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RICE UNIVERSITY
The African American Dancing Body: A Site for Religious Experience through Dance
By
Shani Diouf
A THESIS SUBMITTED
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
Master of Arts
APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE
Claire Fanger
Associate Professor
Co-Director of MA Studies
Elias Bongmba
Professor of Religion, Harry & Hazel
Chavanne
Chair in Christian Theology, Department
Chair
Niki Clements
Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Assistant Professor
of Religion, Allison Sarofim Assistant Professor
of Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities,
Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of Religion
HOUSTON, TEXAS
April 2021
Abstract
African American religious dance is not a topic previously explored in detail beyond
dance that has historically existed in the church within the confines of Christianity. However
the African American religious experience is not limited to Christianity and is inclusive of various
religious practices extending beyond the church and thus required deeper exploration of what
constitutes an African American religious experience, especially as it relates to dance. In an
effort to explore this, careful exploration of the Ring Shout was necessary as a tool in discussing
the evolution of the African American religious dances. Using the Ring Shout as a lens for
viewing subsequent dances of the diaspora within my thesis, I acknowledge it as the first
African American Religious dance with special emphasis being placed on its purpose and
function as a form of communal action and way of achieving oneness by the practitioners,
ultimately laying the foundation for subsequent dances. I also include interviews that I
conducted with dance practitioners of different dance genres about their perceived notions and
personal experiences of what makes a dance religious. I ultimately arrive at a definition of
African American religious dance that is neither aligned with Christianity or any other specific
religion but is instead representative of the communal identity of being Black in America and a
visual movement manifestation of the wrestling of what that engenders. I ultimately assert that
African American religious dance can be both inclusive of secular dance and a religious
experience simultaneously.2
Acknowledgments
I am immensely grateful for this opportunity to confront questions both academic and
personal that I have been wrestling with for some time within the confines of my thesis here at
Rice University. I am grateful for each and every professor that I have had the opportunity to
study with in the Department of Religion. I have been challenged academically in ways that I
did not imagine and for that I am grateful. I would like to thank the members of my committee;
Professor Elias Bongmba thank you for meeting with me and never hesitating to answer my
questions and for always having recommendations for me, and even allowing me to borrow
books from your personal collection. Professor Niki Clements I so appreciate you creating
space within the 19th Century History & Methods Course for me to consistently explore how the
topics may relate to dance. Professor Claire Fanger thank you for listening and becoming
genuinely interested in my research in an effort to assist me and for constantly challenging me
with questions and feedback. I am forever grateful.
I would also like to thank Professors who while not on my committee have contributed
to my learning and research in immeasurable ways; Professor Nicole Waligora - Davis whose
course in the English Department - Blackness - introduced me to many previously unexplored
authors ultimately assisting me in constructing a solid framework for my thesis and Professor
Tony N. Brown in the Department of Sociology who introduced me to the concept of Black
Sociological thought.
I also give special thanks to the dance practitioners who, understanding the importance
of my research, allowed me to interview them and answered each question that I had in detail
and with patience. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends who have supported me3 by listening to me talk through much of the content, praying with and for me, and when needed giving me space to sit with my work. I am forever grateful.
4 Table of Contents Introduction. Setting the Stage .............................................................................................. 6 Defining African American Religious Dance ................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1: Ring Shout: Embodied Aesthetics: Reaching Back and Moving Forward ............... 18 1.1 Contributing Interview: Tamara Williams ................................................................................ 24 Chapter 2: Reimagining Performance in the Context of Performative Death and Suffering .... 33 2.1 The Performative in North America......................................................................................... 33 2.2 Embodied Aesthetics in West Africa ........................................................................................ 40 2.3 Contributing Interview - Germaine Acogny .............................................................................. 43 2.4 Contributing Interview – Gideon Alorwoyie............................................................................. 49 Chapter 3: Musical Influence ................................................................................................ 52 3.1 Contributing Interview – Ricco D. Vance.................................................................................. 54 Chapter 4: Experiencing Religion in the Body ........................................................................ 57 4.1 Contributing Interview – Chris Thomas.................................................................................... 63 4.2 Hip-Hop Choreography and Religious Experience .................................................................... 71 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 73
5 Table of Figures Figure 1. Students at The University of North Carolina Charlotte performing William's choreography of the Ring Shout ................................................................................................... 32 Figure 2. Thomas dancing in the Cypher at The Red Bull Dance Your Style Event ....................... 70
6
Introduction. Setting the Stage
Honoring both African and European needs, enslaved Africans found ways to shift weight from heels to
toes, to insides and outer edges of the feet, moving the feet in various directions, turning toes and knees
in and out, sliding, gliding, shuffling, stomping the feet-without ever crossing them or lifting them from
the ground. On top of this they articulated the torso and limbs in counter rhythms and different
directions, adding syncopations and improvised movements throughout the body. Thus, they were not
breaking white Protestant rules-not dancing in a European sense! What they were doing, in an exquisite
example of acculturation, was inventing a new dance form!
-Brenda Dixon Gottshchild, The Black Dancing Body: a Geography from Coon to Cool
What is African American religious dance? While terms like Black dance or African
American dance have been used in academic discussion for some time, much of the
conversation around African American religious dance focuses on dance in churches or
performed in a Christian context, referencing both the historical dance called the Ring Shout, a
dance performed by enslaved Africans moving in a counterclockwise circle, or the Shout, a
contemporary development of the Ring Shout that does not take place in a circle in the same
way the Ring Shout does but is still associated with religion through church settings.
