Choreographers as Cartographers
Why Geographies?
Geography is about maps. But what is a map?
Geographers have tended to define maps as graphic representations of spatial relationships. However, scholars have questioned this definition as they look at cross-cultural understandings of maps (Bassett 1998). In some cultures, the performance of map-making itself is considered more valuable than the visual product of a map.
Geographer Patricia Noxolo takes this further by thinking of contemporary Afro-Caribbean choreographers as cartographers. She compares a Eurocentric definition of a cartographer–“the one who tests the validity of different accounts as s/he brings them together, carrying out an ‘abstract synthesizing operation’, involving a number of skilled ‘operations’: ‘comparing data, resolving inconsistencies, finding modern equivalents for ancient place names, translating textual and descriptive information into locations, distances and orientations’, and forming a ‘visual cohesiveness’ in the map as finished product”-- to her own observations of contemporary African Dance research processes (Noxolo 2015).
This website builds on Noxolo’s idea of the choreographer as a cartographer by looking at how (neo)traditional African Dance teachers, drummers, and dancers do research to understand the geographical and historical context of dances. These dancers' research represent the continuity of an established tradition of cross-cultural learning through African Dance performance, education, and community organizing. This method of embodied methodological research may also represent forms of inquiry new to the discipline of human geography.
Fume Fume
Although Fume Fume is often considered to be a dance of the Ga people, Mustapha Tettey Addy rearranged the songs, rhythms, costumes, and dance of Fume Fume from the traditions of many different people groups that live in Ghana. As the “National Anthem” of Ghana’s drumming and dancing, Mustapha Tettey Addy and his brothers rearranged Fume Fume to unite the people of Ghana across ethnolinguistic differences. When performed and taught in countries around the world, Fume Fume also unites non-Ghanaian people to Ghana.
Fume Fume rhythms come from Ga rhythms Kple, Akorn, Otu, Nana, Tigare (Younge 2011) and the Eʋe rhythm Amadjro. The costumes for Fume Fume come from various Ghanaian ethnic groups. To authentically arrange the dance, the Addy brothers had to know the context of each tradition they were pulling from to make Fume Fume a harmonious rearrangement.
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The beat and tones of the male and female drum mimic the tones of the Ga language. The drum language for Fume Fume translates to:
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Male rhythm: “Let’s go”
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Female rhythm: “I’m coming. Let’s go”
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Milanorvisi
Oral tradition of the Eʋe (Ewe) people holds that, after several historical migrations, their population took up residence in the city of Nortsie in modern day Togo. During the reign of King Agorkoli I in the 14th century, the Eʋe people left the walled city of Nortsie to settle in other regions of Togo and Eastern Ghana. In a 2017 article, Sylvanus Kwashie Kuwor describes the Agbadza dance that is performed at the Hogbetsotso Za festival to continue and commemorate the knowledge, values, and institutions that emerged from this migration for the Anlo-Eʋe people (Kuwor 2017).
Atsiagbekor and Milanorvisi are also dances that emerged from this history of Eʋe migration from Nortsie. Dancer and drummer Doh Mensah traveled to Benin to learn Milanorvisi. In the song, the history of Eʋe people's escape from King Agorkoli's unsatisfactory regime is recounted. The song/dance performs the famous episode where Eʋe people gathered their belongings, their children, and walked backwards in order to evade detection as they left the walled city. The dance is triumphant and celebratory of the agency of the people to escape a difficult situation. Performing the dance is performing a scene from Eʋe history.
One does not authentically know how to dance the dance without knowing the history of the places and peoples from which the dance emerged. African dance choreographers use their informed discretion to arrange movements and songs from different places in ways that are authentic to the meaning and history of the dance. In this way, like in Noxolo's article about Afro-Caribbean dance, African Dance choreographers present maps of their knowledge in an embodied, holistic art.
Dance Produces 'Place'
In human geography, 'place' describes the cultural meaning of particular spaces. Graphical representations of space (i.e. the narrow definition of maps) produce meaning. Graphical maps, in addition to mapping existing spatial relationships, also actively shape how map users engage with the world.
In my experience, when danced at the University of Colorado, at a coffee shop in Boulder, USA, or at an urban dance studio, Milanorvisi and Fume Fume can transform how one engages with the world. Dance is an embodied map containing knowledge about how to carry oneself in relation to self, others, those who have passed away, and the space we inhabit. These embodied philosophies are diverse, retaining the mark of the choreographers' life experiences in the places they have lived.
The quality of the transmission and performance of African Dance and Drumming rests on the respect between teacher and student. To authentically transmit the philosophy and history of dances (which emerge from specific relationships between people and place), to maintain the lineage of knowledge, to act as a transformative, data-encoded technology, practitioners must put respect and effort into their dancing and drumming.
Understanding African Dance from this perspective, it is no wonder that Africanist historians have argued that African oral traditions such as Dancing and Drumming can be read as a particular kind of historical text (Vansina 1985). Yet, Africanist geographers should also consider Dancing and Drumming as a form of embodied mapping. As practitioners share dances, they create a place where bodies and spirits transmit holistic knowledge from the past to the present, from one place to another.