CWAH Dance and Philosophy Annual Lecture

This year’s CWAH Dance and Philosophy Annual Lecture titled, Bad Sistahs: Women Exploring the Africanist Aesthetic in Hip-Hop Dance will be given by Dr. Halifu Osumare.

Osumare is Professor Emerita in the Department of African American and African Studies at UC Davis, and winner of the 2019 American Book Award. She has been a dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, and scholar of black popular culture for over forty years. In her book, The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves, Osumare asserts that hip hop culture has become another locus of postmodernity, as she explores the intricacies of this phenomenon from the beginning of the Twenty-First century, tracing the aesthetic and socio-political path of the currency of hip hop across the globe.

*This lecture serves students in Rutgers’ MFA Dance degree’s fall semester course, Dance Philosophy and Aesthetics and Creative Process: Improvisation Strategies. It is open to the general public and all students and faculty who wish to engage more fully with dance as an expanded field.

Sponsored by: Department of Dance; Department of Philosophy; Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities

REGISTER HERE

Pre-Lecture VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS

• LaTasha Barnes, jazz dancer: Vernacular Jazz Mashup, Bay Area House Dance Festival
  DESCRIPTION: La Tasha Barnes is a New Orleans jazz dancer who knows the roots of the Africanist dance aesthetic, and creates blends between rhythm tap, vernacular jazz, and house dance as a unique mashup.
• Fresh New Yorkers | New York City B-girl Ana “Rokafella” Garcia
  DESCRIPTION: Ana “Rokafella” Garcia is a b-girl from the Bronx, New York. She has been spreading the history of hip-hop through her dance performances and classes since the rise of hip-hop culture. Through her dancing and other skills, she spreads the history of hip-hop while also changing the stigmas of that New York borough that started it. Check out how this Bronx native has been inspired by NYC and how she is inspiring others to join her movement.
• Nina Flagg at Cal Arts – Hip-Hop Lecture Demo
  DESCRIPTION: Professor Nina Flagg teaches at California Institute for the Arts and is a dancer with Rennie Harris Puremovement. Here she gives a hip-hop dance class that includes many styles, including b-girling, waacking, popping, etc. This will allow you to begin identifying the different hip-hop styles that have developed.
• Summer Dance Forever Freestyle Competition Between two B-Girls
  DESCRIPTION: Nubian Néné, originally from Montreal, faces off with Sarah Bidaw, in a freestyle competition, demonstrating both the skills of women in hip-hop dance and the articulate intricacies of the Africanist Aesthetic.