Consideration of the Ring Shout – which I will further examine in Chapter 2 -- is necessary here,
not only because it was the earliest form of African American religious dance,1 but also for
understanding what constitutes an African American religious experience. Both the Shout and
the Ring Shout are referenced as “religious” in the context of Christianity, but a broader
perspective is necessary since the African American religious experience is not limited to
1Barbara S. Glass, African American Dance: An Illustrated History, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc 2012),
327
Christianity. Can secular dance in the African American community serve the same purpose as
the Ring Shout?
My undertaking has both academic and personal implications for me and is in part
centered around researching the importance of the Ring Shout specifically for several noted
connections to the religious influence in contemporary dances that I have observed in my
practice as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher in diverse performance spaces throughout the
diaspora.
My thesis, while focusing a significant amount of attention on Saidiyah Hartman’s
Scenes of Subjection to aid in my investigation into why and how African American performance
was affected by enslavement, also draws in part on historical recollections of experiences of the
enslaved and historical and contemporary reflections on the Ring Shout, the first African
American religious dance. However I am especially interested in the way contemporary African
and African American dancers view their own techniques and experiences. Thus in part I draw
on interviews with dancers which were meant to elicit reflections on their relation to dance
experiences, their sense of their own dancing as it has merged with religious experience, and
their sense of the importance of dance in African American culture.
While I will be writing more about the definition of “African American religious dance”
throughout this thesis, and will return to this topic many times, for the moment it is enough to
suggest that when I use the word “religious” I follow Anthony Pinn, who defines African
American religion as the “quest for complex subjectivity, a desire or feeling for more life8
meaning.” The “religious” in this sense, per Pinn, is not limited to any particular religious
tradition, and is thus useful for my purpose here.2
My thesis argues that the categorization of African American religious dance should not
be exclusive to dances in the religious sense or dances that exist within the church since African
American religiosity is strongly embedded in perception of and attention to body, identity, and
an embodied experience of moving, in ways that defy dehumanizing depictions of what it
means to be African American. I further assert that African American religious dance even
within a secular dance genre can be a religious experience fully capable of progressing to a
state of trance or progression.
My argument is partly based in my reading of Saidiyah Hartman’s book Scenes of
Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. It is of particular
interest because of Hartman’s careful analysis of racial subjugation and its effect on recreation
and performance during slavery as well as in the present. Her detailed investigation into the
forms of terror and resistance that simultaneously and exuberantly coexisted within various
performances of “merriment” by the enslaved helps to construct a baseline understanding of
historical as well as contemporary African American religious performance in terms of the
duality that exists within it.
It is crucial to understand that the body is the site that holds memory and experiences
trauma, and that memory and that trauma become articulated through performance in the
African American community. Additionally, it is important to understand how identity and
2 Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: the Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 173.9
community, play a role in the aesthetics of African American dance. Hartman’s analysis of
issues surrounding the intersection of commodification, control, fungibility, terror, and
enjoyment gives special attention to the fact that the enslaved was both a subject and an
expendable object to be controlled. Hartman depicts the way the enslaved was made to be
afraid but still required to perform merriment, an aspect of freedom. The duality of intention
and emotions produced by the stress of this arrangement is evoked in the movements of
African American dances since the Ring Shout, and has, in a sense, become a defining
characteristic of African American performance culture, which I will explore further.
By drawing attention to the various atrocities committed against the enslaved as well as
focusing on those who witnessed the acts as a form of pleasure and enjoyment, she offers a
different perspective to the understanding of performance. Hartman looks carefully at the
diverse roles of those witnessing the suffering of the enslaved, as well as the experience of the
enslaved being forced to perform in what she refers to as the “pageantry of the coffle” at the
slave auction.3 Much effort was made to disguise the horror and sadness that accompanied the
auction, including slaveholders enforcing the enslaved to perform happiness by singing,
dancing, and “stepping it up lively on the auction block.” 4
An understanding of what Hartman refers to as “Innocent Amusements” 5 is imperative
in the task of defining African American religious experience, especially as it correlates to
dance. By “innocent amusements,” Hartman refers to the theatricality of the slave trade.
3 Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, 1st
edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).23
4 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 23
5 “Innocent Amusements: The Stage of Sufferance” is the title of chapter 1 in Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection.10
These were forced performances “intended to shroud the violence of the market and deny the
sorrow of those sold and their families.”6 Hartman gives the example of William Wells Brown
whose job was to prepare the slaves held in the pen for inspection and sale. He explains that
before they were exhibited for sale they were dressed and made to dance, jump, and play cards
in an effort to make them look cheerful and happy. He noted that he “often set them to
dancing when their cheeks were wet with tears.”7 This tactic was often employed by the
slaveholders in an “effort to cultivate docile and dutiful slaves,” by promoting what was labeled
as the slaves “‘natural gaiety,’” and typically engaging them in forms of music and dance.
