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Chapter 1
Introduction
British Dance and the African Diaspora
Christy Adair and Ramsay Burt
This edited collection brings together new writing about the work of Black British dance artists. It arises out of a two year research project, British Dance and the African Diaspora, led by Christy Adair and Ramsay Burt. The historical scope of this book is the period from 1946 to the present, including the pioneering work of Les Ballets Nègres and the strong growth of dance activities between the 1970s and 1990s. Its aim is to celebrate the contributions that Black British dancers have made to the British dance scene, and does so through enlarging and clarifying existing historical information while focusing on cultural and aesthetic issues and concerns that are particularly relevant to British experiences.1 The following anecdote illustrates the gap in knowledge about Black British dancers and their work which this book seeks to fill. In her introduction to the 2007 book Voicing Black Dance: the British Experience, 'Funmi Adewole recalls an incident when she had been invited to give a visiting lecture at a London Dance Conservatoire. She began her talk by asking the students what they knew about Black dance artists and they named a number of African American choreographers and companies. When she gave them the names of British dance companies, they had not heard of any of them, even ones that were touring at the time. British-based dancers who are Black have made rich and significant contributions to the British dance world since the middle of the twentieth century, but as Adewole's anecdote illustrates they remain largely unknown. The ideas behind performances by Black British dancers and companies were often misunderstood by dance critics at the time and their work has been largely ignored by those writing British dance history.
One of the aims of the British Dance and the African Diaspora research project was to write Black British dance artists and their legacies back into history. It was not the first project that set out to do this. Part of our aim was to consider why the dancers working within this sector have not received the recognition they deserve. As Adewole found, the abundance of information and resources about African American dancers has overshadowed the achievements of Black British dancers and companies. The poor quality of critical writing about the latter has made it difficult to recognise the specificity of Black British experiences as these have expressed themselves in choreography and performance. This specificity, in turn, derives from the different routes through which African diasporic dance and music forms have come to Britain. This is the central focus of the present chapter which explores this specificity further as an introduction to the main themes and concerns of the rest of the book.
During the 1979 Arts Council documentary film about the pioneering British dance and drumming company Steel 'n' Skin, there is a significant incident during a performance in a community centre in Liverpool. George Dzikunu, who came to Britain from Ghana in the early 1970s and was later to become artistic director of the important dance company Adzido, dances a pulsing solo in front of the band. Then as the sounds from a steelpan emerge, an older man moves from the audience to dance. Is he re-living memories, does he find the steelpan irresistible, or is he just carried away by the energised atmosphere which is evident later when all of the audience join in with the dancing? Whatever his motivation, as he moves with undulating arms stretched wide to the side, his enjoyment is evident. When he turns, throwing his arms high and wide, there is a look of sheer bliss on his face. As he shuffles forward on one foot, the other slightly extended forward, he undulates his spine leading with one arm in front of his body and the other tucked behind his back. He embodies the music and clearly has moves which are very familiar to him. Yvonne Daniel suggests that there are
identifiable qualities within Diaspora performance. For example, Diaspora performers repeatedly rely most on soft or flexed knees, a gentle, forward-tilted back, polyrhythmic body-part articulations, and a cool or controlled approach within an extensive range of dynamics. They highlight movement that has an intimate relationship with music, visual art, history and cosmology.
(2011:14–15)
Some of these characteristics are evident within the man's dance, specifically, soft knees, tilted back, and a cool approach. Compared with the energetic, vigorous pulsing quality of Dzikunu's dancing, which is typical of sub-Saharan, West African dance, the older man moves in a gently wandering, undulating way that is characteristically Caribbean. Nevertheless the underlying African qualities that Daniel describes are common to both dancers. Through his communicative interaction with Dzikunu and the musicians, the man in a pullover seems to be coming home to some identification of defining importance within his body. This is beautiful on a purely aesthetic level, and also beautiful in its joyful collision of the need to wear a pullover in a cold climate, but respond to the rhythmic tunefulness of the steelpan, and to a solo by a Ghanaian-born dancer. British, African, and Caribbean histories and cultures collide and mix in this brief incident as the man seems to be making identifications and inventing his own connections between them as he dances into view. This exemplifies the diversity of the routes through which diasporic African dance and music forms have come to Britain, and the complex ways in which British-based dancers who are Black experience these collisions and make these hybrid connections and identifications. The hybridity of Black British identities should not, of course, be set against the supposed stability of white British identities. Britain itself was initially an imaginary community arbitrarily formed out of England and Scotland by the Act of Union 1707, and subsequently modified through the absorption of successive waves of immigrants, including the 'Windrush generation' of Caribbean immigrants.
