Paper short abstract:

Pedagogies, Aesthetics and Notions of Being: The cultural footprint of Senegalese dancers' trans-Atlantic movement on New York City Sabar classes.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1960s, West African dance forms travelled to America in the form of performance art. Today, Senegalese dance-rhythms Sabar are taught in New York City's dance studios. The classes enchant American students to travel to West Africa and provide an incentive for Senegalese artists to pursue a teaching career in New York. The teachers' transatlantic movement between Senegal and New York is not free but negotiated within the political geography of their movement. As they negotiate boundaries and join in flows, teachers' mobility towards and within New York's Sabar scene 'writes' on the forms, affecting the kinds of Sabar that are available to American students. Avoiding conventional approaches that explore the 'lost' and 'retained' elements of African cultural forms in the New World, this paper explores how participants' negotiated mobility through socio-economic fields relates to ideas of 'authority', notions of being, pedagogical techniques and aesthetics of Sabar in New York.