Nuances of Malian performance, with emphasis on complexities inherent to performers' movements and self-presentation strategies as individuals aware of their roles in a larger dance collective are probed here. I call these performers (the individual and collective) dance ensembles. Ethnographic methodologies synthesized into my approach, are complemented by modes of interrogation, analysis, and theory, from various disciplines including art history, phenomenology, black cultural studies, African ethnomusicology, African studies, folklore, gender studies, and popular culture. Importantly, Malian (particularly the Bamana culture) aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural systems provide a foundational theoretical ground. This research is complemented by my fieldwork in Mali where I studied and documented dance in both urban and village contexts during trips conducted between December 2001 and January, 2007 and my training as a dancer and drummer of djembe and djun-djun drum music both in Mali and with Malian master teachers in the Boston area.
The four key Malian dance collectives presented illustrate the primacy of collective action in Malian performance: Sounou, a dance of Malian womanhood, underscores feminine gender formation through the individual action of dancers and their interactions among themselves, accompanying musicians, and active audience members. Chi Wara, a traditional agricultural masked dance, reflects socio-spiritual relationships between the land and the collective that both farms and dances upon it. The "political dances" performed by the subjects of photographer Malick Sidibé's teen portraits offer insights into the position of Malian youth during the second phase of the country's independence. The global designs and choreographies of the models fashioned by Malian designer, Xuly Bët, explore the performance of Malian fashioned bodies--styled and choreographed--as contributors to a high-fashion global aesthetic. These dynamic Malian dance forms evoking music and dance, all have complicated ensemble structures with roots in Mande call and response musical formats. Moreover, each example exists within everyday life, be it a dance performed in a village square celebrating the spirit of a beautiful girl, on a field for better harvests, in a local photographer's studio located in the heart of Bamako, or within the pages of a popular fashion magazine.
