CONFLUENCES:
CROSS-CULTURAL FUSIONS__________
IN MUSIC &
DANCE
Proceedings o f the F irs t  
south African Music and 
Dance Conference 
Incorporating  
the 15th Symposium  
on Ethnomusicology
16-19 July 1997
university of CapeTown 
South Africa
CONFLUENCES:
CROSS-CULTURAL FUSION IN MUSIC AND DANCE
Proceedings of the
First South African Music and Dance Conference
incorporating
the 15th Symposium on Ethnomusicology
University of Cape Town 
16-19 July 1997
Conference Chair:
Associate Professor ElizabetH'Triegaardt
Conference Organiser and Porceedings Compiler: 
Danie Fourie
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
Chair: Associate Professor Elizabeth Triegaardt
Mr Danie Fourie 
Ms Sharon Friedman 
Dr Deirdre Fiansen 
Ms Jasmine Honore 
As Angela Pearson 
Ms Lindy Raizenberg 
Ms Allison Rubia 
Mr Dudley Tomlinson
Published and distributed by:
University of Cape Town School of Dance
Woolsack Drive
Rosebank
7700
This collection of papers has been compiled from camera-ready copy supplied by 
individual speakers and performers at CONFLUENCES. Papers have been reproduced 
as supplied; they have not been edited or proofread.
Individual contributions: ©1997 by individual contributors
Collection as a whole: ©1997 by the School of Dance, University of Cape Town
ISBN: 0-7992-1871-5
CONTENTS
Dance Papers
‘Making a Bedroom out of a Public Building’ - Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity in 1
Shobana Jeyasingh’s ‘Duets with Automobiles’
Valarie A. Briginshaw
Between Description and Deconstruction 11
Roger Copeland
From Graham to Cunningham: An Unsentimental Education 23
Roger Copeland
Jazzart Dance Theatre: ‘The People, The Passion, The Politics’ or ‘Dancing Towards a 43
New Cultural Order’
Clare Dembovsky
Confluences of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Modem Dance 51
Susan Leigh Foster
Appropriation and Appreciation 79
Sylvia Glosser
Lessons and Mirrors: Steps to Consider in the Education of the Dance Maker 91
Gary Gordon
Strategies for Including African and African-American Culture in an Historically 99
Euro-Centric Dance Curriculum
Karen W. Hubbard and Pamela A. Sofras
Crimes and Misdemeanours: Aspects of Ballet and Dance in South Africa 109
Jonathan Hurwitz
The Choreographic Notebook: An Interim Report 121
Jean Johnson Jones
‘Palimpsest’ As Creative Practice and Analytical Technique: Secret Complexities in the 129 
Work of Shobana Jeyasingh 
Stephanie Jordan
Three Indigenous Peoples of the United States of America and Mexico: Contrasting 135
Strategies to Sustain Their Dance and Music 
Joann W. Kealiinohomoku
Dance and Political Correctness 143
Lynn Maree
Destination: Rhythm Nation - A South African Dance Writer’s Perspective 151
Adrienne Sichel
A Delicate Balance 157
David Spurgeon
Dance Culture, Education and the South African Context 171
Jill Waterman and Jennifer van Papendorp
Ethnomusicology Papers
Xhosa Rhythm: Links Between Voice and Body Rhythm in Thembu Dance Songs 195
Dave Dargie
Sama: Its Nature, Purpose and Function on the Islamic World, with Particular *203
Reference to South African Islamic Music 
Desmond Desai
Current Issues and Trends Pertaining to the Advent of Neotraditional Genres of 221
Music and Dance in the Contemporary African Societies: An Assessment of the Kenyan 
Situation
Beatrice Obonyo Digolo
The Kirby Collection 231
Deirdre Hansen
Mitambo: Venda Traditional Dance Theatre 245
Jaco Kruger
The Problem of Literal Documentation in African Dance Studies 257
Dele Layiwola
Discovering Some of the Characteristics of Namibian Dance/Music 273
Minette Mans
John Blacking’s Contibution to Dance Research 291
Lynn Maree
“The Famous Invincible Darkies” Cape Town’s Coon Carnival: 297
Aesthetic Transformations, Collective Representations, and Social Meanings 
Denis-Constant Martin
Traditional Music Theatre in Contemporary Contexts: 335
Perspectives from Aniocha Igbo of Nigeria 
Joe Ngozi Mokwunyei
An African and Western Percussion-Based Approach to Music Education: 345
Contributing to an Intergrated Arts Curriculum 
Linda. Muller
Expressing an Explicitly African Aesthetic in Neo-traditional Dance Expressions 353
Patricia Achieng Opondo
Exploring the Waterfall: An Analysis and Application of Compositional Processes in 363
Venda Music 
David Patrick
Getting it off the ground: The Compilation of an Electronic, Multilingual, Multicultural 375
Music Encyclopedia for South African Music Education 
Maria Smit
The Incorporation of ‘Foreign’ Concepts into the ‘Traditional’ Cosmology of the 387
Xhosa-speaking People and its Subsequent Effects upon Xhosa Ritual Music 
Kathy Stinson
Transcribing African Music in Pulse Notation 401
Andrew Tracey
Overtones in Central Asia and in South Africa (Xhosa Vocal Style) 422
Tran Quang Hai
Chaos - A Paradigm in Art and Education 433
Helmi Vent
“Dancing on the Cutting Edge of Tradition, Media and Marketing in the Carnival 441
of Salvador, Bahia Brazil” .
