Dancing Opacity: Contemporary Dance, Transnationalism, and Queer Possibility in Senegal

by Amy E. Swanson

Overview

Amy Swanson’s Dancing Opacity chronicles the ways in which contemporary dancers in Senegal navigate the global contemporary dance circuit while challenging heteropatriarchal ideologies at home. A longstanding hub of African performing arts, Senegal was at the forefront of the explosion of contemporary dance across the continent at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research, Swanson demonstrates how Senegalese choreographers and dancers contend with entrenched racialized prejudices about Africa outside the continent, while pushing back against repressive regulations of gender and sexuality within Senegal. Swanson employs the concept of opacity, defined as a refusal to adhere to the colonial logic of transparency for dominant gazes and argues that artists create work with multiple layers of meaning that are not meant to be immediately transparent to all viewers. By doing so, these artists evade cultural norms that govern gender and sexual expression in Senegal, while challenging their international audiences to expand their perceptions of African dance. Dancing Opacity highlights the artists’ accounts of their pedagogies, performances, aesthetics, and lived realities, as well as Africanist conceptions of gender, sexuality, and queerness that have yet to be applied to contemporary dance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472905256
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	09/22/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Amy E. Swanson is Assistant Professor of Dance Studies, Theory, and History at the University of Oregon.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Entanglement: France, Africa, and la Biennale de la danse en Afrique

Chapter 2. Openness: Internationalism and Gender in 1970s-1980s Dance Studios

Chapter 3. Otherwise: Contemporary Dance Training as Queer Praxis

Chapter 4. Ambiguity: Assemblages of Senegalese Masculinities

Chapter 5. Unfolding: Iterations of African Womanhood

Conclusion: La ville en mouv’ment and Queer Afro-Futurities

Epilogue

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Ayo Coly

“Dancing Opacity is a groundbreaking, thoroughly researched, well-executed and beautifully written study of the interface between dance and queer discourse in Senegal. Swanson seamlessly blends archival research, solid ethnographic work, and interviews to create a book that effortlessly holds its own against noted texts in queer theory, dance studies and African studies.”

Catherine Cole

“Swanson’s impressively detailed and beautifully written manuscript honors the complexity and artistry of contemporary Senegalese dance while conveying the difficulty of managing the expectations of audiences with radically divergent tastes. Dancing Opacity makes an important contribution to the academic discourse surrounding African dance.”

Editorial Reviews

“Dancing Opacity is a groundbreaking, thoroughly researched, well-executed and beautifully written study of the interface between dance and queer discourse in Senegal. Swanson seamlessly blends archival research, solid ethnographic work, and interviews to create a book that effortlessly holds its own against noted texts in queer theory, dance studies and African studies.”— Ayo Coly, Dartmouth College

“Swanson’s impressively detailed and beautifully written manuscript honors the complexity and artistry of contemporary Senegalese dance while conveying the difficulty of managing the expectations of audiences with radically divergent tastes. Dancing Opacity makes an important contribution to the academic discourse surrounding African dance.”— Catherine Cole, University of Washington

From the Publisher