Asante, Kariamu Welsh : Temple University

Dr. Kariamu Welsh Asante received her doctorate from New York University in Dance History. She is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at Temple University where she teaches African and African American dance as well as courses in aesthetics, social philosophy and art.

Foreword:
The publication of this volume of essays on African dance comes at a time when the world seems willing to search for novel ways of viewing the world, for different ways of knowing, and new bases of social interaction in a world that is fast contracting in its outward reach. This is taking place against a background of old values maintaining their tenacious hold on traditional centers of social, economic, political and cultural power which is still active in the North Atlantic segment of the Planet, even while Japan and the Pacific Rim communities suggest some real shift in economic and technological areas of influence, if not control.

A core feature of the last half millennium, during which time the "modern world" grew up, is the peculiar relationship between Europe and Africa both on the African continent where colonies were settled or forged in conquest, and in the Africa diaspora known historically as "Plantation America", with its history of slavery, but more recently extended to such Western European countries as Britain and France, two of the former great colonial powers.

The lasting consequences of racism and, with it, assumptions about the natural cultural inferiority of "lesser races," continue to plague relations in the changing world despite the cessation of slavery in the nineteenth century and the acceleration of the decolonization process in the twentieth. Cultural resistance and all other forms of struggle against the racism which is still actively denigrating people of African ancestry in Southern Africa, in all of the Americas (including the Caribbean), and more recently in Western Europe, are vital instruments of change in this sense. Armed resistance, polemical self-assertion, cultural action through energetic activity in different branches of the arts (especially performing arts), and even voluntary surrender by way of co-optation or denial of the co-opted's African ancestral origins are among the many strategies of survival employed by the Africans at home and abroad. The systemic study, analysis, interpretation and diffusion of African cultural heritage by Africans themselves has been late in entering the complex of strategies of demarginalization required by persons of African ancestry if they are to retain and maintain human equilibrium in a world that developed in lopsided fashion to Africa's decided disadvantage.

EXCERPT (3):TRADITION TRANSFORMED - Dancing Under the Lash: Sociocultural Disruption, Continuity, and Synthesis by Katrina Hazzard-Gordon
Though a sizeable body of literature on dance has been generated in the past two decades, none of it has focused on the socio-historical context from which African-American secular social dance has emerged. An assessment of at least some of these circumstances would be a contribution as important as the body of literature focusing on the structural and functional aspects of the dance. The primary purpose of this paper is to make a contribution in that direction by looking at the transformation process from African ceremonial to African-American secular social dance, and a brief examination of the specific contexts in which that transformation occurred.

Life under slavery, repressive though it was, allowed some opportunity for community and cultural development. In the hostile environment in which Africans found themselves it seems indeed miraculous that any African customs were able to persist. But as antagonistic to African culture as slavery was, it could not exercise total control over all areas of bondsmen's lives. This "unregulated sociocultural space" which existed in the slave quarter and which Africans created for themselves, provided them with at least some latitude in which certain aspects of African culture could survive.

In addition to opportunity provided by this unregulated sociocultural space, at least two other factors seem significant for the survival of African-based traditions: one, that the surviving culture proved functional for the practitioners; two, that it be somehow functional and perceived as relatively non-threatening for the slaveocracy. Once the enslaved Africans left the ship and "settled in," they could begin, with the sociocultural material available to them, to forge a new culture through interaction. As a new African became part of the fabric of slave life, acquaintances and group relationships developed. Though the environment of bondage provided little with which African-Americans could create culture, it could not prevent an African-based cultural tradition in dance and other areas from flourishing as Africans continually sought ways to circumvent restriction

This is a collection of essays written by scholars and professionals on the field of Dance and African American Studies covering four major areas of the disciplines. It provides historical, philosophical and aesthetic information on the subject matter drawing from the African continent and the African Diaspora.

Acknowledgements
In Memory of Pearl Primus by Kariamu Welsh Asante
Foreword by Sir Rex Nettlewood

TRADITION

African Dance by Pearl Primus
Traditional Dance in Africa by Doris Green
A Panoply of African Dance Dynamics by Esilokun Kinni-Olusanyin

TRADITION AND CONTINUITY

African Dance: Tradition and Continuity by Robert W. Nicholls
African Dance: Bridges to Humanity by Tracy D. Snipe
African Influences in Brazilian Dance by Myriam Evelyse Mariani

TRADITION TRANSFORMED

Dancing under the Lash: Sociocultural Disruption, Continuity, and Synthesis by Katrina Hazzard-Gordon
Diane McIntyre: A Twentieth Century African-American Griot by Cynthia S'thembile West
The Dance: Manifestation of the African aesthetic by Cheryl willis

TRADITION CONTEXTUALIZED

Traditional African Dance in Context by Felix Begho
In Contest: The Dynamics of African Religious Dances by Omofolabo Soyinka Ajayi
The Zimbabwean Dance Aesthetics: Senses, Canons and Characteristics by Kariamu Welsh Asante

A Bibliographic Essay and Selected Bibliography of African Dance by Glendora Yhema Mills
Contributors