Linda Yudin
Appendices
A. Conference Programme 457
B. Concert Programme 461
C. Speaker’s Biographies 467
The Problem of Literal Documentation in African Dance Studies
Dele Layiwola 
Institute of African Studies 
University of Ibadan 
Ibadan, Nigeria
Paper Presented at CONFLUENCES: International Conference on Dance and 
Music, University o f Cape Town, South Africa 
16- 19 July, 1997.
257
The Problem of Literal Documentation in African Dance Studies
Whilst the models of Rudolf Laban and Rudolf Benesh have conquered the 
three dimensions o f space in Western dances, a similarly universal mode of 
literal documentation is being earnestly sought in African dance studies. One is 
tempted to ask: what exactly constitutes the form, content and characteristics 
of performance as to render such documentation problematic?
- is it because indigenous dances are tied to ecology?
- is the dance in Africa analogous to rhythm?
- is the lack o f indigenous writing a factor in dance documentation?
- is the lack of a uniform interdisciplinary field methodology a crucial
factor?
These questions constitute a heuristic device by which this paper accounts for 
the problematic raised in this paper.
I. Methodology
The study o f dance and theatrical performances often correspond to the study 
of human behaviour since the dance is a recognised behavioural pattern (Royce, 
1977). Its analysis, apart from offering aesthetic patterns, often accounts for 
anthropological and historical events. Hence the references to the cave 
drawings and Palaeolithic rock paintings o f Tassili; bas-reliefs of dancers in 
ancient Egyptian art (Thompson, 1974:29; Tierou, 1992). But since paintings 
and engravings are static forms, their records are not enough to demonstrate 
movements and kinaesthetic details in performance. The historical details of 
motion can, therefore, be supplemented, either in the description of historical 
records or in the representation o f plastic forms and sculptures in various media 
depicting motion. But there is a limitation still: the details o f performance as 
arrested or frozen on the frame o f a mask or a head dress do not reveal the 
story line or content o f a dance performance, given that every performance 
almost always has a story line (Layiwola, 1989:102) In this light, we must admit 
the considerable pain to which an art historian like Thompson went in an 
attempt to sketch a history o f the dance in Africa. Though he cites medieval 
historians like Ibn Batuta (1352/3) and the Portuguese explorer, Ca’da Mosto
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(1455 - 7); and noted Vasco da Gama’s entry in his log book on 2nd 
December, 1497 at Mossel Bay, present day South Africa, no uniform method 
o f the dance in Africa emerged. He noted, however, that the documentation of 
an African call-and-response emerged in the description o f William Towerson 
ini 556 - 7 on the West African coast. The women were seen enacting a dance 
event. But Thompson regrets that:
We shall never know the calls, nor the motion o f the dancers.
Assuming a rough degree o f accuracy, it is just possible that 
this ... sixteenth century call-and-response also shows that 
delivery in singing (and , by immediate extension, dancing) was 
characterised, in those days, by speed and drive as it is today.
[p.29].
