ABSTRACT
This chapter explores from a Ghanaian perspective, how the African choreographer can reconcile tradition with modernity through constructing the new from established principles and philosophy of African dance. It presents an overview of the role of dance in traditional African communities, detailing its basic choreographic characteristics and how knowledge of its practice is acquired. The chapter discusses the impact of the new paradigm in choreographic practice in Africa – and specifically, Ghana. In Africa, dance serves as an index to the value systems that enable the community to interpret and express the various events of life. African cosmology reflects a continuity of experience and a re-occurring relationship between the past and the present; the ancestors and the living; the unexpected and the familiar. Contemporary African dance must negotiate between the old dance traditions of Africa and the impulses and issues of the new generation.
