Embodied authenticity in Moroccan contemporary dance [Ressource électronique] / Karima Wolfe Borni

Doctor of philosophy : Anthropology : Northwestern University : 2016

Bibliogr. p. 359-374

This dissertation explores contemporary dance in urban Morocco. Drawing on anthropological approaches to cultural production and transnational practices in local and global contexts, the argument of this dissertation is that contemporary dance plays a role in the cultural politics of Morocco by challenging customary restrictions over display of the body in public. For Moroccan dancers who claim contemporary dance is an authentic practice within Islam and the national culture, their reversals of customary practice are often met with contention from local audiences. By exploring the day-to day life of creation, performance, and training of dancers, this dissertation shows how ideological conflict plays out through the cultural production of this new medium of expression. The task of the dissertation is to understand both the discourse and choreography created by dancers as efforts to resolve the ambiguities of authenticity in their work and the ensuing tensions between dancers, the global arts market, and their local communities. Contemporary dancers incorporate musical and movement motifs borrowed from several Moroccan performance traditions such as Shikhat singers, Gnawa music, and Sufi practices. They also create "fusions" of foreign and "authentic" native elements in training workshops, transforming Euro-American traditions of theatre, modern, and postmodern dance into indigenous forms of expression. However, as a publicly visible form of bodily display, contemporary dance also indexes the political, economic, and moral anxieties of urban Moroccan society during a time of upheaval in the broader North Africa region. The present study aims to account for the urgency of support for youth in employment in the cultural arts and the state's effort to disseminate new standards for worthy Islamic practices to ensure the accord between conservative and liberal factions in Moroccan politics. At the same time, many dancers strive to cultivate authentic Muslim identities that resist the secularist agenda of corporate patrons allied with powerful Western institutions. While dancers are seemingly without authority to represent the population at large, their challenge to customary norms of embodied conduct positions them as actors making statements about a society under pressure from opposing moral, political, and economic directions. Thus, Moroccan contemporary dancers and their work stand on the edge of multiple divides in the present cultural fabric of the nation.