We realise that whilst a description o f the dance is given, and there are 
references to the rapidity of drum syllables in the intervocalic consonant V , 
this has not helped in the documentation o f the polyrhythmic dance that 
follows. Both Thompson and Nketia have described the dances of Africa as 
characterised by ‘multi-meter’ with simultaneous movements o f various body 
parts (Nketia, 1975: 201 - 13). This is the reason why, unlike in ballet, it is 
difficult to isolate individual movements or distinct segments and document 
them as script in multi-metric African dances.
In the 1960s, Peggy Harper had tried to bring her knowledge o f Western 
dances to bear on the documentation of African dances in Nigeria. She 
concentrated her efforts in the collection o f a wide variety of dances both in the 
forest and savannah belts o f Nigeria to see whether a form of uniform 
documentation method could be synthesised. Harper, whilst realising thus:
■ It is imperative that the recording should provide an accurate 
and comprehensive reproduction of the dance in terms which 
are accessible to the wide range of specialists whose work includes 
an aspect o f dance study;
notes, somewhat, that:
Dance notations, forms of symbolic transcription, are extensively 
used in Europe and America to record dance. However, these 
transcriptions are too reliant upon personal and cultural factors 
to be trusted as a recording technique in Africa where a vast 
amount o f material o f great variety needs to be recorded in field 
conditions. [1968: 12]
Consequently, because transcriptions need to be an exact, or at least a close 
representation, o f the dance form or style; she concludes that at the present 
time, professionally made films would seem to be the best medium of ‘meeting 
the requirements o f accuracy and accessibility’.
It is noteworthy that after an extensive fieldwork in the Tiv culture area of 
Nigeria, Harper observed of the Tsough dance:
The movements have shape and volume rather than linear 
definition, so that the accent is on the rhythmic-dynamic 
qualities rather than on the spatial patterning of the movement.
[1970: 58]
It is a technical observation o f this sort which spurred Harper to adapt a 
tripartite combination of space, time and energy as a basis for further analysis 
o f the dance event in Africa (see figl).
Most researchers on performance have always expressed the opinion that 
dance will continue to be a mode of counterbalancing the force o f gravity 
(Humphrey, 1959; Harper, 1968; Thompson, 1974; Tierou, 1992). The same 
goes for the feeling in agrarian societies that dance expresses fertility in 
(wo)man and in nature; as Tierou rightly writes:
Whatever the motivation o f the dance, it combined the 
spontaneous expression of human feeling with the higher 
aspirations o f man to communicate with the cosmos
The method of the dance will therefore always combine the element o f beauty 
with that o f balance and shape be it in the geometrical definitions o f Western 
ballet or the rhythmic-dynamic potentials o f African dances. But there is an 
increasing need to find a satisfactory method of notation that will combine 
aspects o f multi-metric dancing with the documentation methods which Rudolf 
Laban and Rudolf Benesh have accomplished for Western dances.
II. The Limits of Literal Documentation:
There is always the suggestion to bring together a large body o f African dances 
as Sachs (1937), Thompson and Harper have done; and thereafter attempt a 
generic analysis which can constitute theoretical frameworks on group studies. 
This would, at least, be helpful in the interpretation o f dances which are similar 
in content and form even if ethnic and geographical connections were lacking. 
We must realise that Africa is a vast continent and historical and cultural 
experiences often differ as much as they relate. But the task is less daunting if 
performances can be grouped and analysed using a conceptual tool that is
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uniform. This will help to make definitive predictions which can lead to the 
classification o f forms and concepts, and consequently lead to a generally 
acceptable method o f notation and documentation. The limitation o f an 
otherwise far-reaching effort as Tierou has recently accomplished is bedevilled 
by the insularity of linguistic and conceptual terms.
The mere recording o f a dance event on celluloid or tape captures its essence 
and distinctive qualities, but in that state, they can be unwieldy. And if 
indigenous music can be scored into notes, there is no reason why indigenous 
dances cannot be so reduced to script. We cannot pretend to the common fact 
that the lack o f a common alphabet beguiles the common heritage of African 
oral and literary expressions. In actual fact, this lack o f an indigenous tradition 
o f writing is fundamental to the problem of a literal documentation or 
transcription o f African dances. Afterall verbalised language alone is not 
complete because renditions of gesture, tone and tempo also matter in 
performance. Even the existence o f one or two written traditions will not be 
sufficient for the entire continent as there are languages still being reduced to 
writing at the present time. Africa, like Asia, is diverse in culture and in ethnic 
grouping; and this itself is a factor which militates against the common heritage 
o f a ‘universal’ alphabet.