Hartman also cites, as one example of many, Solomon Northrup’s narrative of being “spurred
by an occasional sharp touch of the lash” as he extracted from his violin “a marvelous quick
stepping tune” to which the enslaved were encouraged by the master to dance by the goading
of the same lash.8 Such “amusements” were intended to foster a picture of the enslaved as
contented, but as she notes, “the contented slave appeared only after he had been whipped
into subjection.”9 Hartman’s description of the performance space of the enslaved in such
circumstances as the “stage of sufferance” captures how the stage, which we might think of as
a site for artistic expression, was simultaneously for the enslaved a site of suffering – though
artistic expression may have had a place as well.
Through these ongoing coerced performances of merriment in America, the way African
American performance looked, sounded, and existed underwent a change and African
6 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 36
7 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 37
8 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 43.
9 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 43.11
American dance began to become what it continues in part to be – an artistic expression
encompassing the ongoing spiritual and historical communal trauma described in Hartman’s
book and experienced daily. From my perspective as a dancer, her observations raised
questions such as: What happens to the dance when it is forced? How is the dance affected
when terror, fungibility, and enjoyment are all superimposed onto it? Can it continue to
function in the same way as it previously did? To what extent does it look the same? and if not,
how has it changed? I contend, that while African American dance maintained elements of its
primary root in African dance, white preoccupation with enforced merriment along with the
trauma of the slave trade ultimately laid the foundation for African American religious dance in
the sense I mean to lay out.
Defining African American Religious Dance
Before offering a definition of African American religious dance, we have to look at how
religious dance in general has been defined by earlier scholars. While some authors have
created categories for understanding religious dance, those categories ultimately serve as
broad classifications containing specific cultural traditions of dance. For example Harriet Lihs,
dance scholar, author, and professor of dance, categorized religious dance by four types.10 The
first is dances of imitation, which refers to dances that depict the imitation of animals based on
the belief that these animals are messengers from the spirit world. These dances were
10Harriet R. Lihs, Appreciating Dance: A Guide to the World’s Liveliest Art (Princeton Book Company Pub., 2009).12-
1412
performed in an effort to honor and embody the characteristics that the animal possesses. The
second category, medicine dances, refers to dances performed by shamans, priests, or
priestesses and intended to deliver healing or remove evil from those afflicted. The third
category is commemorative dances, which are dances that observe or memorialize important
events or milestones in the year or in a person’s life.
Finally, dances for spiritual connection are classified as dances that are spontaneous
expressions of gratitude and are essentially dances that are performed in effort to reach a more
spiritual plane. Performers often experience a possession or a trance like state with dances in
this category. These categories are widely accepted and used in the universal dialogue of
religious dances.
It is useful to have broad categories in which to place religious dances; however, these
categories do not really help to define “religious dance” as such for two reasons. 1. They do not
attempt to delineate the personal or sociocultural reason for the performance of such dances,
Surely the intent of the dancer, as well as the experience of the dance as religious, must be at
the heart of defining religious dances as such. 2. They do not attempt to delineate the local
religious and cultural implications and expectations of the dance - including communal
perception of the body or ways of accessing and communing with the divine that are socially
agreed upon within that local religious culture. This means that the definition of what makes a
specific movement or dance religious will vary depending on the environment in which it exists
as well as the people who are performing the movement and how those people view the body.
In essence, each society decides for itself first if dance can be used in the service of religion and
if so, what then that religious dance or movement will be. To qualify as religious in the sense I13
wish to use here, the dance ultimately is a quest for complex subjectivity. Through the dance
the practitioners wrestle against efforts to dehumanize them.11The dance is therefore also a
response to the identity of being black in America. This dance, this experience, is “the
recognition of and response to the elemental feeling for complex subjectivity and the
accompanying transformation of consciousness that allows for the historically manifest battle
against the terror of fixed identity.”12
Factors constituting religious dance or movement will also involve many distinctions not
present for theatrical dance: distinctions about who is designated to perform the dance (e.g.
whether it is performed by a certain gender or age group); about the occasions on which the
dance is performed (when crops are failing, after a death or birth); about what is worn during
the dance; about the music or song that accompanies the movement; and, finally, about what
the purpose or objective of the dance is. Religious dances are created by a community to
achieve a specified necessary goal. Unlike theatrical dances, they don’t typically exist on a
stage, are communal in nature, and are not for the primary purpose of entertainment. They
typically include several nuances of motion that are communally understood. This can look like
body language, movements of the body that communicate a message understood by the
overall community, but is not necessarily transparent to outsiders.
Dance naturally functions in conjunction with other arts in the service of religion. This
means a religious dance may include accompanying songs, musical instruments, and
11 Anthony B. Pinn, “Black Bodies in Pain and Ecstasy: Terror, Subjectivity, and the Nature of Black Religion,” Nova
Religio 7, no. 1 (January 2003): pp. 76-89, https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2003.7.1.76, 76.
12 Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: the Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 175.14
costumes.13 Each community has a collective idea of what is acceptable in relation to specific
practices associated with their idea of the divine. The community collectively defines what is
appropriate. When it comes to movement of the body there is great variability between
religious practices depending on the local culture. This means that religious dance is defined
not specifically by the dogma associated with the religion, but by the community in which it
exists. This community creation and belonging is evident in the Ring Shout.
