Berghahn Books Dance Circles: Movement, Morality and Self-fashioning in Urban Senegal: 5 (Dance & Performance Studies)

Senegal has played a central role in contemporary dance due to its rich performing traditions, as well as strong state patronage of the arts, first under French colonialism and later in the postcolonial era. In the 1980s, when the Senegalese economy was in decline and state fundingwithdrawn, European agencies used the performing arts as a tool in diplomacy. This had a profound impact on choreographic production and arts markets throughout Africa. In Senegal, choreographic performers have taken to contemporary dance, while continuing to engage with neo-traditional performance, regional genres like the sabar, and the popular dances they grew up with. A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of this multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space. Hélène Neveu Kringelbach is a researcher at the African Studies Centre in Oxford. Since October 2011, she has been leading a Leverhulme-funded research project on transnational families across Senegal, France, and the UK. Her research focuses on dance, musical performance, and popular culture in Senegal and in the diaspora. She recently co-edited, Dancing Cultures: Globalization, Tourism and Identity in the Anthropology of Dance (Berghahn Books, 2012).