Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago

2019 ◽  
pp. 114-122
Author(s):  
Amaniyea Payne
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
African Dance ◽  
Community Institution ◽  
Women's Incarceration ◽  
Dance Companies

Long famed as a mecca of African-American culture, New Orleans occupies a special place in studies of African diasporic music and dance. By outlining the historical and social factors that shaped unique expressions of African American cultural identity, Ausetta Amenkum provides an experiential account of the formation of the Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective, not only as a performance troupe, but also as a community institution. Utilizing poetry and an engaging tone, Amenkum situates the emergence of African dance companies founded by African Americans in the local cultural trajectory of New Orleans mid-20th century. She, then, chronicles her work and the use of African dance as a holistic approach, as she addresses a specific example: women’s incarceration issues in Louisiana.

scholarly journals Dancing the Black Atlantic: Katherine Dunham’s Research-to-Performance Method

AmeriQuests ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Halifu Osumare
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Performance Ethnography ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Black Dance ◽  
Caribbean Culture ◽  
Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) was one of the great dancer/choreographers of the 20th century. As a trained anthropologist and author, her unique contributions formed a marriage between dance and ethnology that developed the archetype of the scholar-artist. I explore her research-to-performance methodology that trail-blazed what has been analyzed by Caribbeanist VèVè Clark as "performance ethnography." Dunham explored Afro-Caribbean culture and dance, as well as her own African American culture. The essay demonstrates how she did this specially in her writings on the Jamaican Moroons and the Vodou of Haiti, recontextualizing the latter in her famous 1945 "Shango" dance work. In the process, Dunham danced the Black Atlantic well before that trope was even conceptualized, and dignified black dance forms of the Americas.

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History.

1998 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 1471
Author(s):  
V. P. Franklin ◽  
Jack Salzman ◽  
David Lionel Smith ◽  
Cornel West
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture

History and Memory in African-American Culture.

1995 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 1174
Author(s):  
Craig Werner ◽  
Genevieve Fabre ◽  
Robert O'Meally
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
History And Memory

African Female Circumcision and the Missionary Mentality

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-57
Author(s):  
Joyce Russell-Robinson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Women ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
African Countries ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
American Women ◽  
Do So

Alice Walker and former Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado have something in common. Both advocate the cessation of female circumcision in African countries, and both tout themselves as feminists, though Walker, borrowing from African American culture, prefers to be labeled as a womanist. What the elders had in mind when they described young African American women as “womanish,” or as “omanish,” the eclipsed form of that same word, was that such girls were too fast, or that they obtruded upon areas that were not their business. While Schroeder cannot properly be called a womanist (to do so would be to misapply the term), one can say that, similar to Alice Walker, Schroeder is putting herself into other people’s business, specifically the business of female circumcision in African communities.

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