In an effort to categorize or define religious dance in the African American community,
the Ring Shout is often acknowledged as the first African American religious dance. Its
distinctively African movement components survived the Middle Passage and continued in
North America, retaining many aesthetics of religious dances in West African culture; such
movements evoked past communal relationships and helped to bind communities of displaced
Africans in the new world.14 Those same aesthetics and movement components were modified
to respond to enslavement. The act of moving around in a counterclockwise circle was sacred
and familiar to all enslaved ethnic groups in North America. However each group had the
opportunity to bring their own unique contributions to the Ring Shout. In this way the Ring
Shout allowed a variety of expressions of individual identity to manifest.15 The Ring Shout was a
dance that emerged out of a need to process the trauma inflicted by the atrocious institution of
slavery.
13 Anne-Marie (Anjali) Gaston and Tony Gaston, “Dance as a Way of Being Religious,” The Oxford Handbook of
Religion and the Arts (2014) 1
14 Barbara Glass’ African Derived Movement Characteristics in detail in the following chapter
15 Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin': the Old African American Hoodoo System (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 2013), 46.15
Modern day representations of the Ring Shout can be seen in many African American
churches where the dance does not take place in a counter-clockwise circle; but the
fundamental elements of the Ring Shout are still present including percussive accompaniment,
shuffling of the feet, shouting, and the possibility of “catching the spirit” or possession.
According to Sterling Stuckey,
[E]ven when black Christians experienced possession, it was mainly in that same circular
context where the degree of emotional fervor and the intensity of convulsions- and the
particulars of dance that finally give way to them-were also African. Especially in the
traditions of Africans in America, passions are unleashed that are to some extent called
forth and polarized by oppression. 16
In other words, Stuckey asserts that while the Shout maintains elements of West African
culture, the oppression that is experienced by African Americans contributes to fervor of the
dance and are an integral part of it as well.
However in my expansive definition of African American religious dance, it is possible to
include other secular dances that do not originate in the context of a church or religious
ceremony . The dance Revelations, choreographed by the late Alvin Ailey in 1960, is one such
dance. Ailey was an African American dancer, choreographer, activist and founder of Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theatre (AAADT). He was born in 1931 in Rogers, Texas and used his
experiences of growing up in the South to create powerful dances performed by his dance
company. Ailey called his choreography in Revelations part of his blood memories, referring to
his cultural memories including his family and church. Thomas De Frantz said that Revelations
was “designed to suggest a chronological spectrum of Black religious music from the sorrow
16
Sterling Stuckey, “Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America”(New York, Oxford
University Press, 2014) 6216
songs to gospel rock,”17 and that it was a mapping of “rural southern spirituality onto the
concert dance stage.”18 DeFrantz goes on to contend that the dance movements which are set
to spirituals allowed Ailey to suggest a political collaboration between his performance and the
music’s historical legacy. The choreography is intricately connected to the vocal arrangements
amplifying the production of the spirituals. 19
The use of spirituals, coupled with distinct African derived dance characteristics, call to
memory the experience of slavery as well as the Shout. However, the movement, while similar,
is also distinctly different than the Shout. The choreography in Revelations is based on modern
dance vocabulary, in contrast to the Shout which tends to pull from West African movement.
The movement in Revelations is a style of dancing that consists of syncopated rhythms,
undulation, and repetition and is signified as a means of calling forth or catching the spirit. The
dramatic movements in Revelations imply mind and spirit release and act as a metaphor for
human longing for aspirations beyond what exists. 20 I do not suggest that Revelations should be
considered an African American religious dance because of the movement vocabulary, musical
accompaniment, or costumes; rather, it is an African American religious dance because of the
intention, purpose, or function of the dance. The movements effortlessly and naturally
articulate the history of a people originating in African while simultaneously expressing the
experience of being black in America including everything that experience engenders. It is also a
dance that counters the oppression and trauma associated with the experience of being black
17 Thomas F. DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey’s Embodiment of African American Culture (Oxford
University Press, 2006). 3
18 DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations, 3
19 DeFrantz, Dancing Revelations, 14
20 Brenda Dixon Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
26017
in America; essentially it is a quest for complex subjectivity while synchronously exhibiting hope
in the salvation of God.
It is my assertion that African American religious dance can therefore be defined as
dance that addresses and ameliorates the condition of being African American. It is dance that
explores ancestral memories through movement, and redresses and affirms the pained and
objectified body. It is a vehicle providing hope and a way of accessing and communing with the
divine. It is not bound by dogma or a specific religious practice but is instead confined to a
communal experience of what it means to be a Black person in America. It can be performed
by anyone, not only African Americans; however those executing the movement do need to
have an intimate understanding of the meaning behind the movement to successfully perform
the dances. As Brenda Dixon Gottschild said “…spirit shows up wherever and whenever
sublime dancing occurs…”21 Additionally, as we can see in Revelations African American
religious dance does not have to be restricted to a specified genre of movement. It may
manifest as different styles not limited to African diasporic movement but inclusive of all
movement that addresses the condition of being a Black person in America. Adding non-
traditional secular dance styles to the conversation about African American religious dance is
imperative since the basis of what defines this category is not codified based on genre alone.
