Browsing by Author "Adewole, Funmi"

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    Africanist choreography as cultural citizenship: Thomas ‘Talawa’ Prestø’s philosophy of Africana dance.
    (Routledge, 2020) Adewole, Funmi
    This essay addresses how Africanist choreography operates as a practice of cultural citizenship, focussing on the work of Thomas ‘Talawa’ Prestø as a leading figure in shaping the cultural sphere for choreography based on African and diaspora forms in Norway and internationally. Whereas cultural policy discourse tends to value Africanist choreography as a tool for social inclusion, this essay seeks to foreground the philosophical basis of Prestø’s work – with a focus on his piece I:Object (2018) and its enactment of ideas of Africana philosophy, heritage and polycentrism. However, rather than focussing exclusively on performance analysis, the essay also emphasises the political importance of the professional work that choreographers like Prestø undertake aside from choreographing – analysing the ways in which he has created a new discursive context for his own practice and the challenge to Eurocentric norms of reception this work enacts.
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    Caribbean dance: British Perspectives and the choreography of Beverley Glean
    (Plagrave Macmillian UK, 2016) Adewole, Funmi
    Beverley Glean established IRIE! dance theatre in the UK in 1985. Described as an African and Caribbean dance company, IRIE! produced 17 productions between 1985 and 2004, and toured work nationally and internationally. In 2004, the company stopped touring when Beverley Glean along with Rosie Lehan began to deliver a foundation degree course with a focus on choreographic fusion. In 2015, Glean returns to choreography in celebration of the company’s thirtieth anniversary. This paper focuses on the first twenty years of the company and interrogates it as part of British theatrical dance history. I do this by exploring Glean’s choreography as a signifying practice which draws on Caribbean dances to create meanings within the context of multicultural Britain. I analyse published commentary on IRIE! dance theatre to demonstrate how the concept of Ethnic Minority Arts which was prevalent in cultural policy of the 1980s and formed a dominant discourse, could not make sense of the dance company. IRIE! blurred the boundaries between its notional templates of what ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ dance by people of non-western heritage should look like. I look to Thomas DeFrantz’ concept of corporeal orature as a way of engaging with how Glean draws on Reggae dance and music to construct the hybrid choreographic works I describe. I conclude by arguing that an engagement with the political or philosophical undertones of hybridity in choreography such as Glean’s offers greater insight into how social integration is experienced and lived than prescriptive templates offered by dominant discourses, as was Ethnic Minority Arts.
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    The construction of the Black dance/African Peoples' dance section in Britain: Issues arising for the conceptualisation of related choreographic and dance practices
    (Routledge, 2016) Adewole, Funmi
    This chapter will discuss the construction of the Black dance/African Peoples’ Dance sector (APD) in Britain in the 1990s. The debate about the definition of the terms Black dance and African peoples’ dance is shown to be part and parcel of the quest for appropriate infrastructure to sustain the work of black dancers and those using African and Diasporan dance forms and aesthetics in their productions. I argue therefore that a fuller understanding of this field of practice can only be gained by taking into account the socio-political context of British dance. The construction of the Black dance/APD sector was intertwined with efforts to develop the British dance ecology as a whole and ensure that the varied styles and practices of dance, both western and non-western, were supported. The use of ‘ecology’ as a metaphor to describe the network of organizations; dance companies, venues and support organizations that sustain the British subsidized dance sector was proposed in the report Stepping Forward published in the 1989. This report was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain to make recommendations ‘for the development of Dance in England in the 1990s’ (pp. 24-28). At about the same time, the Arts Council defunded, on the basis that its definition of Black dance was too narrow, the Black Dance Development Trust (BDDT), the first support organization for black dancers who worked with African and Caribbean dance forms. The Arts Council then commissioned a report to look into a new structure for an organization to support black dance. This opened up a discussion about the definition of Black dance itself. The struggle to find an appropriate definition to support professional practice led to the definition and redefinition of the terms ‘Black dance’ and ‘African Peoples’ Dance’, as seen in a number of Arts Council commissioned documents during this era. 1993 was a key moment in the history of these discussions. In this year, the reports, ‘Advancing Black Dancing’ and ‘What is Black dance?’ were published. The next major report ‘Time for Change’ (2000) offered new definitions and concluded that what was needed by the sector was a strategy to engage a wide range of organizations into providing support for the Black dance/APD sector as opposed to the reliance on one organization. Through an analysis of these and other reports, I will discuss the role of language and the nature of the rhetorical power struggle involved in the positioning of the Black dance/APD sector within British dance. I, therefore, interrogate the conceptualization of Black dance/APD as fields of professional subsidized dance practice in the British dance ecology of the 1990s. I will also discuss the questions arising from this particular historical account and the implications of these questions for generating the histories of black British based dancers.
