African Dance as an Expression of Primitive People? Old and New Stereotypes in the Literature on the History of Dance

This paper offers a critical discussion on the ways in which African dance is approached in the literature on the history of dance available in the Italian language. I have been dealt with the textbooks (both as translations and original productions) widely used in Italian universities. In these texts, African dances are usually described as “primitive” and are assumed to be equivalent to the dances performed by our ancestors in a prehistoric age. Typically, the people who practice these dances are depicted as “inferior” and like children, and their music is not considered “real music” but merely “rhythmic noises”. It is necessary to ask how it is possible nowadays to continue proposing such a description of African dances, particularly if we take into account the acquired knowledge of their complex forms and meanings. I will argue that these descriptions are still informed by the assumptions of outdated anthropological approaches, such as evolutionistic and cultural circles theories. As is well known, such assumptions have lost all scientific credit, but surprisingly they still survive in the literature on the history of dance. In this domain, outdated anthropological theories are indeed neither rejected nor deconstructed because of their overlapping with “positive” widespread stereotypes of African dances as “instinctive”, “spontaneous”, “authentic” and “timeless”. The description of African dances in this literature illustrates how “positive” stereotypes, in spite of their being usually considered harmless, may actually give rise to new forms of cultural racism.