21 Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body, 26218
Chapter 1: Ring Shout: Embodied Aesthetics: Reaching Back and Moving
Forward
The enslaved body was the vessel that held the memories of more peaceful times in
Africa as well as the site that nurtured the future possibilities. It was the site of need, desire,
and pleasure. The body was also the site of violence and trauma. It existed as a vessel of
communication, a bridge between the living and the dead. Of particular significance is an
understanding of the complicated issues impressed upon the body because of institution of
slavery and the abuse associated with it. This abuse made a lasting mark on the Black dancing
body and the way it existed in performance. Because the enslaved body was simultaneously a
subject and an object --stolen from one environment to be treated as a fungible commodity in
another -- they had to reinvent for themselves what a religious experience was and the primary
focus was on ways of redressing the body, the site of trauma. As Anthony Pinn put it:
…religious experience, when viewed in light of the black body and its struggle against
the social system, entails a stylized movement against warped depictions of African
identity, against limitations on being. 22
One of the ways that the enslaved practiced redressing of the body was through praise
meetings in which the enslaved could sing, dance, and pray. These could be considered one of
the most direct expressions of redressing and attending to the pained and traumatized body.
22Anthony B. Pinn, “Black Bodies in Pain and Ecstasy: Terror, Subjectivity, and the Nature of Black Religion,” Nova
Religio 7, no. 1 (January 2003): pp. 76-89, https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2003.7.1.76, 83.19
Using what was available to them, the enslaved Africans in the Americas created a movement
practice that honored their traditions and practices while including newly introduced ones.
Thus, the first visual, embodied representation through religious dance of the condition of
being African American was the Ring Shout. Careful examination of the Ring Shout gives insight
into the intricate relationship between African American religious dance and the African
American experience. While practitioners tried to adhere to the Christian rules regarding
dance, the dance includes a number of what Barbara Glass terms “African derived dance
characteristics” such as call and response, polyrhythm, percussion, orientation to the earth, and
improvisation.
These “African derived dance characteristics” are outlined in her book, African American
Dance: An Illustrated History as follows:23 Orientation to the earth can be understood as
movement of the body that is closer to the ground. This style of moving is opposite to the
European way of moving which typically has an orientation upward as seen in ballet. Glass also
speaks of improvisation which can be understood as creativity, innovation, and spontaneity in
African derived movement forms. She also mentions the importance of community. The
concept of community refers to a specific group’s culture and way of living. Many villages
employ a communal philosophy but more importantly, the term “community” speaks to the
way dance and performance exists. In a communal performance environment, the performer is
not separate from the audience. The audience often times has knowledge of the songs, dances,
and meaning associated with the performance. The audience will also take part in the
performances as well and often times can be called into the performance to dance or
23 Glass, African American Dance. 1320
participate in varying ways. Another characteristic that Glass describes is polyrhythm which
refers to the layered percussive patterns that are part of the musical accompaniment.
A typical rhythm may consist of a master drum patterns that are part of the musical
accompaniment. These master drum patterns will communicate messages to the performers,
but there will also be several supporting drum patterns, each one playing an individual
accompanying rhythm that supports the master drum patterns. Additionally, there may be a
bell played, keeping the time much like a metronome would. Competition is also another
important characteristic in African derived movement. This competitiveness does not exist in a
negative way but rather serves to reinforce the characteristics of community and of call and
response - another characteristic referring to the call of a song or dance movement and the
repetition that follows when the dancers or singers respond with a movement or song as well.
These African derived dance characteristics are present in various ways in African American
dance.
Enslaved Africans retained these African derived dance characteristics in their bodies.
The coerced performances, “stepping it up lively,”24 as well as the secret praise meetings
including the Ring Shout, included these movement characteristics since this was their natural
way of dancing. However while African derived dance characteristics were present in the
performance of the movement, the enslaved also embodied a new way of moving informed by
trauma, violence, pain, and memories of ancestral traditions.25 Dance was used as a tool of
survival and activism, as well as a way to experience and manifest aspects of their true
24 A phrase reiterated passim in Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, e.g. pp 23, 36, 37.
25 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 7221
individual and communal identities, as well as counter the narrative that they were replaceable
objects.26 Albert Raboteau in his book Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the
Antebellum South likened the Ring Shout to a two- way bridge connecting the core of West
African religions-possession by the gods – to the core of evangelical Protestantism.27
African aesthetics within the confines of coerced or forced performance also created
possibilities for subversion of the enslaved state. Dance became a form of slave agency and the
Ring Shout was slave agency in practice, providing a vehicle of communal action. Sterling
Stuckey referred to the Ring Shout as “the key to understanding the means by which they
achieved oneness in America.”28 His use of the word oneness refers to the sense of community
that was created within and through the practice of the Ring Shout. The enslaved believed they
could not serve God properly without stealing away to the woods to pray the way they wanted.
The dance was a form of redressing the pained body and regaining a sense of control over it
which created a new way of moving and a new form and function of the dances previously
executed.
Dr Katrina Hazzard – Donald in her book Mojo Workin’ The Old African American Hoodoo
System describes what she calls Hoodoo as “the folk, spiritual controlling, and healing tradition
originating among and practiced primarily, but not extensively, by captive African Americans
and their descendants primarily in the southern United States.”29 Her definition of Hoodoo
encompasses traditional west and central African practices merged into life in the Americas.
26 Hartman, Scenes of Subjection, 21
27 Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press,
USA, 2004), 73.
