This thesis explores a network of participants, dance students and teachers, who travel between New York City and Dakar, Senegal, around the practice of West African dance forms. Focusing on the Senegalese dance-rhythms Sabar, I joined this movement and my fieldwork methodology included apprenticeship as a student. I explored different learning environments of Sabar in New York and Dakar: the understandings involved, how this movement is maintained and how it affects dance forms. The methodological move enabled a comparative approach to research questions of learning and performing, local aesthetics and notions of being. This thesis discusses the role of the imagination in mobilizing students and teachers to travel within this network. I explore how participants navigate through the political geography of this movement, sustain the network, and how in turn the cultural flow of Sabar is ‘punctuated’ by socio-economic relationships. Secondly, I explore the understandings involved in each learning context, how these are negotiated and contested on the dance floor and how they relate to broader socio-cultural discourses and relationships that they reinforce or subvert. I argue that while different Sabar settings cannot be understood as ‘bounded’ in as much as people and ideas circulate through them, they are also distinct in that they produce different forms of Sabar. The learning contexts provide the meeting grounds for alternative conceptions of ‘dance’ and pedagogy. I explore how these notions are negotiated in relation to the specific socio-cultural and economic environments in which they are located. Specifically I analyse some common problems New York students face in learning and performing Sabar and explore the reasons behind them: the complex connection between movement and rhythm and the achievement of a specific kinaesthetic in movement. I delineate the relationship between movement and rhythm in Sabar and the importance of the aesthetic of improvisation. I argue that the prevalence of certain paradigms of learning and ‘dance’ over others is related to the specific socio-economic relationships of the participants. Specifically, an over-emphasis on movement distracts from other important aspects in the performance of Sabar and I argue that skills need to be understood as environed processes, malleable and shifting in relation to the broader socio-economic settings that link the participants together.

Sociology of dance is an evolving discipline that takes as a central focus the social makeup of dance – the societal structures and individual agency that are inherent within dance activity and practice. Relevant ethnographic literature that adopts particular sociological concepts and models is generally narrow in focus, with attention centred on the frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault and the conformation of vocational and professional ballet and contemporary dancer minds and bodies, to particular practice-specific behaviours and beliefs. Through drawing on Erving Goffman's (1959/1990) model of dramaturgy, this interdisciplinary thesis uncovers and interrogates the two-way relationship between sociological micro relations (social interactions), and various types of dance activity and practice. Six case studies undertaken encompass a wide range of dance and social settings; the professional ballet class, inclusive creative dance class, line dancing class, salsa club, Highland dancing class, and dance in primary education. Data was collected through undertaking participant observation (primary method) and qualitative interviews (secondary method): each specific combination was influenced by the reflexive approach followed, the nature and setting of each case study and as researcher, my own dance ability. The transcripts and field notes were analysed and situated within Goffman's (1959/1990) framework to interrogate the social and dance ‘performances' given. The research aims to firstly, uncover and present the nature of the ‘realities' (Goffman, 1959/1990) within each setting and secondly, to interrogate and demonstrate the applicability of the dramaturgical model to dance scholarship. The findings reflect the sociological binary of individual agency and societal structures as realities were shaped by the ‘place' of each dance activity and practice in the field of dance, and challenged, maintained or supported existing dominant perceptions.

Cultural heritage events as a tourism product have increased in recent years, both globally and in South Africa. Within the sphere of cultural heritage tourism, people construct and present their heritage and traditions to tourists in a reconstructed setting. To the visitors and people who are directly involved with the planning of the event, a sense of belonging and group identity are experienced by linking the present to the past in a celebratory mood. The annual ‘Afrikaanse Taal en Kultuurvereniging’ (ATKV) Riel Dance Competition in South Africa is an example of such an event, which celebrates a threatened cultural heritage in the form of a competition. The idea of a dance competition in order to preserve cultural heritage started in response to a feeling of marginalisation of culture among certain segments of the Coloured community of South Africa after the establishment of democracy in 1994. This dissertation used the constructivist-interpretivist approach in geographical enquiry to explain the role of cultural heritage events. Multiple sources of evidence and information were used in this study, including focus group interviews, observations, audio-visual materials, questionnaires and participant observation. The participants and visitors alike felt that the ATKV Riel Dance Competition serves an important role in preserving and protecting the cultural heritage of the Coloured community. The competition played a role in fulfilling the need of a large percentage of its participants and visitors for a group identity. There was no significant financial benefit for the communities who participated in the ATKV Riel Dance Competition. However, on a political level the competition played an important role in nation-building and cultural expression in South Africa. / Geography / M.A. (Geography)