[Music] Ethnographic Imagination Basel a series on
reimagining the world from the mundane my name is George Paul Meiu and this episode is on Dance
how dancing not only encompasses the elements of our changing worlds but also allows us to act
upon that world today we are lucky to have uh two guests on our podcast Hélène Neveu Kringelbach who
did research with dancers and musicians in Senegal and Lesley Braun who worked among women concert
dancers in the Democratic Republic of Congo so stay t
uned for a conversation on how
dance can help us rethink our world [Music] Hélène Neveu Kringelbach is associate professor of
African anthropology at University College London her research has focused on the lives and works of
dancers and musicians on migration and effective Relationships by national International families
in Senegal and France Hélène is author of dense circles movement morality and self-fashioning in
urban Senegal published in 2013 By Bergen books Lesley Braun our other gu
est is research associate
at The Institute of social anthropology in Basel her research explores dance a gender transnational
Mobility women's sexuality and trade primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo but also
transnationally Lesley is author of kongo's dancers women and work in Kinshasa published
in 2023 by the University of Wisconsin press okay a heartily welcome to both of you we are
delighted that you accepted our invitation and that you're here with us today let's start with
t
he question the simple question of what is dance it seems an obvious question a question to
which presumably we all have an answer but I can think of many contexts and many languages
in which the word for dance is the same as the word for let's say singing or ritual so
that not everywhere the category is so um obvious as anthropologists how do we think
about dance Hélène would you want to start so in the 60s and 70s anthropologists were very
concerned with defining what dance was for the re
asons you outlined because they didn't seem to
be Universal definition in many languages there isn't a specific word for dance which doesn't mean
that people don't know what it is or don't have a concept of Dance but this was also for reasons
links to the discipline itself because until then the study of dogs had often been a sort of a side
or you know a hidden aspect of the study of music and there was a sense of urgency in delineating
our object of study as a dance anthropologists so at t
hat time in the 60s and 70s there were lots
of arguments going back and forth and someone like Judith and Hannah had summarized those arguments
in her studies some anthropologists wanted to expand the focus into human movement others
into performance there seemed to be a general agreement that it was culturally constructed it
was culturally defined that it involves some kind of patent movement that varied across cultures
and that very often dance involved some kind of altered state of consc
iousness now since then
it's appeared much less urgent to Define what dance is because there is uh flourishing Branch
within anthropology the study of dance is much more uh common and much broader than it was at the
time so it seems less urgent to Define answer away from studies of music and I think generally the
consensus now is to try to understand rather how people themselves in this context that we study
Define or understand what it means to dance for them and we find that it's a univer
sal activity
Just Like Music Of course so even though many languages do not have a specific word for dance
it for example in wolof in Senegal there is a word for dance that is fetch but it only applies to
popular dances or to the kind of dances that women do in family ceremonies it it's not always used of
professional dots which doesn't mean people that people don't understand what dance is but there
is a tendency to use a term for a particular genre like the sabar for example refers to as
a dance
style but also a type of instrument a type of Rhythm and there is a long history that goes with
that particular term and so nowadays I think many anthropologists would rather you know have those
conversations in the field with people about what dance means to them or even if it can't be
talked about try to understand from practice so so we have um kind of broad understanding of
movement and what you said very interestingly and potential altered state of consciousness
that participa
te in that participating in that movement but we also need to leave it open
enough to see how these things are constructed um On The Ground by different actors um Leslie
can you think also of situations in which it's not necessarily obvious with dances or when
the with dance is becomes historically speaking um contested or um because I can imagine they're
all kind of hierarchies of dance too not all Dances all the time acceptable or respectable yeah
and I think from an anthropological persp
ective it's always tricky to start off with a question
you know what is dance and what is not dance The Contours are really blurry and there's
a lot of ambiguity there for instance when does you know gesture turn into a dance when
does it turn into movement it's really hard to say so again I think this is true what
Ellen brings up is is ask people themselves um what it is it that they're doing and but
then you know as anthropologists we sort of bump up against a whole other set of problems
in that it's so hard to articulate something that's so ephemeral and fleeting and it's really
difficult to pin down and there's a famous dancer named izadora Duncan and she's uh you know the
pioneer of modern contemporary dance and she said famously uh with journalists who were asking her
