Papers by Alfdaniels Mabingo
Journal of Dance Education, 2025
Dance teachers are increasingly collaborating with live drummers to teach classes. Commonly, drum... more Dance teachers are increasingly collaborating with live drummers to teach classes. Commonly, drummers are spatially and socially peripheral in the dance studios and classes as mere producers of sound and rhythms, further compounding the pedagogic binary between music and dance. The article draws on the Indigenous talanoa methodology and theory of Vā, which originate from Polynesian nations in the Pacific Ocean to interrogate how our relationship as a live drummer and teacher of African dances in higher education, has produced a decolonial collaborative pedagogy grounded in relationality, reciprocity, and co-construction. The analyses unpack how the sociospatial repositioning of the drummer can weave together the epistemological ecologies of mnemonics, singing, clapping, drumming, notation, body percussion, storytelling, and dancing to construct a critical multidimensional pedagogical experience of African dances that is rhythmic, reflective, aural, kinesthetic, conversational, participatory, experiential, and co-constructed. Our work offers insights that can further pedagogical innovations in dance education.
African Studies, 2025
The deepening economic and cultural convergence of Africa and China have opened new routes of tra... more The deepening economic and cultural convergence of Africa and China have opened new routes of trade. Coming on the heels of China’s policy of reform and opening up, exports from Africa to the Chinese market have increased. This article breaks new ground by interrogating the innovative agency and artistic imaginaries of individual dancers as players in reassembling, exporting, restaging, and circulating Indigenous dances as transnational performances in China. Using cultural commodification as a framework of analysis, the essay dissects the innovative nuances and entrepreneurial savvy of individual dancers as a practice that has advanced the aesthetical and commercial value of dance beyond their cultural confines. I frame individual dancers as embodied interlocutors in establishing and navigating the transnational economic supply chains of the dances. The work also attempts a closer reading of the body as a constellation of reproductions, packaging, and distribution of the dances within the imaginaries of transnational circulation. Further examination of aesthetical performativities is made to unpack their re/assemblages and the links they hold to the commercial dynamics within the Chinese market. The article unveils insights that provoke a robust broadening of discourse and theorisation on China-Africa cultural and economic relations to consider the performing arts and artists as drivers in facilitating and diversifying points of contact between Africa and China.
Journal of Dance Education, 2024
How do dancers, drummers, and singers cultivate connections, collaborations, and cobecoming throu... more How do dancers, drummers, and singers cultivate connections, collaborations, and cobecoming through dance-making and staging African dances in higher education? This critical question provoked inquiry into processes and experiences of creating and staging African dances in higher education contexts. Taking the philosophy of Ubuntu and the worldview of Vā as an interrogative lens and engaging the data collected through talanoa as a methodology, the discussion frames and unpacks dance-making and performance processes as socio-spatial locations where dancers embodied, negotiated, experienced, and shared notions of connection to the community, co-becoming, and constructive relationality. The analyses disclose how African dances can nourish (a) knowledge, (b) meaning of being, and (c) values that cultivate diversity, equity, and inclusion as guiding and anchoring principles of the 21 st-century university. The article invites educators, choreographers, performers, researchers, and other dance practitioners to reimagine and reorient African dances beyond the stereotypical objectification, fetishization, and exoticization.
How do dancers, drummers, and singers cultivate connections, collaborations, and cobecoming throu... more How do dancers, drummers, and singers cultivate connections, collaborations, and cobecoming through dance-making and staging African dances in higher education? This critical question provoked inquiry into processes and experiences of creating and staging African dances in higher education contexts. Taking the philosophy of Ubuntu and the worldview of Vā as an interrogative lens and engaging the data collected through talanoa as a methodology, the discussion frames and unpacks dance-making and performance processes as socio-spatial locations where dancers embodied, negotiated, experienced, and shared notions of connection to the community, co-becoming, and constructive relationality. The analyses disclose how African dances can nourish (a) knowledge, (b) meaning of being, and (c) values that cultivate diversity, equity, and inclusion as guiding and anchoring principles of the 21 st-century university. The article invites educators, choreographers, performers, researchers, and other dance practitioners to reimagine and reorient African dances beyond the stereotypical objectification, fetishization, and exoticization.
Research in Dance Education, 2023
The Covid-19 pandemic impacted dance practice in African communities, which at the time were stil... more The Covid-19 pandemic impacted dance practice in African communities, which at the time were still grappling with building technological infrastructure and resources to advance dance education, research, scholarship, and practice. How did the dance teachers and students in environments with less developed information and communication technological (ICT) infrastructure in African countries such as Uganda navigate online teaching and learning of dance during the covid-19 pandemic? This article engages the Kiganda education philosophy 'kola nga bwoyiga ate oyige nga bwokola' (learn as you do and do as you learn) as an analytical frame to unpack how the dance teachers and students in Uganda navigated dance pedagogies during the pandemic. The reflections of the teachers and students revealed how the pandemic dismantled the sense of community as an actual essence dance in local communities. The pandemic stirred a radical rethink on framing online and distance dance teaching and learning, applying context-centered and technologicallyresponsive pedagogies, and using motion picture tools to teach indigenous dance traditions. The discussion unpacks how 'kola nga bwoyiga ate oyige nga bwokola' centered pedagogic reimaginations and maneuvers to activate agency, adaptation, resilience, and contextualization, underscoring the value and relevance of Indigenous worldviews in overcoming ever-emerging barriers in dance education.
