of Northern Uganda
ronald kibirige
However, there is need to look further into the essence of performing, and (or) notating a dance action. For instance, and in reference to figure 1 below, a dance notation expert may look at such notation as a six-bar dance movement phrase in four-four time with quite detailed, and repetitive movements in the lower and upper body parts in the third and sixth bars. But, indigenous dance practices present a differently complex cultural coded phenomenon for dance notation, as they are
“embedded in a thick context of traditions” (Bell 252), and “wrapped in a web of symbolisms” (Kertzer 9) that may need further notation theory to explore.
In the performance of Myel Bwola (introduced in detail below) for instance, the dance movements, together with their musical as well as rhythmical (time) accompa-niment involve notions of invisibility and silence. For one to understand and rightly notate the visible dance movements, one has to know that some rhythmic body
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movements are silently and invisibly shared, or rather distributed in, and executed by other accompanying instruments, yet, on analysis of the whole phenomenon, they represent the main essence and crux of the dance tradition.
Notation and the Performed Myel Bwola Movements
Many indigenous communities in Uganda enact their dances as they come to them in a moment without any conscious conditionality of notation, but rather use, and engage the surrounding environment, their senses, mood, music, and all the different sonorities, such as ululations, clapping, humming to perform their dance movements.
On analysis of Myel Bwola from the Acholi sub-region of Uganda, the enactment of the dance presents three categories of traditional dance movements: the visible and audibly performed dance movements, the visible, but silently performed dance movements, and the invisible and silently executed dance movements, which presents the inquiry.
In a notated dance idiom, one can easily understand what they can see and hear, adapt to it, and embody the actions or movements in and outside a class-learning environment. For instance, in the outward and visible performance of the Laije Motif of Myel Bwola (figure 2), the support provided by the alternating stamping of the feet—acoustically amplified by ankle bells, the simultaneous playing of the drums and singing, the forward high position of the trunk, and the contracted arms holding a drum in the left and a mullet in the right hand, all audibly and visibly present the dancer as full “orchestra”.
Further, analysis of the Myel Bwola phenomenon can be done using both music and dance notation, where visible dance movements can be analysed simultaneously with audible music accompaniment as seen in figure 2.
Similarly, in the performance of Myel Bwola movements, there are visible, but silently executed dance movements. These are mainly presented by unamplified dancing body parts, as well as visibly but silently active body parts, such as the knee joint while performing specific motivic patterns of the dance. For example, in the performance of the Donyo Ibar dance phrase of Myel Bwola, though silent, the central rhythm of the movement can only fully be seen (not heard) in the forward movement of the head propelled by the neck, in opposition with shoulder blade, and in the bounce of the knee joint, as seen in figure 3.
As West African music and dance scholar Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia argues, in Akan dances like Adowa and Sikyi, dancers are guided by a number of principles.
The first is the recognition and proper articulation of the basic regulative beats of the
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Myel Bwola: Laije Motif.
Video: NUR004.VOB Time: 05:24-05:40
music (Nketia 213). Similarly, in the performance of Myel Bwola, the dancer is aware not only of the fact that the basic regulative beat may come through multiple relays, and not within a specific rhythmic or melodic instrument, but could be processed fully through a specific dancing body part that may be visible but audibly silent. As such, in the execution of the Donyo Ibar movement pattern, some audible rhythms are accented to structure, or to complete the structuring of a rhythmical pattern silently performed by a particular body part.
The complexity of notation of this dance therefore is not only in the dance movement itself, but also in the identification of the definitive rhythmic patterns distributed in both accompanying melodic and percussive instruments, as well as the artistically active body parts of the dancer. For example, due to the fact that the main drummer intuitively, but unconsciously generates his patterns from the feeling created by the visible and invisible movement patterns performed by the dancers, as well as the audible and silent body movements and other sonorities around him, it is at times a challenge for him to play a rhythmic pattern more than twice in a given duration of a dance-rhythmic phrase, as each moment presents a different musical and rhythmic reaction. As illustrated in figure 4 below, the silent rhythm presented in the third beat of the bar by the Gara (ankle bells), which are tied to the lower leg of the dancer would be completed in the knee joint in the same beat, but it is also silently executed.
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Donyo Ibar movement phrase.
Video: NUR0922 Time: 01:47-02:15
However, the Lutinobul (a pair of small drums) audibly sounds it in the first quarter of beat three, but only polyrhythmically.
Further, when performed, Myel Bwola exhibits invisible and silent movements whose performance at many instances describes the essence, and crux of the dance. This rather tacit “felt-being” of the dance is the real dance according to the local elder practitioners. The resultant action could rather be taken as reaction to this individ-ual and tacit pre-movement, or inter-movement “stimulant”. These rather invisible movements not only act as propellers for the visible movements, but indeed are part of the action the body takes to produce those specific dance movements. For instance, as notated in figure 3, the active forward movement of the head supported by the neck, in opposition to the shoulder blade, in the execution of the Donyo Ibar movement pattern is visible, and therefore can be notated. However, connected to it is a propelling silent and “seemingly” invisible contraction and flexion of muscles in the lower torso of the dancer in the execution of the dance movement.
