Teaching Traditional Ghanaian Dance Forms in Higher Education in the Diaspora

Abstract

Learning a dance form from a culture outside of one’s own, in my observation, can be quite daunting for students, especially those who do not have any dancing experience or those who have experienced dance but not in African forms. This was indicated each year in an assignment in which students were required to share their experiences in a West African dance class that I taught for 6 years in the Department of Dance at the Texas Woman’s University. In their responses, the students shared their fears, misconceptions, uncertainties and concerns, which can be put into two categories. The first category — from students with and without dancing experience — includes fears and misconceptions about difficulty in performing African dance forms resulting in concerns about their ability to dance. The second category — from dance students — includes concerns and uncertainties about the level of challenge that the class might offer to them as an elective class open to students from all disciplines. The students, however, indicated in their responses that the structure of the class and the way in which pedagogy occurred helped alleviate their fears, misconceptions and concerns. In this article, ideas undergirding the structure created to support pedagogy of West African dance forms as a university core curriculum course are presented. The structure focused on five ideas — the five C’s — which are the need to create a comfortable environment that will provide a support base for students to build confidence in their movement capabilities, encourage them to get involved in teaching and learning through the creation of community, and provide feedback in the form of comments and compliments to the entire class. The article concludes with a few suggestions for teachers who are engaged with the pedagogy of Ghanaian dance forms at the tertiary level.