Infinite Repertoire - On Dance and Urban Possibility in Postsocialist Guinea (Hardcover)

In Guinea's capital city of Conakry, dance is everywhere. Most neighborhoods boast at least one dance troupe, and members of those troupes animate the city's major rites of passage and social events. In Infinite Repertoire, Adrienne Cohen shows how dance became such a prominent-even infrastructural-feature of city life in Guinea, and tells a surprising story of the rise of creative practice under a political regime known for its authoritarianism and violent excesses. Guinea's socialist state, which was in power from 1958 to 1984, used staged African dance or "ballet" strategically as a political tool, in part by tapping into indigenous conceptualizations of artisans as powerful figures capable of transforming the social fabric through their manipulation of vital energy. Far from dying with the socialist revolution, Guinean ballet continued to thrive in Conakry after economic liberalization in the 1980s, with its connection to transformative power retrofitted for a market economy and a rapidly expanding city. Infinite Repertoire follows young dancers and percussionists in Conakry as they invest in the present-using their bodies to build a creative urban environment and to perform and redefine social norms and political subjectivities passed down from the socialist generation before them. Cohen's inventive ethnography weaves the political with the aesthetic, placing dance at the center of a story about dramatic political change and youthful resourcefulness in one of the least-studied cities on the African continent.

General

Imprint:	University of Chicago Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	July 2021
Authors:	Adrienne J Cohen
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	216
ISBN-13:	978-0-226-76284-5
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > General Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Promotions
LSN:	0-226-76284-X
Barcode:	9780226762845

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!