In her article Stripping the Emperor, Brenda Dixon drives home the point that the Africanist legacy is part and parcel of the modern American art culture. Brenda Dixon carefully traces out how five aspects of the Africanist legacy exist in ballet, which is considered the repository of Western values. The five aspects are embracing the conflict, polyrhythm, high-affect juxtaposition, ephebism and aesthetic of the cool. She does this by comparing ballet to the dance of Earl “Snake Hips” Tucker.
Surprisingly, many people are not aware that there are many similarities between ballet and African dances. As Brenda points out, some people think ballet is about far away from anything Africanist as black supposedly is from white. To make the point even clear, the article discusses how one of the pioneers of ballet dancing in
Unfortunately, as Brenda Dixon points out, many people are not ready to accept the fact that ballet has African aspects in it or that Balanchine borrowed from African dancers. Instead they rephrase it as “Balanchine’s works were influenced by jazz”. This has become a way to misname and silence the Africanist legacy.
Anthony Manyuru
Dance 0163
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