One interesting fact as a point o f illustration is noteworthy. Among the Yoruba 
o f South-western Nigeria, the invention o f the hourglass or talking drum dates 
back about three centuries. Royal personages adopted the drum to encode 
proverbs and witticisms interpretable to only those entitled to the knowledge. 
The mere beating o f the drum is not as nonsensical as strangers to the 
community often suppose (see, for instance, Soyinka, 1975: 27). Whilst it is 
beaten around palaces, messages on the environment and o f visitors and traffic 
in the area are transmitted to kings and regents for necessary information or 
action. Approaching guests are introduced before they enter the palace; ditto 
for news o f invaders and intruders. For a little over a century now, the drum 
has been adopted by musicians and entertainers because o f its enhanced 
‘glottophilia’, adaptiveness and mellifluity. This is one ingenious example which 
surmounts the frustration o f a racial stock in search o f new forms of verbal 
modulation and expression. This becomes an aid to memory and a mnemonic 
device (Layiwola, 1986:94; Euba, 1990:30,34; Dark&Hill, 1971:76-77). Writing 
or literal documentation is a tool fashioned to complement or cue the memory 
of things otherwise forgotten or ‘lost’. African cultures have tended to 
overcome this lapse, in some degree, by a resort to the (re)creation of plastic 
artforms. Tierou echoes my mind with precision here:
African “memory” exists in other and more varied forms.
It slightly resembles a puzzle: it is impossible to recognise
the exact meaning o f one part without reconstructing it in
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full... To Africans, statues and statuettes represent memory 
inscribed in form, the materialisation o f knowledge from 
every sphere o f life: practical, magical, therapeutic, divinatory.
[1992: 9]
III. The Poverty of Theory:
There is another problematic with indigenous, non-secular traditions o f art, 
namely, the documentation o f non-material phenomena. One is tempted to 
think that certain gestural, expressive aspect o f African dances use what we 
have described as their multi-metric and poly-rhythmic aspects as a metaphoric 
expression o f the intangible. There is no dance movement without a story line. 
Dance, itself, is an aspect of the theatre and cannot but continue to respond, 
aside from its own laws, to other laws governing performance. Many of the 
dances we document in the field carry along with them dense accretions of 
mythology, history, ritual and religion. If  indeed we succeed in inventing a 
method o f notation for the dances of Africa, we have to contend with ways of 
interpreting also the ritual and mythological allusions which often attend these 
dances. As a concrete illustration o f what I mean here, Ulli Beier once recorded 
a dance event in a small Yoruba town (Beier, 1959: 14). The dance was in the 
form of a pageant rounded off as a triumphal procession. Though the entire 
action is danced, the practitioners told him that the fifteen minute dance 
performance was the re-enactment o f a conflict between two mythical heroes. 
The story was then told in its various manifestations which shed some light on 
his own research in the area.