what she was doing and she said well if I could talk about it and speak it then I wouldn't have to
dance it so it is really difficult to to sort of approach that topic with people but nevertheless
that is
sort of the bread of butter bread and butter of anthropology is is really dwelling
in the nuances and the sort of the difficult um topics to talk about and and I think you
bring up um something quite interesting about the you know histories and I think dance is also
part of a living archive for a lot of people um and it's an embodied archive
and often when you think of dancing um you can think of like moves and genres from
the past and this sort of lives inside of you and you can you know
bring them up collectively
with people and and sort of dance some of these memories together this is interesting because we
also point to the fleetiness of things it's it's hard to pin it down it's a fleeting moment but
also I'm thinking here of meaning how meaning is made in a song for example where you use language
right an analysis of meaning can revolve around let's say metaphors or metanimes whatever here
we're talking about an embodied production of meaning or meaningfulness and an ac
cumulation
of that meaning historically as you say but if step back um I was curious also about each one
of your trajectories with dance how did you come to studying dance in Senegal and in the DRC
respectively and why dance how you happen upon it um and what what made you think that
this is a interesting starting point um to look at a particular historical social
context um and so on so as you know George many anthropologists choose a topic for personal
reasons very often are attracted to
a place or to a topic because it's something they that's
part of their personal history they feel very strongly about and then we have a tendency to
put a narrative back into this retrospectively and make it look as though we came from a
problem in the literature but in actual fact that's not how it works most of the time right
so for me it was a lifelong passion I started dancing as a child I realized around the age
of six and seven that this was something I remember even telling my mom t
hat I wanted
to to dance until I could no longer walk um and by the time I started my anthropological
doctoral research I tried lots of different styles never as a professional but I'd taken lots of
dance classes I've been to Adventure workshops I've done ballet contemporary dance a lot of jazz
I'd done Flamenco salsa and I just had a sense that having this passion to share with my research
participants would be a great way in I wanted to do field work in Senegal I wanted to spend time
the
re because this is where my paternal families from I had this origin in my family history but
I'd never actually lived there and I thought you know it has to be structured around something
that I'm passionate about this is I suspect how good work is done but it's also because dance
is ubiquitous in Senegal I want you to do field work in Dakar and as soon as you arrived in in
Dakar and you know regardless of how much time you spend there you will see people dancing so
I was also really intri
gued by this uh contrast between the fact that dance was ubiquitous and
the way in which people spoke about dance which was often in very derogatory terms and in fact my
version of my paternal family wasn't very happy to see that I'd chosen this as a topic they found
it very difficult to make sense of the fact that since I had this great opportunity to do a PhD in
a good University why on Earth would I want to do that on Dance presumably not serious enough or
what exactly wasn't serious eno
ugh and also it's the social context in which people who dance who
perform in public are assumed to associated with um a particular cast or group of caste you know
they're shaded with grios or people from Artisan cast my families from a different background
and in a sense I was transgressing I was crossing boundaries I wasn't supposed to cross
unbeknownst to me at the time not just to dwell on this question a little bit more um the context
in which dances become highly problematic because t
hey're too sexualized or too erotic perhaps
but also because various publics National or otherwise might find them um disturbing or vulgar
absolutely and actually when you look at human history Dons has always generated a lot of
anxiety and it's often caused authorities religious authorities or nationalist authorities
to want to regulate it and to control it and I think part of the reason for that is that dance
reminds us that bodies can never be completely controlled there is always a pote
ntial for excess
there is always a potential for boundaries to be exploded and for things to go beyond what is
considered acceptable in a particular moment and that's partly due to the ecstatic power of
dance and partly due to the fact that dance is fun and therapeutic and a lot of things can happen
in a given moment that people can't anticipate and can't control we can barely control our own
bodies and dance reminds us of that I think and this is independent of the particular genres
of da
nce or is it particular genres of dance in public that are looked down upon or in in such a
context spot on so there are particular types that are associated with um being of of Grail ancestry
or a similar Associated cast and it tends to just let's tell our audience a very briefly sorry to
interrupt you um what degree hours are for those of or not familiar with it so in in some Societies
in West Africa there are hereditary categories of uh praisingers entertainers oral historians people
who
