Myth performance in the African diasporas : ritual, theatre, and dance / Benita Brown, Dannabang Kuwabong, and Christopher Olsen.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Diaspora studies continue to expand in range and scope and remain fertile terrain for investigating multiple techniques of myth creation in dance performance, history as performance, dramatic narrative, and staged rituals in the field. Similarly, research in postcoloniality, gender/sexuality, intercultural, and literary studies, among others, all engage and feature core components of performance and myth in articulating and understanding their fields. This sharing of similar components also demonstrates the interrelatedness of these fields.



In Myth Performance in the African Diasporas: Ritual, Theatre, and Dance, the authors contend that performance traditions across artistic disciplines reveal a shared--if sometimes varied--journey among diasporic artists to reconnect with their African ancestors. The volume begins with a historical and aesthetic overview of how dramatists, choreographers, and performance artists have approached the task of interpreting African myth. The individual chapters reveal how specific artists, dramatists, and choreographers have interpreted African myth and what performative approaches and traditions they have used. Focusing on theatre practitioners from the nineteenth century through the present, the authors examine performative traditions from Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America.



Drawing upon research in theatre, dance, and literary texts, Myth Performance in the African Diasporas will be crucial to academics interested in African performance viewed through the prism of myth making and spiritual/ritualistic stagings. Besides those interested in diasporic studies, this book will also be useful to scholars and students of history, drama, theatre, and dance.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

According to Kuwabong's introduction, myths "are neither true nor false narratives, but [in this book] new revelations of the inner relationships of African Diaspora people with their non-African environments." The three authors offer two chapters each on wide-ranging topics: historical dramas designed to counter Western imperialism; the presence of òrisà worship in dance; the reimagining of the female African body through the African American gaze; the codification of "soul" in African-derived dance culture; trickster figures in Caribbean and Brazilian drama that engage myth performance through drama and dance; and mythic return journeys to the motherland that complicate rather than romanticize the relationship between the motherland and her distant children. Olsen's conclusion offers valuable contextualization of this "series of journeys by writers and artists who strive to understand and embody mythical and historical figures from their reconstructed memory of the past in present Africa." The strengths of the volume include its working across artistic disciplines; continual connection of identity, practice, and praxis in the diaspora to the motherland; and solid theorizing. --Kevin J. Wetmore, Loyola Marymount University