There is also a dance called Nyambi recorded among the Lugbara by John 
Middleton (Spencer, 1985). The event is a transvestiture in which the sexual 
inversion is a metaphoric interpretation for the reversal o f cosmic order, or a 
betrayal o f the season in an agrarian society. The women involved are all 
women o f an entire sub-tribe. It is performed on two occasions, neither of 
which occur together in any single year. An occasion may be after an unusually 
bountiful harvest or a harvest that has caused so much anxiety because delayed 
by too much rainfall during the ripening season. Another occasion might be 
after a drought or a protracted dry season. Either o f these two occasions 
constitutes an unusual cosmic order and scarcity may upset the peace and 
stability within the various groups. The women would regroup outside the 
settlement near the raingrove holding gourds and rattles and would dance 
across the settlements singing obscene songs and challenging any man who 
might come their way. The hierarchy and roles are reversed so they are led by a 
male transvestite who wears either the horns of a buffalo or the antlers o f a 
waterbuck. They dance up to the raingrove where the rainmaker receives them 
and performs his rites to reorder the calendar. Middleton sums up the 
phenomenon thus:
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People say that this dance is a sign that the world has gone wrong 
and confused, that ordinary social hierarchies and relations are 
‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’, and that the rainmaker must now ‘start’ the 
new year and the orderly passing of time again. [1985: 178]
This dance event travesties the pattern o f actual death dances and a grotesque, 
mirror image o f the real dance for a tragic or ritual occasion is enacted as a 
reflection o f the crisis situation. In actual death dances, men dance in definite 
lines o f patrilineal kin, but in this nyambi it is danced by women who have no 
affinal relationship, who do not dance in any definite lines, but appear only like 
a mob. They sing obscene songs and challenge men (including the subjugated 
transvestite leading them) to symbolise the fact that their world is amuck and 
that rules o f  temporal liminality is broken for a while. The suturing o f social 
and cosmological categories is therefore carried out by the renunciation and 
parody demonstrated in the temporal world. A question immediately comes to 
mind: How will a simple notation which is sophisticated in the interpretation o f 
form account for the empirical content o f such a dance as we have just 
described? It is true that in Western dance forms, notes and story lines do 
accompany dance notation; but where empathy is necessary for the dancer’s 
accomplishment, we are faced with a limitation. An easy way out is to advocate 
a secularisation o f these dances and make do with the forms alone. Afterall, 
many o f the masks we witness in performance have been synthesised by carvers 
and sculptors under religious instructions. The present writer was told at a 
Gelede festival in the northern Yoruba village of Ijio that mask carvers are 
sometimes under strict religious instructions when carving or designing works 
for performance. Thereafter they become co-workers in the preservation of art 
in the service of religious observances.
In some respect, theoreticians o f the dance such as Thompson and Tierou who 
advocate the study o f the dance as part o f masking traditions have, probably, 
anticipated the aforementioned problem, in my opinion, this latter approach is 
the furthest we have come in the search for a method of dance notation of 
indigenous African dances. But it is by no means the furthest possible since we 
have still to contemplate a cross-cultural study of mask forms and dance 
traditions or patterns. It will thus appear that the approach to the notation of 
theatrical dances will derive from symbolic transpositions in particular linguistic 
patterns, if we conceive of linguistic here, not only as language but a whole 
system of signification. This, in itself, entails a study of the history and 
classification o f particular dances and patterns o f expression, certainly, a cross- 
cultural appreciation o f the wide variety of African dances will, in turn, enrich 
performance in each o f the distinct culture areas, the next turn o f research in 
the area would be, it seems to me, language-based since the notation will
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necessarily be a glossary o f symbols or vocabulary which are universal within 
the concept o f a unifying culture (cf. Laban, 1975: 6,12).
IV. The Relationship Between Sculpture and the Dance:
The plasticity o f these two forms have led, as implied above, theoreticians and 
experts to study the dance through sculptural motifs. This is eminently 
justifiable especially as the mask could be more than a medium in performance. 
The mask also acts as a permanent form of representation in the absence of 
written script. This idea is conceptually related to the definition o f dance 
derived from the Robert dictionary as “an expressive series o f movements of 
the body executed according to a rhythm, and most often to the sound of 
music, and following an art, a technique or a social code which is more or less 
explicit”. To this Alphonse Tierou adds the ingredients o f “freedom and 
awareness” (1992: 11).
Thompson consistently links the therapeutic ‘cool’ o f the African masks to the 
beauty o f dance and believes that a unification o f the body/soul dichotomy is 
attained by the inertia achieved through the kinaesthesia o f dance (1974: 1 - 
45). Tierou, in like manner, bases his idea o f the dance on the concept of 
doople as he had seen in statuettes and sculptural pieces. He accounts for the 
concept thus:
The dancer is standing, his knees are bent and the thighs 
are not held close together. His feet placed parallel and flat, 
keep close to the ground and are wide apart by between 
thirty to forty centimetres according to the length o f the 
dancer’s feet.
The torso, bent slightly forwards, forms with the pelvis an 
angle o f about 135 degrees... The gaze is fixed on the horizon
[1992: 53]
Roughly the same postural description is given by Nketia:
The postures that are assumed in these dances are directly 
related to the way the body is used and moved. Certain move­
ments are more easily executed from a position in which the 
back is slightly bent with the knees slightly dropped and the 
arms held loose, than from a rigid, erect posture. [1975; 210]
Whilst Nketia believes that music creates the mood and dynamics to 
complement the posture in improvisation, Tierou believes that the movement in 
itself creates a tidal intersection which are activated at the shoulders, pelvis or 
the vertebral column.
