Between 1985 and 2005, a number of organisations and individuals sought to generate a discourse through which to articulate the artistic interests and values of black choreographers and also to find organising centres for the narratives about their work. Below are four of these: Ancient Futures, an international programme of black contemporary dance produced by IRIE! Dance theatre, Bami Jo summer school produced by Badejo Arts, the Black Choreographic Initiative (BCI) produced by Vivian Freakley and the dance writings of Thea Barnes.
5.5a. Ancient Futures
Ancient Futures was a programme organised by Beverley Glean, the founder of IRIE! dance theatre in 1996. It was billed as an international season of
‘contemporary black dance’ featuring L’Acadco from Jamaica and Forces of Nature from the USA alongside IRIE! She hoped the season would demonstrate that culturally diverse choreography was characteristic of dance of the African diaspora and strengthen the context for companies like her own. Writing in the
foreword of the season’s brochure, Hilary Carty, then dance officer at the Arts Council of England, described the event as taking place at a ‘critical time’ for Black dance in Britain, which was striving to establish its identity at home and abroad.
5.5b. Bami Jo:
The Bami Jo summer school issues about the importance of dance form to choreography, the codification of African dances, and the development of technique were topics of discussion. Bami Jo was started in 1993 under the directorship of Peter Badejo, the artistic director and choreographer of Badejo Arts. Bami Jo filled the gap created for a summer school when the Black Dance Development Trust (BDDT) closed. Bami Jo ran most years, from 1993 to 2005. Badejo, a thinker and practitioner was vocal in his belief that for contemporary African dance to be a meaningful choreographic practice, its deconstructions or experiments should reveal knowledge of traditional African dance forms. He described contemporary African dance that showed little knowledge of traditional Africa dances as simply being western dance techniques with embellishments. His intervention was to promote the idea of ‘dance technique’ and posit the African or Caribbean dance form as being the technical resources form dance practitioners. Most summer schools featured international dance artists and musicians and evolved into a provider of intensive weekend and one-week courses for professional and semi-professional freelance dancers.
The tutors that taught at the summer school included both teachers of neo- traditional dance and as well as contemporary dance. The contemporary dance artists he invited were those who techniques or choreographic practices drew technical foundations or movement principles from traditional forms or
investigated specific features of discreet African or Diaspora dances such as L’Antoinette Stines, Were Were Liking and Zab Mougboungu and Flora
Theaine. From 1997, the summer school was began to include a seminar with the invited teachers investigating a theme that related to issues surrounding cultural translation or change. Badejo was interested in the development of new and hybrid forms and links between dance forms from Africa and diaspora. Six out of the nine seminars that took place before the summer school ended in 2005 were on topics that related to dance forms, technique and codification . 1996 edition explored the differences and similarities between African and Afro- Cuban dance. The teachers that year were Patrick Acogny, Homero Ganzalez and Ian Parmell. The 1999 seminar had the title: Choreography: Art or scientific arrangement and featured Zab Mouboungou. In 2000, the seminar looked at the overview of African dance techniques. The title of the 2001 seminar was: Is codification necessary for the continunity of African dance? and in 2003 it was; The Bata dance tradition. Badejo’s own dance technique Batabade is based on the Bata dance tradition. The technique is based on selected Bata dance steps and motifs in conjunction with their stipulated drum patterns and signals.
The Black Choreographic Initiative (BCI) was a groundbreaking project devised and coordinated by Vivian Freakley. The project created encouraged
participating choreographers to develop a shared intellectual context for the practices they were developing as part of the initiative, which situated their practices in the world of work with it cultural politics and demanded them to take responsibility for a personal approach to their choreography. It was the result of a partnership between East Midlands, West Midlands and Yorkshire and
Humberside Arts. Additional support was provided by the Gulbenkian
Foundation and three National Dance Agencies: DanceXchange, the Yorkshire Dance Centre and Dance 4. The aim of the project was to provide professional development for eight choreographers who were working in different regions of England. The eight dance artists on the programme were established artists with a recognizable profile and level of influence. The project began with a Development Need Analysis weekend in which during which the artists reflected on personal and career goals. The organizers provided no definition of black dance. The artists were simply brought together because they were black. However the topic was made available for discussion at part of the project. Some participants disliked the term and other terms such as African dance. Others were comfortable with these terms and did not mind being associated with them. Through discussion and debate they arrived at six statements, which served their framework of consensus and in doing so they developed a
discourse in which to situate their own practices (Freakley 1998). The statements were
1: Where traditional dances are part of a sense of cultural identity they must be preserved - the essence of them must be preserved - but cultural identity might be tribal and divisive
2: There is an 'African heritage industry' in Africa and in European countries which sees traditional African dances as promoting tourism - this has grown out of a tradition of 'packaging' African people's dance for Europeans - for example, state visits
3: There is a 'white' approach which says you must preserve your heritage and which does not recognize the ability of African people to preserve and change and grow
4: There can be an unwillingness to accept that black people can be as diverse, as innovative and as challenging as white people
5: If you are reconstructing you are not choreographing
6: If your work is honest and truthful the essentials of identity and community are in the dance you make. (Freakley, 1998)
These statements framed the choreographers’ practices in an institutional context, acknowledged cultural politics, stereotyping, artistic standards and the personal responsibility and integrity. It therefore let dancer develop their own philosophical and artistic methodology with an awareness of the constraints and that possibility of being misunderstood.
Over the course of three years the choreographers took part in intensives and practical workshops with tutors from different parts of Africa and the diaspora including Senegal, New York and Jamaica as well as British choreographers such as Emlyn Claid. This way they were exposed to a variety of forms of dance and ways of making work as well as participating in seminars, sharings,
hothouses and mentoring programmes. The dance artists were from different paths in dance, which related to their interests and career directions, which ranged from working in community dance to running a dance company and developing a choreographic. The BCI considered one of it achievements as
being that the choreographers who took part are set out on ‘individual journeys’ which were directed ‘towards artistic honesty and clear artistic identity’
(Freakley 1998).
5.5d. Dance writing of Thea Nerissa Barnes:
Thea Barnes is a dance researcher and writer who moved to Britain after an
illustrious careerdancing with the Martha Graham Dance Company and Alvin
Ailey American Dance Theatre. She began to write reviews and articles regarding British dancers and choreographers whose work had been
categorised through heritage or dance making as African Peoples’ Dance or black dance; politicized terms in the British context that Barnes felt had little relation to the practitioner nor the work they were doing. Barnes’ effort was to change perceptions of these dancers and their choreographies. She describes her strategy for writing in this way:
My strategy is to demonstrate their ineffectualness by not using them5; by
illustrating, articulating, characterising dance practice not categorising dance practice. The artefact is what I choose to describe and in so doing delineate the practice of individuals not groups of people. In describing the individual as an individual, you discover the intricacies of dance making in the place and time of its occurrence. This will provide an honest and deferential accounting of how the dance is lived and performed (Barnes, 2015).
She contributed to the ADAD newsletter and Dance Theatre Journal amongst others. When Barnes moved to Britain in the 1990s, her published articles were the only reviews most choreographers ever received. Barnes felt the term black dance in Britain had been co-opted by funding bodies and was not useful for
practitioners. Her written on dance highlighted both issues of choreography and of form that were being made invisible by the way the sector was organised.
5.6 Achieving ‘Scale’: Hip-hop theatrical practices and Contemporary