L'École des Sable--School of sand. Jant Bi--The Sun

I am here at a world class dance school in Toubab Dialow, Senegal. We are learning contemporary and traditional dance forms. You have no idea how fortunate I feel right now. There are dancers here from all around the world. France, Spain, Japan, England, Switzerland, Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Benin, Congo, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Canada, New Caledonia, and then myself and another from Florida. It is an amazing group of people. The energy is incredible. We are dancing for almost seven hours a day and at the end we still have full energy that we put into our dance. We speak different languages the two common languages being French and English. We eat different food, have different customs, different ways of relating to family and friends. But it is not a problem at all. We all communicate. We all laugh and smile. We all have fun together. We are all grateful to be here. And we all dance. And when we dance together, I cannot explain the power that we have as a group. I have never in my life experienced anything like it.

So what are traditional and contemporary African dance forms? Well first off, we were asked to prepare a traditional dance to bring from our country. I could understand this as being relative to some, but for me, I have not traditional dance forms. Maybe modern dance, but that's so vague. Patric, the director clarified for us but only slightly. He said for Africans, it is clear what traditional dances are, for others, we will have to ask ourselves some hard questions. Already the guy from Florida brought up hip-hop as a possibility. No way I said. That is a tradition based in a particular marginalized group's rejection of power structure. The girl from Canada who we were grouped with suggested a native American circle dance. Even worse, I thought to myself.

For me, I have already been thinking a great deal about my relationship to my cultural positioning. How being an American pretty much means appropriating from sub cultures and then commodifying it. I was already holding some questions about my coming to Senegal in the first place. In some ways I accept that I have access to an incredible amount of information from many different places in the world. Good information. But I have to have respect for that information. I felt that for me, my tradition in dance most recently has been steeped with a bay area tradition. I think about Anna Halprin, Sara Shelton Mann, Kathleen Hermsedorf, Lisa Wymore, Peggy Hackney, Joe Goode, Amara Tabor-Smith, Dana and Shinichi Iova Koga and so on. A rejection of the norm, a questioning of structure, deep reflection on the body processes in conjunction with the mind, somatic awareness, core connectivity, and much of the teachings I have experienced have had influences from many parts of the world.

It has not been decided what we will share with the group, but I have an idea about how I want to approach the topic of what is tradition for me. In many ways, it is staying true to my own personal experience. It is my willingness to face a challenging question with honesty and integrity.

As for the distinction between contemporary and African dance forms . . . more to come!