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V< Improvisation:
Both theorists mentioned above make valid points, the difference in opinion 
being derived from their training: Nketia is a musicologist who reads a 
time/space relationship in the skill o f the drummer whilst Tierou, a dancer, 
reads the adjustment o f body parts into movement. Both, certainly are justified 
from the viewpoint o f improvisation and the private styles o f dance groups, 
dance traditions and mythical or religious temperament. I prefer to distinguish 
two major improvisational styles or principles: the first is that which gives 
much scope to the relationship o f the artist to the audible rhythms of the music. 
This is usually characterised by a lot o f leg rhythms with gong or rattle beats. 
The drum, rattles or gong clearly or approximately delineates the rhythms for 
the footwork as seen in the atilogwu dances o f the Igbo o f South-eastern 
Nigeria; and the miango male dancers of the plateau region o f Northern 
Nigeria. In the former instance, the xylophone or gong rhythm is crucial to the 
multiple movements o f the legs and rattles. Sometimes the improvisation is 
broadened to include acrobatic displays modulated by the rhythmic timing o f 
the beats. Extensive group and personal initiative go a long way to maintain the 
regularity and tempo of the movement. There is much emphasis on footwork 
and motor display woven into short but concentrated dance phrases. Body 
patterns and movement tessellation are created with human components 
mounting one another’s shoulders or backs whilst responding to the strains of 
the drums, xylophone, gongs and flute. The dancer can then guide him/herself 
with the aid o f the rattles worn on the ankles, wrists or elbows. Because o f the 
consistent stamping of the feet on the ground and the heavy emphasis on 
polyrhythm, these kinds o f dances occur with a greater number of 
allomorphokines (dance movements on the meaning level that can be 
substituted without considerable change in meaning) (Royce, 1977:). 
Consequently, these kinds of dances also allow for greater improvisation and 
deviation from rigid rules. It shows that they will adapt better for intercultural 
conflation whereby classification and notation are easily accomplished.
The second principle relate to those dance events which combine complex 
facial and physiological expression for both private and public performance. 
And these are as varied as there are cultures and sub-groups. For, instance the 
Sango devotees and Bata dance group among the Yoruba often communicate 
feelings by the manipulation of facial muscles; they also jerk the thoracic and 
shoulder regions when invoking the climax of the dance. In the real heat of 
dance, a dancer takes several somersaults and attains ritual and mediumistic 
possessions. After the dance experience, devotees find themselves pop-eyed 
and serene. Others who, during possession, have gone through homophagy or
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the ritual mutilation o f their organs, re-emerge whole and apparently unscathed. 
In like manner, Nketia (1975: 209) described that the Anlo-Eve and the Lobi 
peoples o f Ghana emphasise the upper part o f the body. Like bata dancers, 
they contract and release their shoulder blades, they move the shoulders up and 
down and rotate the upper part o f the body. The Gelede transvestite dancers, 
again o f the Yoruba, put the line o f emphasis on the hip and girdle regions. 
Whilst posturing in doople, the legs go in a rather agile interpretation o f the 
drum rhythms. On the contrary the nyindogu dancers o f the Dagomba o f 
Northern Ghana and the Soponna dancers o f the Yoruba create a welling up of 
forces from the belly and the solar plexus.
In whatever way the African dancer postures on the margin o f dance, (s)he 
dances in multi-meter and often simultaneously battles and relates to the pull of 
gravitation in a way that generates tension and inspiration which sustains 
his/her performance. Rather than weave patterns in space, the dancer weaves it 
in multiple media relating to sculpture and to performance; all in an attempt to 
gain a certain dynamism and grace without which art cannot attain genuine 
expression. Rather than create an outward experience, it relies on a measure of 
infectious inner satisfaction.
