Modern-day griots: Imagining Africa, choreographing experience, in a West African performance in New York

This dissertation examines the production and practice of African dance performances in New York based on the music and dances from West Africa. The performances that I examine are not staged performances, rather they take place in a dance studio setting. New York has been central to the historical development of African dance outside of the continent due to trans-Atlantic ties that were established between Black American artists and political activists in America and West Africa. Since the period of intense interaction in the 1960's, African dance has become commercialized via World Music and is practiced by an eclectic population. Presently the performers who participate in these dance and musical practices include West Africans, a mix of African and Euro-Americans, and several other international groups.;African dance performances serve as a mask for individuals to explore marginal forms of experience that do not conform to mainstream values surrounding aesthetics or subjectivity. West Africans take part in performances mainly for professional or economic goals but also to gain new forms of experience by re-thinking Africa in a new social context. While African dance performances have enriched the collective and individual experience of participants, the creative exchanges among them traverse diverse social movements, ideologies and artistic practices and involve a cultural protectionism of both space and experience. African dance has been produced within a dialogue and through a plurality of competing discourses that both fix and destabilize identities based on claims to authenticity. These claims have been inspired by a universal paradigm that associates both the performers and African dance with authentic or rooted cultures. The competing discourses are informed by a Black Diaspora aesthetics, a commodified version of exoticism and a quest for authenticity. Authenticity is an ambiguous term that describes both the source and a quality of personal experience that is derived by taking part in African dance performances. Performance participants describe their experiences as being pleasurable or symbolically meaningful and associate their practice with an authentic West African tradition. By highlighting the power dynamics involved in struggles over defining the aesthetic standards of African dance, the results of this research address the relations between aesthetics, cultural production and personhood in American life.