Translating Movement. Dance-Aesthetic Transformations and its Medial Framings – The Example of ‘African Dance’

Project director: Prof. Dr. Gabriele Klein, Universität Hamburg
Research assistance: Dr. Marc Wagenbach
(sociology, human movement science and dance studies)

Corporal movement can be seen as a specific practice of translation, due its presence generating and volatile nature. It can be described as a permanent ‘in between’, as something that is constantly in transition. The medium of translation is the body, as it generates meaning ‘in and through’ practice as well as ‘in and through’ movement.

This project investigates how meaning can be described as a practice of situational framing. It’s fragility and contingency is visible especially when physical movements are translated into different cultural contexts. Empirical object of this study is the transfer of dances from various African cultures to ‘Europe’, introduced and appropriated as ‘African dance’.

The process of this (dance-)cultural globalization and hybridization in the tension between corporal practice (in different cultural frameworks) and its (re-)presentation in audiovisual media (photography, film, video, internet) is worked out as a permanent process of translating and framing.

Research Hypotheses are (1) perception of meaning is not only generated by a dance-performance itself but always in connection with its (re-)presentation in visual media. (2) Visual media globally transport the social image of ‘Africa’ which is translated through dance as a physical and sensual experience. (3) These processes of translation need frames. They authenticate translation within specific locations (dance spaces) and its productions of images and evoke meaning in connection with the movement experience of dance.


Given these hypotheses the project investigates the following questions: How is ‘Africa’ – analogue to Said’s Analysis of the Orient (1981) – as a social image framed by visual media and written texts that produce social meaning (by strategies of inclusion and exclusion, discriminating and exoticizing the African dancers)? How does the translocalization of ‘African dance' to the ‘contemporary’ European dance change and (de-)politicize the meaning of movement and its cultural frames?