are there to be uh the voice of the community they are said to be the masters of performance
and the Masters of the word and their role is to valorize to speak on behalf of others to sing and
perform on behalf of others to be the community's ritual intermediaries and oral historians
and through their performance they're meant to vitalize the community if you will and there
they can be rewarded very generously for that so there are some Styles then that are particularly
associated with agri
os that are deemed problematic so historically family ceremonies like weddings
baptisms but also women's Gatherings are those contexts where although anyone can dance in
particularly women can dance it's assumed that it's Grails who are really the masters of
the performance in those contexts they are the musicians but also gray or women are assumed to
be the ones who are the best dancers there is an assession between this group and performance
in those contexts now in more recent times peop
le who do for example contemporary dance
or hip-hop are often not from these groups and the fact that the Aesthetics of the movement
looks different also enables others who are not hungry your families to argue that in fact what
they are doing is not dance or it's a different kind of dance so doing different styles
enables people to cross those boundaries while maintaining but in a way that remains
socially acceptable this gets us back to the whole question of definition and how in this
ca
se playing with the definition allows for certain kind of Mobility social Mobility access
to respectability maintaining respective exactly in some contexts you can say well actually what
I'm doing is not dance it's more like theater or it's a kind of research it's worked on the
self but it's not what the grios do right right Leslie how did you come to to dance and to dance
among women that that says in uh in the DRC well it goes back to when I was a teenager growing
up in Montreal which is
um it's a French Canadian city and it's home to a large population
of francophone Africans and um early on I was brought by friends to African run shops that
sold DVDs and VHS tapes of dance concerts filmed in Kinshasa and in Brussels and in Paris and
these were spectacles that were filmed on these and and disseminated all over the world and so we
would buy these tapes and then bring them home to watch and I was just blown away by the spectacle
and the musicality and of course the dancing a
nd the dancing really was something that elevated the
show and the dancers for the most part were were women and these were virtuosic performers um and
it was absolutely captivating and and my friends and I we would try to master the choreography
learn the steps together to to perform at parties um and I think this is really what sort of sparked
my my interests initially and then of course much later I I began to formally study dance and
especially dance in the DRC because it has such a ric
h history and I was always curious as to why um
for the most part it was sort of a male dominated milieu especially in Congolese Rumba music however
women really were present and they were present as dancers or dancers and so this was something that
I found was curious and I wanted to explore more and so that's how I I came to this this subject
and then to um to think about I mean both your um books um and and research work um in this
context you both take dance and the performance of dance
and then almost moving out in ever
growing concentric circles you tied to questions of your work gender Mobility um history um how
particular genres came to emerge how Notions associated with respectability or disrespect um
comes to be tied uh come to be tied to these um Ellen in your work you suggest that dance is not
just about bodily performance as such and you're looking in particular to the genres of sabar all
right and um in balaks is that am I pronouncing it um but how these also at
once Express and shape
forms of self-making dance is Not Just Dance for its own sake but it is making those engaging in it
as selves as persons um and how it shapes Mobility gender and so on how does this work how does this
thinking out from dance and then back to dance and into the social world and then back into um
dance how does this work how did it work for you so to look at Dawns and the different the ways in
which people engage with different jars enables you to look at things that a
re not normally talked
about in society because with dance as Leslie said it's a matter of practice and although people
debate the morality of dance there is a lot that happens in dance events that does not get talked
about so it gives you insights in which onto those things that remain normally quite hidden and one
of these things is um is the making of gendered selves so for example in in Senegal there is there
is a perhaps much more ritualized initiation in for for boys there is a much m
ore straightforward
way in which you become initiated into manhood for some groups at least but there isn't an
obvious way in which one becomes a woman and it's much a much more gradual process actually even for
for men it's much more gendering it's a much more gradual process than what it often appears and
actually I think the gendering of persons happens very much at dance events this is where you learn
to behave in a particular sexualized way or where you can also contest that so this is
where you
learn how to become a girl and then a woman or where you learn to contest that and the same for
boys actually to some extent and can we argue that actually the general the generational sort of
selfhood is also made in this case I imagine that from one's parents generation or grandparents
