Fulbright Chronicles, Volume 3, Number 2 (2024)
Author
Mary Anna Ball
Dancing in the World: Revealing Cultural Confluences by Sinclair Ogaga Emoghene and Kathleen A. Spanos. Kathleen Spanos was a Fulbright Scholar to Universidad Federal de Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil in 2018.
Dancing in the World: Revealing Cultural Confluences reflects on the current limits of dance education and scholarship in Western academia through personal anecdotes and analysis of different aspects of dance. Sinclair Ogaga Emoghene and Kathleen A. Spanos propose that by broadening our (meaning the Western dance practitioner, educator, scholar, and audience member) ideas and perceptions of dance beyond the Western stage (ballet, modern, and contemporary) to other marginalized performance practices both Western and non-Western, we can better serve tradition in these practices, expand our own practices, and innovate dance scholarship.
Sinclair and Kathleen (as they refer to each other in the book) detail their own dance practices, the reception their dancing receives in Western academia and dance circles, and their experiences studying and teaching dance. Sinclair’s primary dance background is in various styles from Nigeria whereas Kathleen’s is in Irish dance. These styles—neither of which is mainstream in Western academia—are limited in study and practice by “impermeable streams of categories, brands, and identity markers” that come as a result of Western methodologies looking at dance independently from society and culture at large (131). They argue that by diversifying scholarship, including ceding the sole “authority” title, and writing together from different backgrounds, dance, both academically and artistically, can better reflect the confluences already present within it and ourselves.
Means of scholarship that could better serve dance also include giving value to nontraditional methods of record-keeping and placing less emphasis on the written word and the authority it lends to a subject. This includes sometimes taking a dance at face value—a dance does not have to have a deeper intellectual meaning to make it worthy of academic or somatic practice. Sinclair and Kathleen describe in Chapter 3 a collaborative social experience, “Ainihi e Alteridade: Performing Otherness,” which drew from rhythms and movements from Nigerian, Brazilian, and Irish cultures. I do not use the word “performance” here because it wasn’t a performance in the Western sense. Although it was held in a theater, everyone was invited to join in the dancing and playing the percussive instruments provided. The authors describe the different ways participants reacted: some reacted negatively to not understanding every detail, but some also enjoyed the freedom to participate, mingle, and experience cultural clues even if they were not completely sure what they were.
This was intentional, spontaneous dancing that included inviting audience participants, providing welcome tokens, and trusting the community to help shape the experience. By ceding total control as producer or choreographer and rejecting assigning the event a specific meaning, as well as blurring the lines between participant and performer, Sinclair and Kathleen were able to involve the community in their perception of cultural confluences in dance and challenge the Western standard of dance and performance.
Inviting people to dance and allowing them to participate in cultural and categorical blurring is just as important in dance academia as it is to the public. This is not to say that categorizations are unnecessary: distinguishing dance by physical, cultural, national, and ethnic identities helps preserve traditions and histories and enable marginalized communities. However, these boundaries, as Sinclair and Kathleen have experienced, can also act as barbed wire: “We have been met with resistance to, and in some cases fearful of, learning about other dance cultures because they are worried about saying or doing the wrong thing, or being accused of appropriation for participating in a culture that is not their own” (38). However, they have also found through giving students the agency to learn, question, and think critically of their own and new practices, students are more engaged in dancing. “Some have even said that our classes have awakened in them a desire to travel and learn more about other cultures when, just a few months before, they were afraid of even talking about another culture” (39).
As a dancer this book made me more aware of my own inherent and unconscious biases
As a dancer, and one who primarily practices ballet, this book made me more aware of my own inherent and unconscious biases in my own practice, my perception of other practices, and my teaching. I appreciated the honesty throughout the book and acknowledging the contradictions and ironies in dance studies that can feel hard to ignore or overcome. As Kathleen and Sinclair state, this book is not a how-to guide on “fixing” dance in academia, but it is a collection of suggestions and proposals made by dancers and scholars from marginalized dance backgrounds. By including other perspectives, different means of scholarship— such as gossip or folk etymology— taking varieties of movement seriously, and incorporating them beyond simply inclusion, we can broaden our ideas and interpretations of dance in the world.
Sinclair Ogaga Emoghene and Kathleen A. Spanos, Dancing in the World : Revealing Cultural Confluences. London: Routledge, 2023. 150 pages. $144 hc
Biography
Mary Anna Ball was a 2020 Fulbright Scholar at the University of Roehampton, UK, where she received her MA in Dance Philosophy and History, and she is presently a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College. A West Virginia native, she received her BA from Marshall University. Since 2015, she has been a soloist with the Charleston Ballet in Charleston, West Virginia, and teaches ballet across the state in addition to performing. In 2019, she won an Emmy for her role as Associate Producer for the documentary Andre Van Damme & the Story of the Charleston Ballet. She credits her cats as co-authors on all her works. She can be reached at verymaryanna@gmail.com