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    Curating performance from Africa for international stages: Thoughts on Artistic Categories and Critical Discourse
    (Breghahan Books, 2018-10) Adewole, Funmi
    This article argues the important of curating for performance from Africa citing its role in generating an artistic discourse for performance art and contemporary dance. The article includes an interview with the curator Jareh Das about performance art in Africa and the work of Jelili Atiku in particular. It also contains as review of the Moussokouma Festival, Berlin which featured seven female contemporary dance choreographers from Africa, curated by Alex Moussa Sawadogo.
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    The dance artistry of Diane Alison-Mitchell and Paradigmz: Accounting for Professional practice between 1993 and 2003
    (Francis and Taylor, 2021-07-24) Adewole, Funmi
    Diane Alison-Mitchell and the dance artist known as Paradigmz started their careers in the 1990s. They went on to become accomplished dance artists. Between 1993 and 2003 the independent dance sector expanded in terms of activity yet there was very little training in Higher Education for a career as a dance artist in the Dance of the African Diaspora as a sector. Furthermore, the administrative debate over the definition of Black dance was at its peak making career definition difficult. Produced through a combination of narrative and critical inquiry, this paper looks at how Diane Alison-Mitchell and Paradigmz developed careers during this period, through on-the-job learning and self-directed professional development projects and engaging with events organised by dance industry professionals. The DAD sector is posited as a community of practice to bring into view how the dance practitioners during this time generated discourses to create a context for professional practice. The career journeys of Alison-Mitchell and Paradigmz display how through their critical engagement with a range of activities and dance discourses in the UK and abroad, they develop dance practices with a hybrid but specific identity from a range of dance forms, techniques, modes of dance making and performance.
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    Dancing and the Stance: Mapping a Creative Practice in African Dance-Drama
    (Edinburgh University Press, 2023-12-01) Adewole, Funmi
    This paper documents ‘Funmi Adewole Elliott’s Practice as Research project into her solo performance practice which is derived from African dance-drama. Her aim is to develop the theoretical context of her practice. Using methods from proposed by Robin Nelson, Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds, her project focuses on the making of a short solo performance The Blind Side (2022). Through analysis of The Blind Side, Adewole Elliott describes how she utilises conventions of African storytelling and Neotraditional Creative Dance to create the performance piece and locate it discursive context. The project opens up a space of ‘know-what’ for her practice leading her to form three lines of inquiry; the conceptual-cultural domain in African dance-drama, the physical dramaturgy of the storyteller and what physical dramaturgy can offer Neotraditional Creative Dance practice.
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    The Impact of Impact dance: Hakeem Onibudo's Praxis
    (Serendipity, 2015-05) Adewole, Funmi
    This paper will focus on the career of Hakeem Onibodu, the artistic director of Impact dance and his contribution to developing a theatrical context for the performance of Hip-hop. His company turns twenty this year (2014). Hakeem emerged in1990s as a dance teacher, promoter and choreographer. It was a time of debates around the meaning of Black dance as evidenced in two documents published in 1993 - Advancing Black Dancing, and What is Black dancing in Britain? Onibodu say he was not aware of these debates as he worked outside the subsided sector, aligning his work with the fitness industry and recreational dance. Tired of waiting for professional opportunities he produced a platform called the SPITZ at the spitz for young dance crews. The platform helped launch the careers of several artists. This ran for ten years from 1997 to 2007. When he began to work in Youth dance with Salder’s Wells theatre his interest in choreographic development as a practice grew. Consequently with the support of Kiki Gale then the artistic director East London dance he started a platform which ran for two years called Two’s Company. The platform featured Hip-hop dancers in a series of duets. His idea was to give dancers accustomed to performing en mass or as virtuosic soloists a space where they were required to focus on the more dialogic and relational aspects of Hip-hop vocabulary. In this paper I will discuss Onibodu’s work in relation to Pablo Ferie’s conceptualization of Praxis, which he defines as "reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it " and the postcolonial studies notion of re-routing to find what insights they might give us into Onibodu’s career and Hip-hop’s potential as professional practice outside the club setting and beyond commercial dance.
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    James Mweu and Kunja Dance Theatre: Contemporary Dance as African Cultural Production
    (Boydell and Brewer, 2018-11) Adewole, Funmi
    This article argues that contemporary dance in Africa should be considered to be a form of African cultural production rather an imported Euro-American practice on the basis that it has been adopted by choreographers in Africa as a means of expressing their cultural citizenship in relation to their countries and the continent. They consider contemporary dance to be a transnational cultural practice which is feed by roots in many geographical places. James Mweu a Kenyan choreographer trained in Kenya is discussed as a case study.