generation some of the Styles might change um is that is that also playing into this gendered
subjection or through section but like self-making through dance yes that's definitely a space in
wh
ich new generations can show their can can make a statement of Distinction where young
girls can show their creativity where they can show that they are actually ready to become
women that they might be marriageable for example through their ability to prepare themselves
for these dance events through their ability to dance in a way that attracts the attention
of the audience of the musicians but it's also a way a space in which different Generations can
coach each other it's a space of fem
ale solidarity sabar events are very much a space from
which many men are excluded and part of the very suggestive dancing that happens
is part of this is a way of excluding men from those spaces so that women of different
Generations can uh older women can initiate younger women into Mobile Womanhood but also in
space in which female friends will for example help each other with marriage problems they might
help each other with trade activities it is really as people say in Senegal Women's
Business yeah
so it creates this intergenerational publics among women in which all kinds of possibilities
emerge all kinds of things happen there that's great let's see your book also takes dance
not as something isolated from society and the political economic context in which it
plays out um especially also historically but as a central mirror somehow of what's going
on in the society more broadly speaking you look for example in how in Congolese a Roomba
among other genres women pursu
e livelihoods um dance can be work and is work visibility
respectability are negotiated in all kinds of ways how did you come to kind of start creating
these broader associations and understand dance not only through its through itself but
through things that happen with it around it I think there's a a politics of invisibility and
invisibility I think that Elena also was touching on is how do you um talk about certain subjects
certain subjects that might be really difficult like changing N
otions of femininity and Womanhood
what does that mean how do you even begin to talk about that and I felt that dance was really
an entry point to talk about social processes um so it was sort of a way in for example in
Congolese Rumba music or La Rumba congoles this is a legendary um music uh genre that has a long Rich
history and Within These bands there's a sort of a particular hierarchy with band leaders musicians
and singers and dancers it also is at the very bottom occupying sort of t
he lowest rung but
despite this they're really relied upon to attract a paying audience um you know and without the
role without the dancers there would be no show um but paradoxically dancers despite them
being relied upon you know for the Ambiance and the effervescence that's generated in
the concert there's a least pained band members and they're also sort of seen as
um uh morally dubious in society at large so there was this this feeling there was a
paradox that I was picking up while
this is a music that's celebrated and really integral
and to the the country's history and identity um the role of women and the role that they play
in this milia was contested morally and so this I felt was really interesting and I wanted to um
ask people themselves about how what they thought and it also is how they saw themselves uh within
their bands but also at Society at large I mean um thinking back at your book I'm I'm remembering
these moments of of course women aren't quite vulner
able positions here um and and they're
very badly paid as you as you just say um so one one skeptic would come in or say
how is that then work how do you produce something if you're not paid if you put in
a vulnerable position and yet you show that these are forms of of of speculating on value on
producing social ties of uh transforming in them into something else something more durable um
there is a word for it right uh in the DRC um so this is sort of loosely translates as
the art of mak
ing do with one's available resources and it's how you get by in the city um and of course downstairs they come from
sort of economically precarious positions um and then they professionalize themselves
which is so not everybody is a good dancer you know it takes Artistry and skill that
has to be learned it has to be practiced um and they are professionals within this
band despite the fact that maybe they're not paid in the same way as the musicians are
so this is a work that they do but al
so the work comes from these sort of effective labor
that they do in maintaining social networks um you know with the visibility that they receive
from being visible public performers they also have access to new groups of people and these
groups of people are really important for them as they move forward in their careers and later
on after they leave um leave their their career of dance that they can leverage for the future
and so this is the work that they do as their professional dancer
s that is perhaps even
invisible invisible labor that they're doing to cultivate it is quite important and United
States precisely this analytic Focus that you put to think about this as work because it is so
easy to to deem it invisible somehow or to not take it seriously as a form of value production
but this also thinks makes me think of something that's coming up in our conversation and that's
a body and I'm thinking here also um in recent studies of of value production work capital and
late capital in late in a late capitalist moment um the fact that many argue that the body becomes