Book Chapter, 2023
How might a researcher use Indigenous African knowledge systems to develop a decolonial dance edu... more How might a researcher use Indigenous African knowledge systems to develop a decolonial dance education research paradigm and scholarly writing? What Indigenous African knowledge systems can anchor dance education research? These questions have been critical in framing the decolonial dance education research and writing paradigm that the author uses as a researcher. In this chapter, the author draws on his autoethnographic reflections to critically examine how he has developed and applied the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a hermeneutic phenomenology to frame the ethics, agenda, logic, conceptualization, spirit, contextualization, and vision of his research projects in Indigenous dance practices. The analysis unpacks the author's reflexivity and positionality as being-in-the-world and being-with-others-in-the-world of fieldwork. Moreover, the article dissects how the Kiganda tradition of okuluka omukeeka (weaving the mat) provides a methodological formula, logic, and creed that the author has employed to conduct fieldwork, analyze data, and write scholarly works. These decolonial paradigms, which confront, decenter, and critique the existing hegemonic Anglo-European research and writing canons, reveal the complex possibilities and pathways that are available for dance researchers to engage Indigenous knowledge systems as valuable and valid markers in the process of decolonizing academic research and writing in dance education.
Journal of African Cultural Studies, 2022
Since its creation in the South Bronx in the 1970s, breakdance has proliferated worldwide. In the... more Since its creation in the South Bronx in the 1970s, breakdance has proliferated worldwide. In the last three decades, urban youth in Uganda have reconfigured breakdance aesthetics to reflect their creative visions and imagination and in response to the local material conditions in Kampala city. This article examines how the youth have reconfigured, localised, and re-interpreted breakdance aesthetics. I analyse the ways in which breakdancers have anchored their practices in their local social, cultural, political, and artistic conditions and experiences. Building on the stories of the youth, the analysis identifies media as a catalyst in shaping the breakdancers' kinaesthetic re-imagination, redefinition, appropriation, and adaptation of breakdance. The discussion documents how the youth have constructed breakdance communities of practice, by engaging in performances that embody and manifest their range of experience, including their struggles, realities of deprivation and alienation, but also their sense of connection, their forms of political advocacy and their creativity. The discussion demonstrates how breakdance can be seen as the embodiment of an agenda that gives agency to the youth, and forms of agency that are situated in local realities.
International Journal of Education & the Arts, 2022
What is 'African dance'? Is the label 'African dance' representative enough of the diverse dance ... more What is 'African dance'? Is the label 'African dance' representative enough of the diverse dance traditions in African communities, or is it just another form of tokenism? How is the term 'African dance' rooted in the histories of colonial racism against the African people? What are the dangers of using the same label as an attempt at instituting anti-racist curricular and interventions in universities, conservatories, dance studios, and dance companies? In problematizing the label 'African dance', we should be cognizant of the view presented by Stuart Hall (1991) that how people are represented is how they are treated. The article examines how the generalization IJEA Vol. 23 Special Issue 1.2-http://www.ijea.org/v23si1/ 2 reflected in 'African dance' has genealogy in the earlier racist European colonial homogenization of Africa, which Valentino Y. Mudimbe (1988) has termed as the 'invention of Africa'. A critical examination is made on how using the label 'African dance' in the current anti-racist dance curricular projects compound racism that whitewashes a complex continent with multiplicity of cultures and dance practices into one single monolithic label. The article provokes critical reflection on the complexity of dance traditions in Africa and inspires a new thinking that looks at the different insidious facets of racism, which can easily be exacerbated by the very projects that seek to address social injustices, discrimination, and marginalization.
Journal of Dance Education, 2022
The comprehensive implementation of anti-racist dance pedagogy requires recognition that the prev... more The comprehensive implementation of anti-racist dance pedagogy requires recognition that the prevailing dominance of Anglo-European cannons of teaching, creating, performing, researching, and learning dance has continued to disempower, subjugate, and inhibit knowledge and practices of communities on the margins. As dance practitioners writing from the margins, we draw on our duoethnographic stories as testimonio and the theories of South-South connection and plática to critically examine how we have engaged ideas, experiences, and practices of people we share connective marginalities with to build critical consciousness and solidarities as a step toward anti-racist collaborative advocacy in dance education. The authors use their writing, choreography, pedagogic, and community engagement experiences to reimagine marginality. The article reveals how critical action around anti-racist dance pedagogy can circumvent institutional and academic rigidities. The discussion ushers the reader into a world where dance practitioners on the margins activate agency to achieve selfempowerment and meaningful connections for, by, and with themselves.