As Alany Felix (interviewed by me on 26 June 2015) a Myel Bwola dancer from Kitgum Pawidi, a remote village in Kitgum district of the Acholi sub-region explains:
“The propelling body movement stimulant shapes the resultant dance movement, it is within and part of that movement but silent and sometimes not visible. It is sometimes done by a different body part from that which is visible. … How can I explain it! … It is what stimulates the mood… the joy… the pride of doing the movement… In Luo it can be expressed as ‘akubakuba me del pakom komi ipiny kede imalu’ [the propelling movement of the muscles of the lower and upper body]. It is also commonly known as
‘akubakuba yenge pakom’ [the propelling vibration of the body].
One can therefore draw a wholesome understanding of the Myel Bwola perfor-mance phenomenon only with a clear understanding that some of the rhythms and movements that define the dance are silent and invisibly executed by the body, and the mind of the dancer.
Fig. 4
Indeed one cannot notate what they cannot “clearly” see. This phenomenon presents rather interesting questions in the process of notation. Can these be regarded as dance even when they are not seen but felt to exist by an experienced dancer? Can they be notated even though they are sometimes nearly invisible, or they should be merely implied in the notation?
For the purpose of notation, as well as a wholesome understanding of indigenous dance practices such as Myel Bwola, there is need to further develop, and give meaningful attention to notation theories connected to concepts such as contraki-nesis (Fügedi 2012) and repetition in relation to, and as presented in many motivic patterns of indigenous dance practices. Practical understanding and awareness for contrakinesis and repetition for instance can, with practice, give a feeling of the propelling, invisible and silent dance movements not only within the dancer, but also the notation experts, and therefore cultivate an effort to effectively represent, and (or) imply them in the process of notation to fully and wholesomely understand the essence and crux of the dance and the dance culture at large.
References
Bakka, Egil, and Georgiana Gore. 2007. “Constructing Dance Knowledge in the Field: Bridging the Gap between Realization and Concept.” Re-Thinking Practice and Theory: International Symposium on Dance Research. Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Conference, Centre national de la danse, Pantin, France, 21-24 June 2007. Compiled by Ann Cooper Albright, Dena Davida, and Sarah Davies Cordova.
Bell, Catherine. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University.
Fügedi, János. 2003. “Movement Cognition and Dance Notation.” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 44, no. 3-4: 393-410, Budapest: Akadémiai.
Fügedi, János. 2012. “Motivic microstructures and movement concepts of expres-sion in traditional dances.” From field to Text & Dance and Space. Proceedings of the 24th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology, edited by Elsie Ivanchic Dunin, Anca Giurchescu, and Csilla Könczei. Cluj-Napoca:
The Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology. 43-46.
Gore, Georgiana. 1984. “Traditional Dance in West Africa.” Dance History: An Introduction, edited by Janet Adshead-Lansdale, and Jude Layson. London:
Routledge. 59-80.
Green, Doris. 2003. “No Longer an Oral Tradition.” Ntama Journal of African Music and Popular Culture. Web. Accessed 24 October 2015.
Hanna, Judith Lynn. 1965. “Africa’s New Traditional Dance.” Ethnomusicology, vol. 9, no. 1: 13-21.
Kertzer, David. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. London: Yale University Press.
Kibirige, Ronald. 2015. “Insider-Outsider Phenomenon in Traditional Dance Research in Indigenous Communities.” Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, vol. 60, no. 1: 17-23.
Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia. 2005. Baakisimba: Gender in the Music and Dance of the Baganda People of Uganda. New York: Routledge.
Nketia, Joseph Hanson Kwabena. 1975. The Music of Africa. London: Gollancz.
Topaz, Muriel. 1996. Elementary Labanotation: A Study Guide. New York: Dance Notation Bureau.
Traditional dances in Vojvodina region, northern Serbia are unique and rich in varieties due to the multiethnic population of Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romas, etc. Ethnochoreologist Selena Rakočević investigated the dance and music tradition of Serbs in Banat (a part of Vojvodina) in 1994 (Rakočević 7, 282). During her field research she found several dances types with varied spatial patterns (such as change of location of female dancers in the couple dances, couple turns, individual turning of the female dancers, etc.) and noticed that the formal units introduced by former structural investigations (as made by the IFMC Folk Dance Study Group or summarized later by Giurchescu and Kröschlová) can be labeled at higher level.
I started my field research in 2001 in the dance practice of Serbs coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Monte Negro, who inhabited Vojvodina by organized migration (colonizations) or spontaneously during the 20th century (Karin 11). Investigating the structure of their dances I established a new label for the hierarchy of dance elements in relation to the music for dance. As a result of investigations the present paper 1) introduces a new method of formal analysis of traditional dances, and 2) proposes new labels for the hierarchy of formal segments of dance in relation to the music for dance and in relation to the spatial component of the dance. In the analysis kinetography is essentially required for identifying the hierarchy, the dance formal segments, and the relationships between them.