our ultimate capital in a context in which many don't inherit land or houses or or money or what
have you in a context in which employment stable employment at least is cars in a context in which
as you said Leslie a speculation becomes both an art and a necessary way to produce ties value and
so on the body then becomes one's ultimate Capital I'm thinking also of all these studies on uh youn
g
men having nothing else to invest in and then investing in bodybuilding for example right can
we think of the body in movement in dance in the particular context that you were are looking at um
in in Senegal and RC respectively um somehow also aligning with or troubling this idea of the body
as our ultimate capital in this historical moment does that doesn't make sense yeah um it's very
interesting because that is also the way in which people in Senegal often speak about uh embodied
acti
vities they might say for example well um if you can't do anything else if you can't be
successful through formal education you can become a dancer you can be become a football player in
a very similar way to what Leslie describes very often dancers come from underprivileged or perhaps
lower middle class background some of them are School dropouts and there is a hope an aspiration
to becoming a Success Through alternative Pathways outside of the formal education system what I
found though i
s that very often this doesn't actually come to pass first of all I think this
idea of the body as a resource in late capitalism reinforces the body mind dichotomy yeah it makes
it assumes that the body is disconnected from the mind and that somehow if you can't do something
with the mind then you can do something with the body that is not actually the case it turns
out that those who ultimately often those who ultimately are successful in the dance world
often people who are able to articu
late what they do and that's most visible in the contemporary
dance world of course where to become successful internationally to work alongside International
choreographers to be invited to perform in Paris or London or at residencies in U.S universities
you have to be able to speak about your work in eloquent ways you have to be able to write texts
about it you have to be able to stand in front of an audience and put this retrospective narrative
that we also do as academics choreographers
have to construct a narrative around their
creative process I was inspired by this often it doesn't reflect the way in which pieces
are created pieces are created out of a feeling a sensation or an idea or they're inspired by the
work of all the groups or an event in the world but then you need to construct a coherent
narrative that will explain to an audience what you are trying to say how you've come to produce
this piece and people who are skilled in doing that and who are also skilled
as performers are
much more likely to succeed and so although many young dancers who are School dropouts for example
think that at least in dance they have equal chances and they can do very well very quickly
they find themselves they find that there are there are hurdles there are barriers that are
very difficult to overcome unless they also have these uh verbal and intellectual tools which
tend to be more available to those who've gone a bit further those who've you know been able to
rea
d and who've been able to travel for example so it's not exactly what people think I can I
can imagine it's precisely what you're saying also might apply to less unless it's correct
because this ability as a dancer to anticipate um it's almost like an ethnographic ability
right to anticipate to capture and to position yourself in relation uh to these possibilities
right and that's part of the work that that needs to be done and all you have is your body
this is the tool um the tool that's a
vailable and there's this expression at least in Congo
it's Agate Loco so you throw your body into an opportunity so whenever there's an opportunity
you keep this sort of radical openness to open eternities that might be presented to
you and then you throw your body into it um so and it's not entirely self-abandoned
it's a managed you know throwing of uh but nevertheless there's this feeling of like
you're taking risks with your entire body and then those risks and those failures
of naviga
ting probably these economies of possibility what have you are also felt on the
body um indeed yes and I'm also thinking here of um now the role of social media and there's
this accelerated pace of of Dance videos that are circulating all over the world of vernacular
forms of dance performed by people that would be marginalized otherwise invisible and so now
the body is becoming digital and is circulating digitally in sort of decontextualized which is
sort of opening up this whole other con
versation about dance and and the just digital digitality of
it anyways that's interesting I I wanted to also talk with you a bit about the way of studying
dance how does an ethnographer study dance and um it is more practical question I think how did
you research dance what concrete do you have to do and we should go back also to what you both of
you said earlier that you came from very personal um connections with dance and dancing um and how
how did you use that kind of attachment to dan
ce um um to study dance we live with this kind of
fiction fantasy in the social science sometimes not I don't think everybody but um that you
know you you studied objectively and you study it subjectively we also moved past that but
it does raise an interesting question about um how does your own experience and your own