28 Stuckey, Slave Culture, 11
29 Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’ The Old African American Hoodoo System (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2013), 222
She goes on to specify that hoodoo religion “involved spirit possession, ancestor reverence,
water immersion, herbal medicine, sacred music, circle dancing, and shaman priests who
functioned in a variety of roles, including that of leader in religious activity such as role model in
the sacred ritual of the Ring Shout.”30 Hazzard-Donald’s definition of hoodoo religion as being
created by African Americans and connected to west and central Africa emphasizes the
importance of sacred music and dance in the form of the Ring Shout to the religion which she
defines for the purpose of her study as “a coherent personal or institutionalized system of
spiritual belief and practice.”31 The assertion that African Americans created a new religion
based on their previous religion including the specific practices outlined within that religion has
implications for many contemporary music and dance influences in the African American
community.
The Ring Shout has had an immense effect on African American religious practices.
According to Art Rosenbaum, the Ring Shout has been maintained as a continuous tradition in
the Bolden community in Coastal Georgia since slavery.32 He describes the performance
tradition he witnessed there as involving “An impressive fusion of call-and-response singing,
polyrhythmic percussion, and expressive and formalized dancelike movements.”33 Some of
these elements have also been retained in the contemporary religious dance derived from it,
the Shout, that is found in many southern churches today. The Shout, however, is not
associated with movement in a counterclockwise circle typical of the Ring Shout. Once the
30 Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’, 3
31 Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’, 3
32 Art Rosenbaum et al., Shout Because You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia
(University of Georgia Press, 2013). 1
33 Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free, 1.23
dance was moved into the church the space did not accommodate moving in a circle. W.E.B.
Dubois when speaking of the Shout said,
Finally, the Frenzy or Shouting, when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and seizing the
devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion
and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the
silent rapt countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad abandon of physical
fervor,-the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro and wild waving
arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision and the trance.34
As this description shows, the Shout allowed the enslaved to move in ways that defied
Protestant and Puritan restrictions on dancing. The dance gave the body permission to be a
vessel of communication with God, to move in communion with the divine, countering the
Christian characterization of the body as tainted by sin, an obstacle to be overcome in order to
receive the benefits of heaven. Beginning in 1740 due to the Great Awakening, many African
Americans were “lifted to new heights of religious excitement” and converted to Christianity by
Baptist and Methodist preachers. 35 As the enslaved were introduced to and forced to practice
Christianity, they began a syncretic process of combining themes of freedom, salvation, and
transcendence that could be found in many biblical stories with elements of their previous
traditional practices including communal perception of the body, and synthesizing those
notions within the Christian practice. While they did not allow their culture to die completely, it
was unavoidable that changes occurred in the African American religious experience. Barbara
Glass noted how “the dance became part of the new religion, adapting itself so effectively that
34W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (OUP Oxford, 2007). 129
35Albert J. Raboteau. Slave Religion : the “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South / Albert J.
Raboteau. Updated edition. Oxford ;: Oxford University Press, 2004.24
it was no longer even recognized as dance.”36 She goes on to state, “dance was considered
sinful. The ring shout however, was not considered dance by the church nor by secular society
as long as the feet were not crossed or lifted from the floor.”37 The Ring Shout was a practice
that borrowed from the qualities of dance and performance in Africa but it also attended to the
needs of the enslaved body on the plantation. It was therapy and prayer hidden in religious
dance, the first African American religious dance. As Rosenbaum has already indicated, this
dance has survived and is still practiced in some places. One of the people currently keeping
the tradition of the Ring Shout alive is Tamara Williams.
1.1 Contributing Interview: Tamara Williams
Professor Tamara LaDonna Williams also known as (Ifákẹ́mi Ṣàngóbámkẹ́ Moṣebọ́látán),
interviewed for the purpose of this thesis is an integral voice to add to the dialogue. Since 2015
she has been Assistant Professor of Dance at The University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her
contributions to the dance community extend beyond academia and reach into the local
community as well. She teaches to college students at UNC Charlotte and she also teaches
several community workshops open to all ages and levels titled “African American Ring Shout”
which is a rare dance class offering, especially considering the history and nature of the dance
historically occurring on plantations in the south and practiced by the enslaved in the same
location where she was born and raised. She has also created field trips for her students at the
university where they have visited the plantations in Charlotte and Beauford. As she explained
36 Glass. African American Dance, 40
37 Glass. African American Dance, 4025
“Charlotte is interesting, because it has a rich history, but it also has a direct relation to my
research.”38
Born and raised in Augusta Georgia, Williams recalls going to Spring Grove Baptist
Church with her grandmother in South Carolina when she was very young. The church was also
her great grandmother’s church as well and while the church has since relocated, it has been in
existence for over 100 years. Williams grew up Baptist and explains that she was fascinated by
the stories in the Bible. She remembers always having questions about ancestors and nature
that she felt were not answered within the church and so eventually she stopped regularly
attending church. In college she began reading and researching religion and while she obtained
a B.F.A. in dance from Florida State she also actually minored in religion and theology which
allowed her to further probe and investigate some of the questions that she had. 39 After
graduating from Florida State she moved to New York to pursue a career as a professional
dancer where she danced with companies such as Alpha Omega and Urban Bush Women’s
apprentice company. This is when she also took time to focus on and gain an understanding of
West African dances. Williams explains that she became “interested in dancing movements
that were inspired by African diaspora culture.”40
It was in New York that she went to a Babalawo, or high priest, for a cowrie shell reading
after having issues with housing and being directed to him for help. The reading is a traditional
way of foretelling events in a person’s life. After her reading she began connecting with the
38 Ssalvato. “Tamara Williams.” https://coaa.uncc.edu/spotlights/tamara-williams, February 4, 2021.
https://coaa.uncc.edu/spotlights/tamara-williams.
