Dance in West Africa

Analysis and description in relation to aspects of communication theory

2020, Internationale Hochschulschriften, Band 673, 176 pages, paperback, 29,90 €, ISBN 978-3-8309-3874-3

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The study centres on the subject of Dance in West Africa, namely a dance of the Ewe in Southern Ghana. Although modernity is having an adverse effect on traditional dancing, it is still important in the society and may be viewed as a mirror of culture. The objectives are to describe the dance and embed this form of expression within a theoretical framework. Every movement has a meaning and in this way it is possible to explain a whole story, a person is speaking through dance.

press

Grounding her research within a genealogy of dance scholarship and communication theories, Ulrike Groß contributes to the growing literature on how dance is a mechanism for nonverbal communication. While she does an excellent job showing how dance is “a unique form of communication and of equal purpose [to spoken language]” (44), her reliance on structural communication theories and pictographic notations of an individual body does not allow for investigating how Adzogbo communicates to participants in the dance event(see Royce 1977).
Dana Vanderburgh, in: Africa Today 68(1), S. 153.

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