Journal of Dance Education, 2022
Multicultural and intercultural dance practices are a by-product of the ever-increasing flow of p... more Multicultural and intercultural dance practices are a by-product of the ever-increasing flow of people across national and cultural boundaries. The increasing presence of Latinx dances in Aotearoa New Zealand, has resulted from the migration of Latino people who celebrate, create, perform, and teach these dance traditions as teachers, performers, and choreographers. This article draws on the ideas of ethnocentrism and ethnorelativism to examine how five Latinx dance teachers have navigated pedagogic acculturations in teaching Latinx dances in multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand. Through interviews of Latinx dance teachers and observations of dance classes, the findings revealed that the dance teachers experience pedagogic acculturation by recalibrating dance movements, reimagining language as a teaching tool, reframing music as a pedagogic intercalator, and embodying dance knowledge as a multicultural mediator. The analysis reveals pedagogic acculturation as a complex process of cultural translation, which interweaves one's heritage, culture, and identity and their attempt at entry into the larger host culture.
Decolonizing Assessment in Dance Education: Ubuntu as an Evaluative Framework in Indigenous African Dance Education Practices
Journal of Dance Education
Dance Articulated
This special issue has been motivated by the transformation the world has experienced in the wake... more This special issue has been motivated by the transformation the world has experienced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Major upheavals and change have occurred in light of this pandemic and there is now a forced reconsideration demanded of what dance is and how dance practitioners, educators, and researchers might continue their work in sustainable, relevant and accessible ways. With such change comes the possibility for dance to be transformed, reconsidered, and reimagined in ways that have implications for meanings, enaction, contexts, communities, practice, education, policy, and application.
Teaching East African dances in higher education in the U.S.: reconciling content and pedagogy
African dances are an integral part of higher education curriculum in the U.S. Adaptation of thes... more African dances are an integral part of higher education curriculum in the U.S. Adaptation of these dances from their traditional African contexts of practice into a western classroom has implications on how their content is reconciled with pedagogy. This paper explores how I used Vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development, Kolb’s theory of experiential learning, Lave and Wenger’s theory of situated learning, the social constructivist theory of learning, Laban movement analysis, Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow/optima experience, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Turino’s concept of participatory performance and Bloom’s taxonomy of education objectives to teach Ugandan traditional dances at New York University. The article covers how I selected dances for the course, developed lesson plans, gave feedback to students, developed and applied assessment rubrics for the African dance course, while allowing students to partake in the learning processes and understanding the social and cultural applications of the dances.
Ubuntu, Indigenous Communities, and Dance Practices in African Cultures
Individuality, Community, Inclusion, and Agency in Indigenous Dance Pedagogies
Teachers of Indigenous dances in Uganda apply multiplicities of pedagogic tools that leverage ind... more Teachers of Indigenous dances in Uganda apply multiplicities of pedagogic tools that leverage individual competencies and integrate the vast experiences, skills, and knowledge of local communities where they teach. Pedagogic frameworks such as storytelling, inquisitorial observation, embodied experimentalism, embodied intercorporealities, peer modeling, and mechanisms of qualitative assessment and feedback facilitate knowledge production and construction. These pedagogies enable individuals and communities to question, think, know, become, share, connect, do, and form identities. The discussion draws on the teaching experiences of individuals dance teachers to analyze how their participatory, collaborative, embodied, and reflective pedagogies accord agency to individuals and communities. An examination is made of how these pedagogies, which are undergirded by Ubuntu worldview activate creativity, inclusion, curiosity, embodiment, imagination, and support. The chapter unveils the ped...
Contexts and Meanings of Indigenous Dance Education Practices
The contexts of Indigenous dance education practices in Uganda include home environments, village... more The contexts of Indigenous dance education practices in Uganda include home environments, village communities, schools, universities, and dance troupes, among others. The environments in which dances are taught, learned, shared, and practiced bring complex perspectives to how the meanings are re/constructed, deconstructed, and rationalized by the participants in the dance activities. In homes and village communities, the dance knowledge and skills are negotiated through relationally interactive processes between individual participants and the rest of the people in the communities of dance practices. In this configuration, there is a reciprocal flow of skills, ideas, and experiences between the individual and the community and vice versa. On the other hand, teaching and learning in environments such as schools, universities, and dance troupes emphasize individual innovation as a means of cultural production and creative progress. These complex contexts cultivate experience, activity...
Model of a Dance Class Undergirded by Ubuntu Philosophy
Music as a Pedagogic Aid in Indigenous Dance Education
Ethnorelativism in Dance Education
Dancing across the wall(s) of exclusion
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Papers by Alfdaniels Mabingo