39 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.
40 Lea Bekele. Tamara Williams' Upcoming African Dance Showcase Honors Enslaved Ancestors,
https://qcnerve.com/tamara-williams-african-dance-showcase/. (accessed February 16, 2021).26
Santeria and Lukumi Orisa community in New York. This led to her traveling to Brazil where she
had more experiences with Orisa ceremonies. The term Orisa was designated by the Yoruba
exclusively referring to the divinities.41 When the term is applied to a person “it carries the
connotation that he derives his authority to rule from the divinities and ultimately from the
Diety…”42 Williams, when speaking specifically about the process of Orisa ‘mounting’ people,
calls it a “prayer, offering, or a meditation” and stresses that it is deeply tied to the spiritual
practice. She continues to explain that In Yoruba culture “everything has a spirit, including
dance“; she continues:
The drum has a spirit, the sound has a spirit, the body has a spirit. So, it’s deeper than
just dancing for pleasure or dancing for entertainment. It’s really to call on Spirits or to
heal the body. So for that reason I don’t call it, in a religious setting, dance.43
Thus she believes that the dance that occurs in the process of being mounted is a prayer of the
body.
While doing a genealogical search of her ancestors she went as far back as 1823 and was
able to connect her family to churches in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. She began to
wonder why the old cultural performances coming from Africa were not as present in the
United States as they are clearly present in the other places that she has visited in the diaspora.
While visiting the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston as part of her research, she saw
something on one of the walls about the Ring Shout and on the same wall she saw something
about candomblé in Brazil which prompted her to do further research. She then made
41 Emanuel B. Idowu, Olódùmarè God in Yoruba Belief (London: Longmans, 1966), 59.
42 Idowo. Olódùmarè God in Yoruba Belief, 61
43 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.27
connections to what she saw people doing at her 92 year-old grandmothers church when she
was young and observed dances in a circle on a wooden floor in the basement at the church.
She thus defines the Ring Shout as an ancestral dance as opposed to a Christian dance.
Williams traveled from Charleston to Beauford to Savannah where she visited plantations and
asked to see records and books. She acknowledged that her appointment at the University of
North Carolina gave her access that she may not have otherwise had. She observed drawings of
people moving in circles which she believes was drawings of the Ring Shout. She also visited
praise houses in Charleston such as The Moving Star Hall Praise House. All of these experiences
helped her to put some of the historical pieces together. She had been observing dance since
she was around the age of four in her church in what she calls the back woods of South Carolina
where there was always food being served while people danced in circles. She spoke of her
grandmother’s church, distinctly recalling the importance of the wooden floors and how
integral they were to the elders. The elders felt the wood floor was their connection to the
rhythm. Williams confirms that the ring shout is still thriving in this area particularly with The
Moving Star Hall Praise House which has been there since early 1900’s. The Ring Shout has
been passed down from generation to generation within this group where they still practice it
on wooden floors with sticks. She explains that Pastor Jackie Jefferson at The Moving Star Hall
Praise House told her that the Ring Shout is improvisational - meaning that it is not
choreographed or set movement and that it is a dance that you can add your own style or
movements to.
Williams has witnessed people being mounted, or possessed, in her travels to several
places including Trinidad, Jamaica, Brazil, and Nigeria. She describes it as a spontaneous28
occurrence but also one that usually occurs when a certain incantation or song is sung. She has
also witnessed a person who is currently mounted by an Orisa holding or hugging a different
person, causing the other person to become mounted, essentially transferring possession from
one person to the next.
Williams has been Initiated into Ifa and the cult of Sango, making her a child of Sango.
She is an Ifa practitioner, a Iyanifa which she explains as one who cares for Ifa- which also
means that people may consult her for guidance and assurance about their future.44 The title
“Iya” is a term of endearment for a woman who is respected. Essentially, she is a priestess and
explains that as a priestess she is required to aid those who may come to her for help. She
clarifies that her responsibility as a Iyanifa and Oni Sango (priestess of Sango) is one where she
“utilizes dance as a form of educating people and sharing and honoring and giving respect to
the Orisa.”45 Her title as Iyanifa or priestess along with her teaching and artistic practices have
provided avenues for her to create better understanding of the connections between different
movement and religious practices within the diaspora.
She reveals that she has encountered a fear in the Christian community regarding
anything associated with Voodoo. Her work attempts to disperse of some of the fears that
people may have. Besides teaching workshops about the Ring Shout, she also teaches
workshops titled “Movement Inspired by Orisa.” Williams says “I do still go to church from time
to time when I’m in Georgia…only because I’m expected to by my family.”46 Despite the fact
that she has experienced a conversion and now identifies as an Ifa practitioner, she does
44 E. Bolaji Idowu B.D. Ph.D, Olódùmaré God in Yoruba Belief (London: Longmans, 1966) 77-78
45 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.