Although there have been Black people living in Britain since at least Shakespeare's time, the majority of Black British people are from families who came to Britain from British colonies in the Caribbean in the late 1940s and 1950s. During the same period there were also immigrants from Nigeria, Ghana, and other British colonies in Africa. This socio-political context makes the work of British-based dancers who are Black different from the work of Black dancers in the United States. Books about African American dance often position slavery and the chain gang as a point of origin. The Civil Rights and Black Arts movements in the United States are important for understanding the background for the work of artists like Alvin Ailey, Eleo Pomare, and others. The abomination of the transatlantic slave trade is not a key reference point for British dancers who came from African countries that were British colonies until the 1950s and 1960s. The social and political context of the work of Black British dancers has been the problems arising from the effects of colonialism. The education system in these countries was modelled on the same syllabi taught in Britain, and as colonial or, later, Commonwealth citizens, they looked to Britain as the mother country. While those who migrated did not have to fight for civil rights in the way African Americans had to do, they nevertheless experienced racism and discrimination. The marginalisation of Black British dance artists compounds these experiences. That is why, following on from the British Dance and the African Diaspora research project, this book seeks to celebrate the achievements of British-based dancers who are Black.
By initiating m-depth research on the dance forms used by Black British dancers and the cultural context of their work, the project began to address the nexus of aesthetic, institutional, and conceptual problems that have rendered these dancers and their work invisible. A key factor we believe is the inadequacy of existing frameworks to provide a suitable basis for analysis. While our project generated new research, it also investigated new methodologies. We did this through three public events – or Roadshows –involving different generations of professional dancers. As well as looking at practice, we discussed continuities and differences between dancers' experiences thirty years ago and today. We deliberately chose to hold these Roadshows outside London, in Birmingham, Leeds, and Liverpool. An exhibition at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool drew on our findings. This chapter discusses key themes that have come out of these events and which inform the rest of this book. These are: the problems caused by the label 'Black Dance'; the significance of the idea of Africa to Black British dance artists, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s; the importance of links with particular Black communities; and the creative reinvention in Britain of diasporic African concerns with rhythm and spirituality.
‘Black Dance’
We titled this project British Dance and the African Diaspora in an attempt to move away from the problematic term 'Black Dance', which we see as a key barrier to re-reading the legacy of British-based dancers who are Black in a meaningful and productive way. This title also reflects our partnership with the London-based Association of Dancers of the African Diaspora (ADAD). When ADAD published Voicing Black Dance in 2007 they acknowledged that 'definitions and labels are a sensitive subject in the sector' (Adewole et al. 2007: 13), evidenced by the reports of conferences in the 1990s. Nevertheless, when publicising the heritage project about 'Black people and dance practices that reflected Caribbean or African culture', it seemed strategic to use a term with which people were familiar. The term 'Black Dance' seems to have come to Britain from the United States where it was used in the context of the Black Power and Black Arts movements. In Britain, for example, it is contained within the name of the Black Dance Development Trust, founded in 1985 to support the development in the UK of African Peoples Dance. In the US the word Black was used as a positive affirmation of Black people and culture in the context of African American struggles such as the Civil Rights movement. In the UK it carried similar connotations but within the context of colonialism. Because the Black Dance Development Trust received subsidies from arts funding agencies, Black British dancers were initially encouraged to contact them when they approached the Arts Council inquiring about grants. Thus Brenda Edwards, a member of the London Festival Ballet who was Britain's first Black ballerina, and Corrine Bougaard, a Black contemporary choreographer, both approached the Black Dance Development Trust in the late 1980s. The trust had only limited funds and felt its purpose was to support dancers working with African dance forms. There were more opportunities for ballet and contemporary dancers to train and perform than there were at the time for dancers wanting to work with African forms. But from Edward's and Bougaard's points of view, there were very limited opportunities for Black dancers to gain professional experience. Some companies would have one or two token Black dancers. Many Black British dancers, at the time, moved to New York because of this. They also suspected that there was a de facto quota within theatres, who would only show one company or have one short season of work by Black dance artists each year.
