Nelson Mandela dances with a choir of compatriots at the 8th Assembly of the World
Council of Churches (December 1999).
|
A
pioneering theorist of African choreography
A pioneering theorist of African choreography
The choreographer and independent researcher Alphonse Tiérou, 43, comes from
a long line of great “families” that are heirs to the wisdom masks of West Africa.
Brought up among great chiefs and prominent dignitaries, he studied at the National
Arts Institute in Abidjan, then capital of his native Côte d’Ivoire, after
a traditional education in African dialectic and rhetoric.
Tiérou’s first book, Le Nom africain ou langage des traditions (“The
African Name or the Language of Traditions”), published in 1977, is about oral civilization.
His work on African masks, Vérité première du second visage
africain (“The First Truth of the Second African Face”), came out one year later.
In 1983, he published La Danse africaine c’est la vie (“African Dance is Life”),
followed by his main work on traditional choreography, Dooplé: The Eternal
Law of African Dance (his only work translated into English by Harwood Academic
Publishers, 1992), which has gone through three editions in French since 1989. His
first novel, Ségoulédé, came out in 1992. His next book,
which will be published by the same Paris-based company, Maisonneuve et Larose, is
entitled Si la danse bouge, l’Afrique bougera (“If Dance Moves, Africa Will
Move”).
Alphonse Tiérou also devised the touring exhibition that came to the Musée
de l’Homme in Paris in June 2000 under the title “From dance to sculpture: a different
view of African aesthetics. ”
He is currently the director of the Dooplé resource, teaching and research
centre for African creation in Paris. For more information, call (33 1) 44 73 42
01.
|
Dance can tear up the old stumps, destroy the causes of evil that are deeply rooted
in the human sub-conscious, give individuals the possibility of belonging, of finding
and fulfilling themselves |
Everyone dances in Africa:
from this simple truth, Alphonse Tiérou, a choreographer and researcher from
Côte d’Ivoire, fashions his faith in dance’s power to push society onwards
Your last work is entitled
“If Dance Moves, Africa Will Move”. What do you mean by that?
A country’s economic and social development does not depend only on its capital
and labour, as economists and the free-market tradition suggest. Culture is just
as important. In La société de confiance (“The Society of Trust”),
published in 1995, the French academic Alain Peyrefitte correctly explained that
the main theories placing economic resources such as raw materials, capital, labour,
production, investment, and growth rates at the heart of development were out of
date. He said that cultural factors, which have been relegated to the rank of “by-standers,”
should be regarded as a basic driving force of progress. In truth, the intangible,
immaterial aspects of culture help to shape people’s mentalities. That’s why they
are the real locomotive of any society. If they are neglected, if they are not put
at the core of thinking about development, there is a chance they may turn into insurmountable
obstacles.
What cultural factors impede development in Africa?
Taboos, superstition, polygamy and tribalism are some of them. How can a woman
lead a fulfilling life when she is constantly struggling against her rivals to keep
her husband’s affection? How can you bring up your children the way you want to when
you must submit to your elders’ authority? How can you think and reflect with a calm,
level head when 10 or 20 of you are living under the same roof? In my opinion, this
custom is an abuse of the traditional values of brotherhood and generosity because
it stands in the way of personal self-fulfillment. You can’t save money or achieve
personal goals because you must obey the group’s demands. In this “gregarious” society,
whose roots lie in traditional culture, it is inconceivable for the individual to
have an existence outside his or her community. But individuality is precisely where
the source of progress lies.
Of all these problems, the most serious is probably an inferiority complex, which
has a tremendous hold in Africa. It generates a culture of dependence to the detriment
of a culture of responsibility, paralyzes and suffocates the whole continent, destroys
the basis of social cohesiveness. I’m convinced that the main cause of under-development
in Africa is a lack of self-confidence.
What do you mean by that?
Africans do not trust Africans. Whites enjoy more consideration and are given
more resources than blacks. Take a personal example. In 1987, during a lecture tour
in black Africa, I was arrested in one country and brought before the ministry of
youth, sports, culture and scientific research, which considered my speech on African
culture suspicious. At the end of a prolonged interrogation, a white man walked into
the office. He spoke out on my behalf. The minister immediately changed his tone.
After a few phone calls, he opened doors for me to all the media while the most beautiful
conference hall in the city, the place used by the country’s sole political party,
was placed at my disposal. Similar things happen every day in our countries.
This inferiority complex can also be seen in the relationship with traditional dance.
Sometimes, African artists who have acquired a veneer of training in Western dance
hurriedly denigrate their roots. Likewise, instead of developing their own analyses,
African intellectuals just repeat everything that some foreign pseudo-specialists
say and write about their culture. The problem is that the discourse of these specialists
often locks African dance in a ghetto and denies the continent the right to evolve
and modernize. They see Africa as a living museum of past traditions.
Can dance change that mentality?
I’m convinced it can. The creative act is fundamental to the emancipation of
the individual. Everyone knows that. But it is even more fundamental in the African
context, where individuality, the source of progress, is often stifled by group pressure
and conformity.
That is where dance can be a factor of development. It can tear up the old stumps,
destroy the causes of evil that are deeply rooted in the human sub-conscious, give
individuals the possibility of belonging, of finding and fulfilling themselves. That
is how it can make society move. Because only a society made up of free and self-confident
individuals can find the right solutions to its problems.
Dance, a major component of African culture, mobilizes a vast amount of energy that
should be more effectively channelled. Everybody dances in Africa: pharaohs, queens
and kings, saints, the masks of wisdom, pregnant women, babies, old folks, judges,
generals, heads of state–remember Mandela? Governments in Africa should take more
account of the emancipatory qualities of dance, and also give artists and researchers
the means to pursue their work more effectively. They mustn’t forget that the very
fact of researching our dances, which condition our entire lives, means agreeing
to accepting ourselves as we are, freeing us from our complexes, making us feel good
about who we are and what we think, proving that we have confidence in ourselves,
in all Africans and in the rest of the world.
How can African dance help to establish a relationship with the rest of the world?
Choreography is an “exportable” cultural product. On a large scale, it could
become an asset for modern Africa. Since African dance has spread worldwide, it has
done more to bring young people from the North and South closer together than any
other policy, no matter how good and well-intentioned. Dance is still the shortest
route linking one individual to another. It is about passion and seduction. During
the period of colonization, Westerners understood this perfectly well and made it
illegal to dance with Africans.
In the past few decades, thanks to the African diaspora and to the many dance courses
held in the North as well as the South, the trend has started moving in the opposite
direction. Real exchanges have taken place, sincere and deep friendships have been
woven in a spirit of mutual trust, dignity and respect. The rising interest in African
dance calls for an adequate response on the part of Africans themselves, so that
supply grows at the same pace as demand. Because, to paraphrase the French philosopher
Albert Jacquard, on the dance floor “the only worthy goal is not to be better than
others, but to be better because of others.”
|
