In-the-Between-ness: Decolonising and Re-inhabiting Our Dancing

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Narratives in Black British Dance

Abstract

In this chapter, Akinleye and Kindred discuss their need to be alert to how Western values creep into their creative processes through the language they use to discuss, describe and facilitate dance. The chapter explores their attempts to extract their ‘dancing bodies’ and choreographic processes from the Imperialist language of Western binaries. Despite their creative processes being informed by their multicultural, trans-national life experiences, how they talk about, or describe their work is often limited by the necessity of describing it using Western mainstream terms, which they suggest is a continuing legacy of colonization. The chapter discusses ways they have sought to decolonize the environment of their creative exploration.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Heidegger’s Phenomenology still sees a divide between subject and object but positions them as affecting each other, while Dewey’s Pragmatist work does not see a separation at all.

  2. 2.

    Dewey was alive 1859 to 1952, Black Elk 1863 to 1950 (Black & Neihardt, 1932) Peirce lived 1839 to 1914, William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born in 1846 and died 1917.

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Akinleye, A., Kindred, H. (2018). In-the-Between-ness: Decolonising and Re-inhabiting Our Dancing. In: Akinleye, A. (eds) Narratives in Black British Dance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70314-5_6

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