A Justice Site
Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: May 20, 2001
Latest update: May 20, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
This essay is based on the article: Enriching Lives by Relearning African Culture and Dance By Valerie Gladstone, New York Times, Arts and Leisure, p. 31, Sunday, May 20, 2001.
The article describes an African Dance Festival "Every Sunday, Obara Wali Rahman Ndiaye, 54, and his wife, Andara Rahman Ndiaye, 41, teach African dance classes there and rehearse their 35-member company, Sabar Ak Ru Afriq (Drum and Spirit of Africa, in the Senegalese language Wolof)." They are preparing their dance group for the popular Dance Africa festival established [i]n 1977, by the choreographer and educator Chuck Davis, to give African-Americans an opportunity to see top-flight African and African-influenced dance companies. "We need reminders of our history," he said recently. "It adds meaning to our lives."
As we seek means of transformative discourse, discourse that will bring us to an awareness that in some sense we are all "Others," and to a place where we can accept that there will be no "Others" left, for the "Others" will be "US." We are, however, a long way from the ideal voiced by a University of Wisconsin student, Rebecca McLaughlin: "We want to get rid of alterity itself, for 'otherness' implies there is an 'us' different from the 'others.' We want to achieve a unity that admits difference and accepts it." (I paraphrase from a personal conversation.)
Dance, like other art forms, permits of emotional traces we cannot capture in traditional language. Through the art form we are able to convey those emotions, that strength, that continuity. Community efforts, such as the one described in this article, are ways in which we keep these parts of our selves alive and growing.
The positivist orientation of the social sciences in this country underplayed the importance of the interpretation of our local narratives. By reviving local traditions, by studying them in depth, as this dance troupe has done, we are preserving our local narratives and rebuilding these traditions and values for our children.
Like all other school and community efforts, this takes tremendous commitment and caring. Urban life places many demands on all of us. And so the dance troupe has the same problems that we do in getting to class on time, in fitting in the demands of school, and work, and children. Thus, we find near the end of the article:
"That night fewer than half of his 22 members made the rehearsal. Naeemah Brown, a police officer, arrived late with apologies. She quickly got out of her uniform and into a yellow African skirt and white T-shirt."Just like us, they have hectic schedules, traffic, other commitments. But just like us, they rush in late with apologies, and then throw themselves into this dance that "adds meaning" to their lives.