46 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.29
explain that listening to the Black hymns and the Black choirs in the Baptist church touch her
heart and spirit deeply. Aside from that, she has completely aligned herself with Ifa since her
conversion.
Williams also practices candomblé since her husband and drummer is Brazilian. Not all
dance that she has witnessed in the varying religious environments is considered a prayer to
her. She explains that Samba is a dance that occurs when women want to show their beauty or
show who they are. In these moments of women dancing Samba to show their beauty, she
does not acknowledge the dances that happen as a prayer. However she explains that there
are infinite numbers of movements that happen in these “movement prayers” irrespective of
the location, and that the movements are specific and codified so that you can determine which
Orisa are being represented by the gestures and movements of the arms and legs. Therefore,
the knowledge of the movements associated with each Orisa is communal; the meaning of the
movements can be identified by the overall community, meaning that these movements
essentially comprise a vernacular language. She discussed the idea of the sacred as universal
and noted that evocations of the sacred can sometimes be used in secular environments
depending on the performers and audience. She also associates the idea of prayer with the
moment before a person is mounted when they are dancing and honoring the Orisa.
Williams has experienced being mounted herself and explains that this has occurred in
different places. She has experienced becoming possessed at home, during religious
ceremonies where chanting has occurred, and also in a dance class which was brought about by
the playing of a spiritual instrument being used within the class. Williams asserts that the30
repetition of sound helps the Orisa to “arrive” and the mounting to happen. She compares this
to the phenomenon that historically happened within the Ring Shout:
Ring Shout when it was practiced before in the 17-1800’s was the same thing. It was
ancestral dance. It was not this Christian dance that you see performed today but it was
this ancestral dance in which this repetition of movement in the circle brought about
the spirit of the ancestor. So in an African American Baptist Church, when we say that
someone catches the Holy Ghost that used to be someone catching an ancestral spirit.
It then became the Holy Ghost after the Second Great Awakening and all of these rules
were put into place about it actually being illegal to honor this African ancestral energy-
with languages and songs and all of these things and drum all being outlawed so then it
became the Holy Ghost instead of ancestors. 47
Williams’ observations reiterate that African American religious dance explores ancestral
memories through movement with an intricate connection to the musical accompaniment.
She goes on to assert that mounting or possession can happen on a concert stage, as was the
case with Germaine Acogny’s experience (which will be explored in the next chapter) of
unintentionally entering into a trance initiated by the drummer.
She describes the physical manifestation of the moment of catching the spirit or being
mounted as looking like a split second or moment of receiving. This includes the person dancing
in a way that shows bouncing of the knees and repetitious movements of the body. Williams’
stresses that there is specific movement in the body that happens across cultures of what she
calls Black and Brown people historically brought from certain nations of peoples of Africa. In
West African dance, Ring Shout, and The Shout she notes similarities such as scooting of the
feet on the floor that she has observed in all of these movements, as well as a vertical bounce
47 Interview with Tamara Williams, September 2, 2020.31
or swing in the body. These movements happen naturally, including certain bodily gestures,
movements like catching something with the hand, and noticeable changes in the face as well.
Williams sees the ring shout in the same way that she sees Orisa dances. She believes
that it is a way of upholding community, a place of legacy, a place of solitude. For that reason
she believes that tap and jazz comes from Ring shout, catching the holy ghost comes from Ring
Shout, and that it is a way of connecting to history and identity. She continues to assert that
“Shouting” is cleansing and healing and she believes the ring shout inevitably leads to shouting
and being mounted or possession. Her assertions strongly propound the idea that the Ring
Shout led to the creation of secular African American dance forms such as tap and jazz, which
she believes can also function in the same way as the Ring Shout, since they all embody the
same qualities of sound and movement that she ultimately acknowledged within the Ring
Shout.32 Figure 1. Students at The University of North Carolina Charlotte performing William's choreography of the Ring Shout
33
Chapter 2: Reimagining Performance in the Context of Performative
Death and Suffering
2.1 The Performative in North America
A proper examination of dance and its relationship to the African American community
including the church requires careful exploration of the dancers’ perceptions of the act of
performing. It is important to have a fundamental understanding of what a performance is.
What makes an act or display a performance? Where does it happen? And what is the
audience’s role in this process? I have already introduced some of Hartman’s observations
looking at performance historically from the viewpoints both of agents and observers among
the enslaved in Scenes of Subjection, but it is important also to understand how motion and
performance are experienced by African Americans in current settings too. Performance can be
understood as the execution of an action, something accomplished, the fulfillment of a claim,
promise, or request. It can also be defined as a public presentation or exhibition. 48 The
atrocities experienced during the transatlantic slave trade created an environment where terror
and trauma were embedded in every experience including dancing, singing, and celebratory
gatherings – a fact that fundamentally changed the experience of singing and dancing for
enslaved Africans and subsequently for African Americans.
As noted earlier, coerced performance was a regular occurrence for the enslaved.
Hartman argues that forcing the enslaved to show merriment was a form of plantation
48
“Definition of PERFORMANCE,” accessed November 15, 2020, https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/performance.You can also read
