{"id":122,"date":"2024-09-22T10:51:56","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T10:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/?p=122"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:21:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T18:21:13","slug":"decolonising-performance-and-unmasking-ethnology-tanzanian-dance-in-a-german-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/decolonising-performance-and-unmasking-ethnology-tanzanian-dance-in-a-german-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Decolonising Performance and Unmasking Ethnology: Tanzanian Dance in a German Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Charlie Ely<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Tanzanians are becoming increasingly vocal about the need to recover their precolonial heritage, whilst Germans are becoming increasingly aware of their obligations to redress colonial wrongs. Vinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies<\/font>, an ambitious live performance, video installation and museum exhibition co-produced by Tanzanian and German partners in 2022, explored many pressing issues of decolonisation through focusing on the fate of precolonial masks. Utilising indigenous Tanzanian cultural practices alongside experimental performance and modern media, Vinyago draws our attention to the permanent and the ephemeral, the material, the digital and the body, to create a decolonial performance within the contested ethnological museum.

Keywords: <\/strong>choreography, intercultural production, interdisciplinary performance, masked performance, transcorporeality<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changing Dynamics of German-Tanzanian Cultural Relations<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, over a hundred years since the dissolution of German East Africa (1885\u20131919), German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave the first official apology for the country\u2019s colonial crimes in Tanzania. It stands within a wider process of German acknowledgement of colonial violence, including the 2015 admission of genocide against the Herero and Nama people in Namibia. Although Steinmeier\u2019s statement is undoubtedly important, it has been received by many Tanzanians as mere words that must be followed with action to be meaningful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent UNESCO estimate deems that about 95% of African\u2019s cultural property is held outside of the continent (Shyllon 83). Conversations around repatriation have been increasing since the early 1990s, particularly in the last decade, and especially following Feline Sarr and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Savoy\u2019s 2018 report\u2014commissioned by the French president Emmanuel Macron\u2014which advocated for the \u201cpermanent restitution\u201d of sub-Saharan African cultural heritage held by France (Savoy and Sarr 28). Yet, copious items of tangible Tanzanian cultural heritage remain scattered across Germany; Berlin\u2019s Humboldt Forum ethnological museum alone holds approximately 10,000 Tanzanian objects (Reyels et al 46). Marie-Louise Crawley discusses museums\u2019 distinct position as \u201csites of public memory, of common remembering\u201d\u2014but in the case of ethnological museums showcasing international objects of colonial extraction, so often is this remembering distorted, the memories misplaced, as the context and contextualisation of the objects have been failed (284).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, a group of Tanzanian and German historians, curators and visual artists began exploring the Humboldt Forum\u2019s Tanzania collection. The Humboldt Lab Tanzania project aimed to \u201c[map] out different historical and current perspectives on the objects\u201d in both countries; the researchers state that especially revealing findings were the depth of feelings expressed by Tanzanian interviewees towards these objects, their contribution to narratives of anti-colonial resistance and national identity, and their relevance to contemporary Tanzanian culture and society (Reyels et al. 50\u201352). The project has since led to further collaborations, including Vinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies<\/em>, an ambitious performance, videography and exhibition production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Led by Tanzanian choreographer Isack Abeneko, in collaboration with Tanzanian filmmaker Nicholas Calvin Mwakatobe and German historian and curator Gita Herrmann, Vinyago <\/em>was presented at the Humboldt Forum over six weeks in 2022. It was funded by the Germany Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Although the Tanzanian contingent grappled with many ambivalent and disquieting feelings in working with these powerful institutions of a former coloniser, the setting and scale of Vinyago<\/em> also allowed them to participate in the international contemporary art world on a more equitable level than the vast majority of Tanzanian artists have been able to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago <\/em>involved several years of research, taking its team across Tanzania to visit different ethnic communities and learn about their cultural practices, especially those that utilise masks. The live performances of Vinyago <\/em>(Kiswahili for masks) attempt to animate indigenous Tanzanian masked performance concepts in the contentious context of the museum. In many ways, Abeneko\u2019s choreography is characteristic of