Director of Badejo Arts. The session, in which everyone participated, was well received, giving the attendants of the conference a reminder of the purpose of the day. Badejo put the participants through their paces, focusing on his own dance technique Batabade.
The papers presented were preceded by a short introduction by Dr Keith Howard, director of the AHRC Research Centre for Cross Cultural Music and Dance Performance at the University of London (SOAS), discussing the importance of the AHRC in it's researching and documenting of world dance. Howard raised issues surrounding Live8 due to its prominence in displaying images of Africa to the world. Both the positive and negative implications of Live8 were discussed; the overall feeling towards the event seemed one of disappointment due to the lack of celebration of African art forms. The presentation ended with a claim that the Exploring African Dance! Conference was to celebrate African music and dance, and hopefully elevate its status.
The Keynote speaker for the day was Dr Bob Ramdhanie, a prominent voice in the development and promotion of African Peoples' arts in the UK . Ramdhanie focused upon spirituality within performance bringing up issues of Black history within the UK , the Western view of dance and lack of funding for African arts. The historical overview presented by Ramdhanie gave the audience insight into the longevity of African presence in the UK and the lack of spirituality underpinning the theatrical presentations seen on stage today. The main responses to Ramdhanie's paper included discussions on why African arts had remained on the outside of British culture and how the work of chorographers such as H Patten and Peter Badejo are not included in documentation of UK dance in the twentieth century. The question of why there is no African Peoples' Dance school was also queried by one audience member, leading to a discussion on why previous African Peoples' Dance institutions have failed and a plea for policy changes in the UK .
The second paper of the day was given by Funmi Adewole, an African dance practitioner and student (MA) at Goldsmiths, London . Adewole has a wealth of experience of performing African dance within the UK and is currently the chair of ADAD. The paper once again took on an historical approach, examining the development of theatrical dance in Post-Independent Nigeria, focusing on Dance-Drama. Adewole presented a large amount of background information surrounding the purpose of Dance-Dramas within Nigeria before discussing the Socio-political implications of independent Nigeria . The questions raised regarding the changes of intention behind the movements and the need to discover an 'African' approach to theatre provoked much debate. This included a discussion on analysing the development of theatre dance rather than ritual in order to analyse post-Independent Nigeria , as well as a discussion regarding representation and presentation in African dance.
The paper presented by Badejo and Johnson-Jones discussed their current research on Batabade, describing the dance technique as well as the issues surrounding codifying the dance form. Batabade, a dance technique derived form the Bata dance form of the Yoruba of Nigeria , has been the basis for much of the research for Badejo and Johnson Jones. The discussion of their educational resources, which have taken the form of DVD's and text based material brought up many issues surrounding codifying movement and the implications of setting a dance form in stone. Badejo and Johnson Jones discussed the processes of documenting Batabade, which involved both music and dance analysis which has developed the first systematic codification of an African dance form.
The paper given by Mo Dobson and Delores Kumah brought African dance into the much-debated topic of education. Dobson, head of Media and Communications at Regent's College in London presented research on work he had done with Hackney based dance teachers in the 1970s before introducing Kumahs work within secondary schools today. The two presenters used a variety of media in order to discuss issues of dance within education, showing documentaries from both the 1970s and present day.
Dobson and Kumah discussed the importance of developing dance, and especially African dance within schools due to the idea that dance lends itself to non-verbal teaching practises which transcends class, race and gender; adopting John Blackings notions of dance living beyond culture rather than for culture. The main issue addressed by audience members was the lack of dance training outside of school syllabus' which has lead to a fall in the standard of dance in school.
The final paper of the day was presented by Silvia Poggiani, a Phd candidate in Ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London . The paper discussed Senegalese dance in economic terms, considering issues such as cultural tourism and identity. By following the work of a singular musician, Poggiani discussed the use of music and dance as a commodity and the affects of this upon the art form. Inevitably this has raised questions of authenticity from the audience, however this issue was not part of Poggiani's research, rather she wanted to focus upon the changes to the music and dance form for European and American clientele rather than trying to define a traditional type of Senegalese art form.
Overall, the day was a success, with a variety of different issues being aired surrounding African dance. The papers given were all of a high standard and can be found in full on the AHRC website http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Dance/ahrb/events.htm . It is hoped that a conference of this calibre can be repeated in the future in order to further the thinking surrounding African Peoples Dance.
By Libby Costello
>>Call for papers
>>Registration Details
>>Abstracts
>>Papers
British Forum for Ethnomusicology and the AHRC Research Centre for Cross-Cultural
Music and Dance Performance
'Music and Dance Performance: Cross-Cultural Approaches'
12-15th April 2005
View further details about this conference
(MS Word format document)
Text, Context, Performance: Reconstruction and Reinvention in African, Asian, and European Dances - Study Day, 8 May 2004 >> View details
Questions of Classicism: An Inquiry into Choreographic Process in Classical Forms - May 2003. >> View details
Society for Dance Research: Rukmini Devi. >> View details
'Obsessing in Line': Sharing/Lecture Demonstration by Mavin Khoo. >> View details
