Research Guides: Fall 2022 AfroPortugal Virtual Research Tour: Music &amp; Dance

Dance

Fire under My Feet : History, Race, and Agency in African Diaspora Dance by Ofosuwa M. Abiola
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2021
Fire Under My Feet seeks to expose the diverse, significant, and often under-researched historical and developmental phenomena revealed by studies in the dance systems of the African Diaspora. In the book, written documentation and diverse methodologies are buttressed by the experiences of those whose lives are built around the practice of African diaspora dance. Replete with original perspectives, this book makes a significant contribution to dance and African diaspora scholarship simultaneously. Most important, it highlights the work of researchers from Ecuador, India, Puerto Rico, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and it exposes under-researched and omitted voices of the African diaspora dance world of the aforesaid locations and Puerto Rico, Columbia, and Trinidad as well. This study showcases a blend of scholars, dance practitioners, and interdisciplinarity, and engages the relationship between African diaspora dance and the fields of history, performance studies, critical race theory, religion, identity, and black agency.
Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities by Kariamu Welsh, et. al.
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2019
The popularity and profile of African dance have exploded across the African diaspora in the last fifty years. Hot Feet and Social Change presents traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and contemporary artists, teachers, and scholars telling some of the thousands of stories lived and learned by people in the field. Concentrating on eight major cities in the United States, the essays challenges myths about African dance while demonstrating its power to awaken identity, self-worth, and community respect. These voices of experience share personal accounts of living African traditions, their first encounters with and ultimate embrace of dance, and what teaching African-based dance has meant to them and their communities.
Myth Performance in the African Diasporas by Benita Brown; Dannabang Kuwabong; Christopher Olsen
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2013
Diaspora studies continue to expand in range and scope and remain fertile terrain for investigating multiple techniques of myth creation in dance performance, history as performance, dramatic narrative, and staged rituals in the field. Similarly, research in postcoloniality, gender/sexuality, intercultural, and literary studies, among others, all engage and feature core components of performance and myth in articulating and understanding their fields.

Listen & Watch

Batuku - Bandeira de Cabo Verde
"It is essentially a woman’s dance even though men are seen clapping their hands to the sound of the drum or playing an instrument."

"Batuku, alongside another type of dance funana, was banned during colonialism. King Manuel I of Portugal passed a law prohibiting the dance, saying it was “too African” and “too primitive”, “noisy” and “indecent”, authors Katherine Carter and Judy Aulette cited historians as saying. It was also considered an offense to the values of Christianity, the official religion of the Portuguese Empire at the time."

"What is more, colonial authorities argued that the dance was a “rehearsal for freedom” and hence had to be forbidden by law. They warned that anyone who went against the law would be fined or sent to prison. But Batuku prevailed. The dance form continued to be performed although 'underground in people’s homes.'"

"After Cape Verde gained its independence from Portugal in 1975, the island country’s new leaders urged citizens to study Batuku. At the same time, the dance form was promoted at events, particularly festivals while politicians hired the services of Batuku dancers to perform at their conventions. Today, Batuku is performed at various social events including weddings, parties, baptisms, and so on."

From Hadithi Africa
https://hadithi.africa/batuku-the-famous-cape-verde-dance-banned-by-colonizers-for-being-too-african/