conte<\/em>\u2014the term used to describe experimental dance practices in East Africa, which draw from both indigenous and international aesthetic and conceptual lineages. Elsewhere, I offer a detailed overview of the movement, its emergence and development from the late 1990s to the present, and identify intercultural hybridity, interdisciplinarity and corporeality as core characteristics (Ely 493). I also demonstrate conte<\/em>\u2019s aspirations and abilities to address the coloniality of being, knowledge and power (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 489\u201390). In particular, interdisciplinary conte<\/em> works like Vinyago<\/em> often have decolonial intent, consciously harking back to precolonial concepts of performance as a holistic entity. Through close examination of spatial, temporal, aural, corporeal and material elements of Vinyago <\/em>as live performance, <\/em>this analysis indicates ways in which the performance demonstrates fundamental differences in European and Tanzanian cultural epistemologies and asserts the value of the latter. It also affirms embodied artistic interventions as a necessary and productive part of decolonial processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decolonising the Space of Performance<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Colonial Power, Architecture and Dead Spaces<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The Humboldt Forum is located within the Berlin Palace (Berliner Schloss<\/em>), an imperial building par excellence<\/em>. It was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern royal family throughout the German colonisation of East Africa including mainland Tanzania from 1885 to 1919. In the Vinyago<\/em> exhibition introduction, on behalf of his colleagues and collaborators, Abeneko states frankly: \u201cwe consider the Humboldt Forum as the architectural and institutional symbol of imperialism, whiteness and nationalism. As a Black body entering such a space to perform, reflecting on power, violence and race is a necessity.\u201d These powerfully crystalline statements challenge all bodies entering the space to undertake such reflections.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Humboldt Forum exterior, December 2022. Photo: Charlie Ely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Even for a white European scholar, familiar with post-imperial centres of power, this grand, bright, monolithic building in central Berlin is an imposing and intimidating space. The original Berlin Palace was damaged during WWI and largely demolished in 1950. Since German reunification (1989\u201391), there has been a heated debate about potential reconstruction options, aesthetics versus politics, conservativism versus modernity (Trilling). Completed in 2020, the successful design combines an exterior with three sides of historical reconstruction, featuring neoclassical trimmings, and one modern, minimalist side, with modern interior structures, including a vast central atrium. It is an impressive architectural feat, and from a sympathetic perspective, one can understand the building\u2019s stately grandeur as reflecting and respecting the gravitas of the museum\u2019s collections. Yet, some symbolic elements of the external reconstruction seem unnecessarily divisive, such as choosing to reinstall a golden cross on the top of the building\u2019s singular dome and reinscribe a religious commandment around its perimeter (Trilling).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Humboldt Forum interior, December 2022. Photo: Charlie Ely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Most controversial of all has been the decision to house the new Humboldt Forum (bringing together the former Ethnological Museum of Berlin and the Museum of Asian Art) in the building, with many African diaspora organisations amongst those leading the criticism (Savoy and Sarr 15). An analytical stance recognises contemporary ethnological museums as fundamentally polysemic: whilst aiming to centre and celebrate diverse cultures, they cannot escape speaking of, showcasing and edifying cultural appropriation and violence. In this case, on one hand, the German government, its institutions and its people appear to be addressing their colonial history with more determination and honesty than most other former colonising European nations. The British Museum, for example, has not presented any exhibitions that seriously address the coloniality of their collections; its surface-level gesture in the form of a \u201ccollecting and empire trail\u201d through the museum highlights gifted items and avoids mentioning theft; moreover, it continues to accept sponsorship from deeply troubling neocolonial multinational corporations such as BP (Carlson “Collecting and Empire Trail”). On the other hand, some Humboldt Forum attempts to acknowledge \u201ccolonial injustice,\u201d such as commissioning a sculpture by Korean-born artist Kang Sunkoo and placing it alongside statues of Hohenzollern monarchs, which led to Sunkoo having \u201cto deny publicly that his work is a \u2018fig leaf,\u2019\u201d have \u201crisk[ed] pleasing nobody,\u201d as Daniel Trilling observes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I contend that the Humboldt Forum has taken a decolonial step forward with the commissioning and staging of Vinyago<\/em>, a success grounded in the ability of the artistic team to speak freely not only of colonial injustice at large but directly to the site of conversation, stating their aim to \u201cunmask