West African dance education as spiritual capital: A perspective from the United States

Abstract

This dance ethnography highlights the work of the Dambe Project (DP), a non-profit organization based in Tucson, Arizona that specializes in West African dance education. The study demonstrates Guinea dance to be a provider of transformative knowledge, and analyses how the pedagogy and final performance provided high school students the opportunity for constructing (post)colonial and self-knowledge that enriches their lives both culturally and spiritually. This research strives to provide a West African understanding of dance that informs teaching philosophies, as well as what Karen Clemente (2008) calls ‘the spiritual realm and potential of our pedagogies’.

Teaching African Dances in the Caribbean: Horizontal Interpenetration and Afrocentricity in Jamaica

“…Spiritually, a combination of music and dance ensures that the “dancer has an enlivened spirit that stems from a deep relationship to music and communal ritual. The attributes of music and community ethos can stimulate a musical spirit alertness, and a suppleness and joyfulness in the body” (Banks, 2014, p. 169).…”

“…The spiritual aspect of the dances is anchored in this communality. As Banks (2014) has noted, the dances “fuel a sense of self-vitality and community solidarity, which can usher in a sense of spiritual well-being in the body . .…”

Glancing back – looking forward

“…This journal then breaks with and balances long-established hierarchies in placing equal value on all dance and movement forms as viable sites of research; each research site contributing to the collection of new cultural data from miscellaneous historical, cultural, geographic, contextual and situated differences that might otherwise remain eclipsed by secular enquiry. I see and appreciate how the journal is beginning to map a strong multi-directional dancing/moving spiritual geography (and notably not just East and West) -ebbing and flowing with multiple perceptions, experiences and expressions of spirituality Kenney 2012, 2014;Latitaraja 2012;Njaradi 2012;Vaugan 2014;Cruz Banks 2014;Golar 2014;Wright 2015). I see and appreciate how the journal is beginning to map a strong multi-directional dancing/moving spiritual geography (and notably not just East and West) -ebbing and flowing with multiple perceptions, experiences and expressions of spirituality Kenney 2012, 2014;Latitaraja 2012;Njaradi 2012;Vaugan 2014;Cruz Banks 2014;Golar 2014;Wright 2015).…”