skill and um can how can that be brought to the study of performance I think the fact
that you've been for me having engaged having practiced other dance forms than
the one
s that were practiced in in Senegal made me willing to position myself as an
apprentice I I knew the value of being a novice in a practice I knew that learning in the field would
give me insight into how you actually learned to dance in that particular context and also I
was like I think many dance anthropologists you have to be willing to make a fool of yourself you
have to be willing to be the clown at the back uh you know people will laugh at but as people
correct you and laugh at you yo
u also learn what is important I learned that for example
it in many of the regional genres it's not necessarily the exact choreography following an
exactrography that matters but you also need to display the feeling that goes with a particular
genre you need to be able to express yourself in some contexts you have to be able to imitate
the person who's teaching you without asking too many questions because an apprentice is not
supposed to ask questions constantly you're supposed to absorb
a particular way of moving and
the willingness to do that and to fail repeatedly is actually part of the learning process and
concretely in your case was that going to dancing classes or was it joining um groups of dancers
having a teacher so I did several things um I took regular classes in West African dances but also
I took part in workshops for professional dancers which were extremely difficult so I was
really the clown at the back but of course having practice in other jars means that
you
have this kinesthetic empathy in a sense that you're able to absorb steps and movements perhaps
faster than someone who's never danced before and that establishes a kind of legitimacy people
say okay you can't do this but I can see that you've danced other things before so you're one
of us and it gives you a reason for being there for the dance troops the dance groups
I followed more regularly and who were working on performances on set choreographies
I didn't dance with them I wasn't
good enough and they were working on particular shows
but I could sometimes join the warming up exercises for example and give them some of my
own ballet warming up exercises which they found quite interesting to try or I could just be there
and take photos and videos and that also gave me a very good reason for being there and a way of
giving something you know giving something back to people and that was of course before everyone
had smartphones with cameras in them now this this interse
ction of imitation and Imagination or
improvisation is is very interesting because there's a structure that one imitates but within
that structure one also creates right and that that sounds very interesting how is it for you
let's see well so since I wanted to explore the milia in the world of concert dancing and
dancers in their position within these bands um I I presented myself to the band leader and the
musicians and I said I want to come and and talk to people here and they said sure
you're welcome
but you're gonna have to become a dancer yourself I was like how do you know if I even can dance
they're like that's okay we're gonna we're gonna train you um and actually I mean this was this
was a way of gaining access but also building trust and relationships with people that I was
um you know talking to and and Gathering stories from so it was a way of building cultural
intimacy actually which was really crucial um because you know you can't really do formal
interviews y
ou have to spend a lot of time with people and to dance with them and sweat with them
and there's something very powerful in that and also you make yourself vulnerable as adults those
too in a lot of ways that they were vulnerable and and then that also cultivates like a level of
trust uh but just about also mimicking and sort of this interplay between improvisation
and and you know mastering choreography I um the choreographer was extremely patient with
me teaching me the different dances
that we were going to perform at concerts and um you know
we would learn this through counting you know a six counts let's say on six you spin and so
in the rehearsal with a live band you know I'd be counting the steps okay six I'm spinning and I
was completely off I was out of sync with all of the dancers and it was it was like horrific and
at the end of this rehearsal that was almost a mini concert the choreographer pulled me aside and
said what are you doing we've practiced this for so l
ong and I said well at six I don't understand
spinning on six and he says what's six why counts you have to be totally in sync with the musicians
and the drummers why aren't you listening to the passage beats and I mean this was I was bringing
my own sets you know this is like a Western Way of of mastering movement and understanding dance
and really it was it was driving home this point is that goes all out the door and you know from
rehearsal to to the actual practice with musicians is you
have to be in sync with what they're doing
and that's in a form of embodied knowledge I'm afraid we're already out of time but I want to
thank you both for this wonderful conversation um and for our audience um that is interested
to learn more about dance in this context please do check out Allen's unless these books and
then Leslie um I want to thank you very much for your time and insightful conversation
and we look forward to hearing more from you on different different venues about the
se
topics and others thank you thank you thank you foreign [Music]
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