ethnological museums as dead spaces with violent histories\u201d (\u201cVinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies\u201d). In emphasising how archives and collections have no power without their \u201carchitectural dimension,\u201d Achille Mbembe also recognises the deathly pallor of such buildings, how they share \u201csomething of the nature of . . . a cemetery . . . in the sense that fragments of lives and pieces of time are interred there\u201d  (“The Power of the Archive and Its Limits” 19). As I discuss further, the physical presence of Tanzanian performers, vital bodies rather than passive objects, is a highly effective means of stressing this spatial deadliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White Spaces, Black Bodies<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago <\/em>is performed in a quintessential contemporary gallery space. It is white, clean, clinical. It is the kind of modernist abstract space that intends to suggest neutrality and universal utility. Yet, in homogenising geographic and cultural difference, it, in fact, proffers up a Western paradigm as a global norm. This is not what Tanzania\u2019s contemporary gallery spaces, such as Nafasi Art Space, or postcolonial ethnological museums, such as the Village Museum (Kijiji cha Makumbusho<\/em>), look and feel like. Furthermore, the gallery\u2019s newness, polished wooden floor, spotless white walls, cutting-edge lighting rig and projector systems suggest wealth, boast of cultural supremacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago<\/em> takes advantage of the contrast between the room\u2019s sanitised whiteness and the boisterous complexity of the performance that unfolds, the performers\u2019 energetic movements, varied musical forms and provocative spoken words. This aesthetic juxtaposition enables the audience to sense a jarring dislocation between the physical space and the culture presented within it. Moreover, with exhibition information and objects remaining in the room for performances, the performers literally and conceptually place themselves within the same space of objectification as ethnological museum properties. White society watches, Black culture performs. As the performance goes on to reveal the vitality of precolonial Tanzanian masks, the inappropriateness of their being held in such a space becomes increasingly clear.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vinyago, <\/em>Isack Abeneko, Asedeva, Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Izdor Kondwa, Edson Chiume, Happiness Majige, Abubakar Mkopa, Lilian Malale, Halima Masoud, Omari Athuman, Thomas Zakaria. 2 December 2022. Photo: Stefanie Loos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A contrapuntal reading suggests another statement within Vinyago\u2019s<\/em> framing of Black African bodies moving within and taking temporary ownership of the white, European space: one of assertive belonging. To begin, the space is largely divided by a wall, one side displaying twenty masks. In a first act of disassembling the space, the eight dancers each slowly take down and put on a mask. Soloist Omari Athumani begins dancing within a central box frame\u2014as a living museum objet\u2014<\/em>including pressing himself against imaginary glass walls. He steps out and continues to perform similar movements, yet taking up much more space. In a second act of deconstruction, the group splits the dividing wall into four smaller walls on castors, which they shift apart. This moment of architectural orchestration also reveals the musicians, situated on a raised platform, and thereby brings more Black African bodies into a strong, active command over the negative space. The walls and empty cabinet frames are repositioned further, later in the performance. What never moves, in terms of mise en scene, are five glass cabinets containing precolonial masks. They alone are accorded an unwavering respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, Vinyago\u2019s<\/em> spatial choices complicate performer-audience relationships. The latter are cast in the role of passive viewers, reinforcing the (neo)colonial (white) gaze. Moving walls, objects behind glass and digital projections also provoke distance. Conversely, with the audience sat on unfixed stools dotted around the edge of the room, and no stage, there is some access and connection between performers and audience. Although a common configuration for dance-based installations and other contemporary experimental performances, in this context, having no clear-cut performer-audience delineations has clear resonance with precolonial Tanzanian performance norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geographic Absence and Digital Presence<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

