African dance
Songs and dances facilitate teaching and promoting social values, celebrating special events and major life milestones, performing oral history and other recitations, and spiritual experiences.
[7] African dances are a collective activity performed in large groups, with significant interaction between dancers and onlookers in the majority of styles.
For example, slaves responded to the fears of their masters about high-energy styles of dance with changing stepping to shuffling.
[11] Capoeira was a martial art practiced originally in Africa which the enslaved Africans masked as a form of dance in order to not arouse the suspicion of plantation owners.
[12] Traditional dance in Africa occurs collectively, expressing the values and desires of the community more than that of individuals or couples.
Dances are usually segregated by sex, where gender roles in children and other community structures such as kinship, age, and political status are often reinforced.
[19] Among the Lunda people of Zambia, for example, young girls remain in seclusion for months to practice the dance for their coming of age ritual.
Thomas Edward Bodwich, an early European observer, noted that "children will move their heads and limbs, while on their mother's backs, in exact unison with the tune which is playing.
"[21] Many traditional African children's games, particularly in western and central Africa, include elements that promote the child's ability to understand rhythms.
Most dances make use of the human voice in the form of singing, shouting, recitations, grunts, whispering, and other vocalizations.
In an African community, coming together in response to the beating of the drum is an opportunity to give one another a sense of belonging and of solidarity, a time to connect with each other and be part of a collective rhythm of the life in which young and old, rich and poor, men and women are all invited to contribute to the society.
Strong contraction-release movements of the pelvis and upper torso characterize both male and female dancing in Agbor.
[44] Mantsoe was a part of the earliest groups which performed Glasser's historic "San trance" dancing work, Transformations.
[47] American choreograhpher and dancer Chuck Davis is thought to be most recognized for formally introducing African dance styles and traditions on a professional level to America.
