Dance, Music Videos and Screens: Intermediality andVideochoreomorphosisin Mali and Benin

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Mali and Benin, the article looks at the economy of music video making and watching and their interaction with social dance practices. On the one hand, the article addresses the creation of new dance aesthetics in Mali through the development of music videos, while interrogating the creation of dance routines and their mediation on TV and via the Internet. On the other hand, it explores issues of remediation and intermediality in dance in light of the use of videos by Beninese salsa dancers. The article thus examines the interactions between dancing bodies and screens in dance venues in Cotonou. The notion of videochoreomorphosis is proposed as an analytical tool to appreciate how dance and dancing bodies are transformed by their interaction with the video format and with audio-visual techniques. This notion encompasses aesthetic and technical transformations as well as changes in the transmission, practice and consumption of dance through its video mediation. It also confronts assumed oppositions such as virtual/incarnate, screen/live, representation/embodiment, global/local. This study aims therefore at a theorization of the role of intermediality and remediation in social dance practices in Africa today.

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