Course Info: CSI-0181

This course combines West African dance classes with discussion-based classes on the cultural and social history of Guinea. Musicians provided live drumming for nineteen dance classes. Students explored the West African aesthetics that shape the music and dance traditions of Guinea. Over the course of the semester, students learned basic step vocabulary for several traditional rhythms of Guinea, including Yankedi, Makru, Sinte, Lamba, Sorssonet and Soli. In discussion classes, we explored footage of historic performances, and read recent scholarship on the role that national dance companies, such as Les Ballets Africains, played in the anti-colonial, revolutionary nationalist politics of Guinea. The assigned literature included social and cultural histories of the struggle for independence as well as cultural analysis of recurring themes related to debates about notions of authenticity and modernity. We explored the ways in which dance figured into the forging of national identities during the Independence era and examined how these projects in self-making evolved over time as the challenges of the post-colonial era constrained and informed the possibilities for such a project. Students were required to complete several short analytical essays, one final film-based research essay and to participate in a final showing of group choreography that featured the rhythms of Yankedi and Sorsonnet.