Atlantic divide: Comparison between Dance Practices in the winter temperate and African tropics

There is a school of thought that believes that the differences between dance practices in the northern hemisphere and African tropics are purely cultural. In this essay, I observe that in addition to culture, the social and economic orientation, progression, patterns and trends that underpin the two societies have intruded quite considerably in the way people in the two societies (North America and African tropics) view, embrace, produce, construct, apply, and value dance, and how this has influenced the availability and accessibility of dance.

For lucidity, I will restrict my discussion to vernacular dance traditions that exist in communities in sub-Saharan Africa in comparison with theatrical dance practices in the northern hemisphere, particularly the US. I will apply Karl Marx’s The communist Manifesto, Emile Durkheim’s The division of labor in society, and Darwin’s theory of evolution as a lens to deconstruct how social and economic constructions, integration, and progression have interlocked with individual distinctiveness to fashion the trends in dance traditions in the two societies. Further, reference will also be made to Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of social field (1984, 1985), which looks at a specific domain of activity defined by the purpose and goals of the activity as well as the values, power relations, and type of capital determining the role of relationship, social positioning, and status of actors, and activities within [a given] field (as cited in Turino, 2008, pp. 25 – 26).

Karl Marx traces the development of capitalism in the collapse of feudalism in the 12^th century. Capitalism as a system of world order was hastily precipitated by expropriation of surplus from former feudalism serfs and appropriation of this surplus by the bourgeoisies in the 15^th century, and the reformation in the 16^th century. Antiquity, which saw the emergence of urban centers only jump started the already capitalistic tendencies that were characteristic of the previous economic epoch. The increase in manufacturing and commercialization in urban centers saw former serfs flood urban areas for work. These serfs became wage labourers serving their employers – the owners of the capital and means of production in this new arrangement. The discovery of the Americas, and metals such as gold and silver in the Americas increased the demand for economic goods. To meet this demand, mechanization was integrated into the production chain hence giving birth to European industrial revolution. The revolution gave birth to commercialization of goods and services. At this stage, capitalism had reached its stage of maturity and the class-divide between the owners of the means of production and capital (bourgeoisies) and proletariats/workers/labourers was plain.

Emile Durkheim saw social integration, construction and progression as a product of evolution and not revolution. He posited that the pre-modern society was based on mechanical solidarity where different individuals within a community were bound together by communal values, customs and practices, and were obliged to conform to the same mindset. This, according to him, gave birth to conscience collective, a state where individuals in the community posses a shared communal way of thinking.  He contrasts mechanical solidarity with organic solidarity, which he argues, is characteristic of modern society. Organic solidarity is attained when over population culminates into division of labour as different individuals with diverse skills proceed to concentrate on their areas and skills of competence. Consequently, there emerges inter-dependency as a result of realization that these individuals need each other in this social and economic configuration. Durkheim argues that inter-dependency leads to e appoint of equilibrium in a given community. The community or society can then move to exchange and interact with other community to achieve moral or dynamic density.

Dance in the winter temperate: A Marxist replica

Looking at the trends of dance in the winter temperate, one notices some salient characteristic that Karl Marx propounds in his attempt to account for the genesis of capitalism. Like the serf-turned-wage labourers at the beginning of capitalism, dancers, choreographers and other dance practitioners are responding to the forces and pressures of demand and supply that are typical of a capitalistic world. Dance metamorphosed from being a social activity that people enjoy to merry-make and build communities. It is a commercial product that goes through a process of packaging, branding and marketing with the dancer, choreographer as a producer and the audiences as consumers. The dance studios are factories where the products are manufactured. The media is the space where these products are marketed, and theatres and other performance spaces are supply outlets where these products are sold. This process of commoditizing and monetizing dance entails scripting and auditing of dance production processes.

In this production chain, the choreographer owns the means of production and the dancers are his/her workers. Both the owners of the means of production and the workers aim to maximize profit out of this venture. Where does this leave dance? Dance will still remain a slave to commercialization with the choreographer as a producer, the dancer as a worker, the studio as a factory, the performances spaces as supply outlets, and the audience as the consumers alienated from the production grid. This new configuration is being compounded by advancement in digital technology which is increasingly tilting the way people in the winter temperate interact with dance. There is rise in objectification of dance through high fidelity, a pattern that has challenged the spontaneity and transiency of live dance performance.   

The ever evolving social and economic patterns in the West have made dance performance become more presentational than participatory, creating a situation where one group of people, the artists, prepare and produce dance for another group of people, who do not participate in making the dance (Turino, 2008, p. 26) in the overall artistic industrial complex.

Living in the shadow of Durkheimian organic and mechanical solidarity: Dance Practices in African tropics

Dance making, supply and consumption in community-based African tropics is inherently Durkheimian in organization, value, and objective. It exemplifies organic and mechanical solidarity as put forth by Durkheim. Dance is a product of collective conscience that is deeply anchored in communal philosophy, values, and procedures. The production processes is an amalgam of different individual experiences that are geared towards engraving the communal ideologies and context of reception and human existence. As such, there is participatory performance where there are no artistic-audience distinction, only participants and potential participants performing different roles, and the primary goal is to involve the maximum number of people in some performance role (Turino, 2008, p. 29). Failure to participate leads to shriveling of an individual’s social responsibility. In participatory music [dance] making one’s primary attention is on the activity, on the doing, and on the other participants, rather than on the end product that results from the activity (Turino, 2008, p. 28).

This communal and participatory arrangement of dance making does not imply simplicity of these dance forms. The complexity and dynamism of these dance practices resides in the convergence of divergent individual competences. The dance activities encompass Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory which states that the most important condition for flow is that the activity must include the proper balance between inherent challenges and the skill level of the actor. If the challenges are too low, the activity becomes boring and the mind wanders elsewhere; if the challenge it too high, the activity leads to frustration and the actor cannot engage fully. When the balance is just right, it enhances concentration, and sense of being ‘in the groove,’ at one with the activity and the other people involved.  It is through this negotiated and continuous interdependence that society attains what social anthropologist Edward Hall would call social synchrony.

Clearly, progress in social and economic civilization in the winter temperate and African tropics symbolizes Darwinian evolution theory, albeit differently. On the one hand, the ever shifting dance production patterns are responding to a highly competitive capitalistic environment where transactional consumption of dance is driven by need for mass production and profiteering as producers (choreographers) and workers (dancers). The dance making and supply process is meant to facilitate the survival of the producers that are surrounded by permanent states of change and flux. On the other hand, in the African tropics, communal consumption of dance is driven by the need for shared production. The dance production and supply process is meant to strengthen individual survival in the group, co-existence within the group, and extension the subsistence of the entire community. The stimuli that leads to competition of individuals in dance production, supply, and transaction processes is inward (communal cohesion) in African tropics and outward (consumer satisfaction) in the winter temperate.