Theatre and the Dance:
Once a dancer attains the state of grace describable only within the limits of 
inner experience, it becomes necessary for the art to rely on costume and 
plasticism to elevate meaning to the level o f an outward performance. It 
appears that from this point, the boundary between plasticity, theatre and the 
dance blurs and merges. The one, an integral part o f the other, becomes a 
vehicle through which a theatrical experience is relayed. Hence the role o f the 
masquerader in certain dance performances o f Africa. This aspect of the dance 
enables us to study a material and tangible counterpart o f the dance in an 
otherwise intangible, artistic context. This interdependence between material 
artefact and a vaporising aesthetic is often acknowledged by art historians and 
only seldomly so acknowledged by anthropologists (cf. Kasfir,1988; 
Adepegba,1995). This is often due to the emphasis that anthropologists placed 
on social institutions (content) to the detriment o f formalistic features in art, 
and consequently on the modus operandi in research style, analysis, and field 
study. But this can only remain so to an extent since, at best, content and form 
in art are profoundly contemporaneous. In like manner, intangible experiences 
in art often tend to corroborate and elucidate their material counterpart. We 
seem bound to agree with both Cole (1969) and Thompson (1974) that process 
and performance are both aspects of one and the same thing. If viewed in 
semiotic terms, text and context merge in performance, and dance as a 
theatrical art is both intuitive as well as processual (Kasfir,1988: 1 - 16). But 
since the realm of art, ritual and religion are not quite as defined in African and
266
Indian dances as they are in Western dances, how do we apply the same 
parameters o f notation as have been done for Western dances? Afterall, we 
would like to have, in the long run, a universal yardstick for understanding all 
. human dance and art forms. Or is it just as well to invent two levels o f notation 
for these dances o f Africa which represent four or five dimensions o f space in 
the art?
This is precisely the cultural process extrapolated as the plastic representation 
of space and time on the frames of masks, costume and body painting. 
Performance has therefore become a cultural system which go beyond its 
modem, - physical representation. This is almost completely captured in this 
statement o f Sydney kasfir:
In much o f West Africa, masks are mirrors of this small-scale 
cultural system. They accurately reflect in a performance frame 
the system o f relationships that obtains in the “real world” out­
side the frame. If myth is a model which validates cosmology by 
grounding it in society, the mask system can be understood as its 
obverse: a model which validates cosmology by grounding it in 
the cosmic order. [1988: 6]
We can, therefore, conclude this section by recalling that the dance masks 
would seem to have gone past the idea o f the theatre in its ‘veritable lie’ as a 
bare-faced illusion. It is true that the plastic phenomenon is sometimes 
stretched to accommodate aberration and deviance as in the revues o f the 
Yoruba egungun and Tiv puppetry theatre where itinerant dancers represents 
shades o f sociological archetypes in wood and mask carvings; or its conceptual 
counterparts in gelede o f the Yoruba and the nyambi of the Lugbara where 
transvestism becomes a dislocation o f hierarchy and order. What we can say, 
for certain, is that the invocation of liminality do invent new ‘illusions’ whilst 
denying old ones. What we cannot altogether account for, at the present time, 
is why the responsibility for enactment is foisted on the dance event. Whatever 
the reason, it has made the re-enactment and representation by dance 
ethnologists a doubly hazardous affair. It only remains for us to align the 
kinetic aspect o f a material, yet activated, mask to its spatial, levitating 
potential.
Conclusion: The space-time Interaction:
It is obvious that the geometric aspiration of the dance in western societies 
cannot be overemphasised with the training o f the ballerina as an actress in the 
construction o f a space-time continuum. The dancer leaps and jumps and 
balances on the mid-point o f his/her toes. S/He initiates the grace o f birds and 
butterflies and temporarily conquers the illusions of gravity. The immediate
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question that comes to mind is whether we can conceive o f a masked dancer 
aligning with space the way a ballerina adjusts to the same phenomenon. Can a 
masquerade, with all his accoutrements, justify the use of a posture grid for 
neatness and symmetry? Do the burden and requirements of masquerading 
cross the boundaries o f consciousness in time alone or in space as well? Is the 
beauty o f the mask the same for the reference to geometry in western dances? 
It will thus seem that an epa masker of North-eastern Yorubaland in his 
gigantic head-dress will conceive o f his ‘burden’ and his encounter with space a 
systemic aberration should he have to leap up to a height o f two or three 
metres or attempt to stand on pointe. In the end an adequate notation method 
will seek to combine technicalities with the peculiarity o f affective stages in 
performance.
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