From the Arts Council's point of view, and for theatre and dance promoters, it was convenient for there to be a sector labelled 'Black Dance' that they could say they were supporting. From the dance artists' point of view, the effects have been divisive. The issue about terminology and the understanding of dance forms of the African Diaspora has therefore been an ongoing controversial debate among artists, critics, and funders. Peter Badejo argued in 1993 that
there is no such thing as Black dance ... African and Caribbean dance practitioners in this country and in the diaspora are fighting an ongoing battle to increase the understanding of our dance forms and of their cultural contexts. To draw together that multiplicity of dance forms and call them Black dance only serves to reinforce the impression that there is only one culture, only one dance form. It makes the colour of the artist more important than the content of the art.
(1993: 10)
In the Arts Council of England's 2000 Report, Time for Change, the authors noted that 'there is not yet a body of work that can be labelled "Black Dance". However, it is evident that a new vocabulary is being born out of Black British experiences, which might well dominate the choreography of Black British artists in the future' (2000: 15). Note here that the report hopes for 'a new vocabulary', as if the broad diversity of vocabularies and approaches that are proliferating are a problem, rather than a strength.
Since the 1940s, a number of British-based dancers who are Black have been teaching and producing performance work in a variety of dance styles that have come to the UK by the various different routes along which the Black British population have travelled. Les Ballets Nègres was founded in 1946 at the time of the post-war wave of Caribbean immigration. As the word ballet in their name suggests, these dancers aspired to become assimilated into the British dance world of that time, which was dominated by ballet companies, but nevertheless remained marginal to it. It was not until the 1970s, with the development of contemporary dance, that professional Black British dancers began again to form companies. The usual narrative of the development of contemporary dance during the 1960s in the UK starts with London performances by the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, followed by the establishment of the London Contemporary Dance School and London Contemporary Dance Theatre (LCDT). It is useful to expand this narrative to include the Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1965, which brought in Rex Nettleford's National Dance Theatre of Jamaica, and visits around this time from Professor Opoku's Ghana Dance Ensemble. While the role of Bob Cohan in establishing LCDT was important, so was the presence in the company of the African American, Graham-based dance artist William Louther and the presence of the Jamaican-born British dancer Namron. Meanwhile in Essex, Felix Cobbson started teaching about Ghanaian dance and drumming in 1965. These additions make room in the story of British dance for the founding of Black companies working with contemporary dance forms, such as MAAS Movers in 1977 and Phoenix in 1981, as well as ones working with African and Caribbean forms, such as Ekomé (1972), Steel 'n' Skin (1974), and Kokuma (1977). Some of these started in order to counteract the lack of opportunities for trained Black dancers in the existing companies. Some, in tune with the Black Arts Movement, adopted a Pan-Africanist rather than assimilationist cultural outlook, drawing on music and dance traditions from Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and other post-colonial African States, and from the Caribbean. Other British-based dancers have worked within the genres of ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance from the USA, offering much needed opportunities for Black dancers to gain professional experience.
Companies like Adzido, Delado, and Lanzel drew upon traditional African rhythms and patterns; others, like Greta Mendez of MAAS Movers and Beverley Glean with Irie!, fused contemporary and Caribbean dance styles; while artists such as Sheron Wray, Corrine Bougaard, and members of Phoenix and RJC Dance Companies explored styles of jazz and contemporary dance; still others, such as Jonzi D, have used hip-hop dance forms and techniques to create hybrid performance forms from the 1990s onwards. In a field dominated by men there are a number of female dancers and choreographers, some of whom are also artistic directors, whose contributions we celebrate, including Corrine Bougaard, Sharon Watson, Brenda Edwards, Beverley Glean, Cathy Lewis, Bunty Matthais, Greta Mendez, Gail Parmell, Judith Palmer, Hopal Roman, Carol Straker, and Sheron Wray. The specificity of the work which all these male and female dancers have created comes from the particular routes by which dance and music practices and traditions have reached Britain through the African Diaspora. It is the past legacies and contributions to these new vocabularies and current artistic practices that we investigated in this project, in particular in the three Roadshows.
Dance and the African Diaspora
"We do not wish to repeat old debates, but point to the need to acknowledge that the terms we choose influence and reflect our thinking and our understanding. In attempting to map out new approaches in this research we avoid the problematic term 'Black Dance' and instead talk about dancers who are Black, and about dance and the African Diaspora. To speak of British-based dancers who are Black is to embrace dancers involved in all kinds of dance. The label Black British dancer seems to imply some identification with...
