A01=Adrienne J. Cohen
aesthetics
africa
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
anthropologist
anthropology
Author_Adrienne J. Cohen
authoritarianism
automatic-update
ballet
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AS
Category=ATQ
Category=ATX
Category=HBTB
Category=HDD
Category=JHM
Category=NHTB
Category=NKD
cities
conakry
COP=United States
creative practices
creativity
cultural study
dance
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
embodied
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
governance
government
guinea
Language_English
norms
orthography
PA=Available
performance
physical movement
political tool
politics
postsocialism
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
resourcefulness
rites of passage
social events
socialism
softlaunch
traditional
transformative
troupe
urban spaces
Product details
- ISBN 9780226781020
- Weight: 254g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Aug 2021
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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.
Adrienne J. Cohen is assistant professor of anthropology at Colorado State University.
