I take pride in teaching and mentoring my students and professional groups in our communities to represent our culture the best way they can. There have been and still, are incidents where wrong names are given to some traditional dance and instruments leading to cultural misrepresentation. I start by letting my students understand that they are all cultural ambassadors who need to represent themselves and their country with dignity through performances at every given function. I also want my students to be aware of their body, time & space around them and develop problem-solving strategies as I believe in a problem being half solved if identified and articulated. Articulation is a core phenomenon, as it helps not just the individual response or question but also the rest of the people in the class. Plus, we need to be able to write and talk about our artistry processes. This will help use our basic knowledge and skills to enable us to tackle problems rather effectively.
I consciously incorporate these form(s) in my works as well as what I have already acquired throughout my artistic journey. As a native Ghanaian, I hold the view that there is more to dance than just movement. I am a firm believer that dance is a composite art form. It includes everything: theater, music, poetry, puppetry, masquerades, chant, specific movements and more. I adopt contemporary issues such as racism, oppression, fascism and inter-ethnic conflict as a basis for experimental work, which allows me to integrate Traditional African and Modern influences in my choreography. In my latest choreographic work Poem of Change (a trio), I am pushing the frontiers of an already existing traditional dance movement vocabulary by experimenting with how contemporary, traditional African and modern dance intersect. The work also explores how a composite view of dance affects the psychology of the dancer and a true connection with the audience. This process is my scholarly research. My scholarly work involves the investigation of a Ghanaian contemporary dance aesthetic rooted in indigenous performance traditions and informed by contemporary art forms. This investigation is underscored by the philosophy behind ethnic festivals and funeral rites. I conduct ethnographic research on movements and all the accompanying art forms that make up the concept of “African Dance.” This research informs my creative works utilizing diverse approaches in applying 21st-century skills and creativity including improvisation. My choreography and performance training, coupled with my scholarly endeavors illuminates a path I pursue in my artistry. My work is deeply personal and reflective, using movement vocabularies based on dances I have embedded throughout my journey by deconstructing traditional dances and fusing modern form as a lexicon for exploring metaphysical questions of self, identity, time, and place—questions that, on the one hand, debunk the notion that my abilities do not go beyond traditional ‘African’ dance but, on the other hand, provide fertile ground for reimagining conceptions of subjecthood through contemporary dance forms. |