The performers wear everyday street clothes, t-shirts and cotton jersey trousers or jeans, in assorted bright, muted or dark block-colours; in a contemporary intercultural setting, they are neither African nor European-coded, suggesting a commonality with the audience. At the same time, the bright colours worn by some performers are striking amongst the neutral colour-palates of the overarching production design and gallery space, reinforcing the impression of performer liveliness in a lifeless space. Hair is loose, natural or simply styled, in defiance of prejudicial politics towards Black hair, and faces are bare. The overall aesthetic is one of casual ordinariness imbued with understated individuality and confidence, of empowered Afropolitan youths who belong anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absence of geographic specificity is undercut by digital projections that cover two walls of the room and accompany much of the action. They display film footage that has a very precise locative effect, beginning with shots of the Humboldt Forum\u2019s interior. Rough, hand-held footage takes us past emergency exit signs, downstairs and through storage rooms to an archival area. Archivists in lab coats and rubber gloves examine exhibits. Later, we see the building\u2019s exterior; most especially, long shots of the controversial dome with its Christian-Imperial symbolism. It shines against a bright blue sky\u2014an ironic detail in its pairing with narration detailing colonial brutality and rash injustice. The digital projections force us to remember that this is not a performance work dealing with the ongoing consequences of colonial actions as a philosophical concept or general motion, but one addressing the absolute here and now\u2014where we, as individuals, find ourselves positioned and therefore implicated.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vinyago, <\/em>Isack Abeneko, Asedeva, Humboldt Forum, Berlin; 2 December 2022. Photo: Stefanie Loos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Juxtaposed before and after these digital reflections of the ethnological museum are films depicting Tanzanian nature and culture. Women dancing and singing together in a rural village, a forest of large-trunked trees, a smaller tree being hand-cut with an axe, an artisan whittling out and sanding features of wooden masks. A white tassel curtain hangs along the length of one projection wall. In one visually arresting moment, dancers appear behind the curtain and slowly, intentionally reach their limbs through it. The interplay between presence and absence is illuminated: visible on the tassels\u2014a man standing regally on a Tanzanian clifftop, his silken yellow robe billowing in the wind\u2014the physical group of dancers, ghostly shadows behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucially, towards the end of the performance, we see footage of Tanzania\u2019s modern, urban landscapes, which disrupts both<\/em> the tired dichotomy of African cultural stasis and rural simplicity versus Western innovation and development, and <\/em>the misguided, nationalistic insistence on cultural authenticity risked by some decolonial approaches. Furthermore, whilst the high-resolution technology highlights the Humboldt Forum\u2019s pre-eminence as a cultural institution, it also demonstrates Tanzania and its artists as engaged with cutting-edge modernity. Vinyago<\/em> brings coloniser and colonised geographies and cultural landscapes together, to tease out ambivalent themes of contrast and equality. In tandem, it brings contemporary art and cultural heritage together, arguing for the necessity of perceiving varied Tanzanian temporalities as synchronously enmeshed.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vinyago, <\/em>Isack Abeneko, Asedeva, Humboldt Forum, Berlin. 2 December 2022. Photo: Stefanie Loos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Temporality, Physicality, Aurality<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Choreography of Collapsing Time<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Crawley theorises dance works taking place in museums as \u201cradical archaeology,\u201d in which aspects of the past are pieced together \u201cin the bodies<\/em> of both the dancer and the viewer\u201d (285). In her own practice, this process aims to encourage an \u201cempathetic, visceral connection to the past\u201d (285). I recognise \u201cradical archaeology\u201d taking place in Vinyago,<\/em> although with a subtly different focus that encourages audiences to see precolonial, colonial and near histories as continually imprinting upon the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago <\/em>collapses time through its choreographic structure\u2014an interwoven assemblage of group and solo movement sequences. It could be separated into six aesthetic sections: 1) Introduction, 2) The living exhibit, 3) Precolonial life and masks, 4) Colonial actions and museums, 5) Present-day Tanzanian culture, 6) Ending. Yet, although there is a hint of chronological logic in this structure, the temporalities are blurred together by overlapping choreographic waves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The choreography combines pedestrian and gestural movements with material from ngoma <\/em>(Tanzanian cultural dance), international contemporary dance and social street dancing. At times, one of these forms constitutes the majority of a movement sequence, allowing audience members to clearly discern contrasts of style. For example, in the third section, the group performs a sequence of vigorous and percussive ngoma<\/em> movements. These include tuck jumps, high knee lifts and extended arm circles, and recall ngoma<\/em> of the Makonde ethnic group, including Sindimba <\/em>and Msolopa<\/em>. The movement quality is pulsing, with quickly repeated steps and back-and-forth motions, building towards a crescendo. This heritage-laden choreography contrasts with the music, which has a modern, easy Afro-jazz air; yet, a strong rhythm connects the two, resulting in a temporally hybrid aesthetic. Additionally, the dancers perform this sequence in a circle\u2014the spatial form which most especially conjures up precolonial dance practices and endures across present-day African social dancing (and the hip-hop cypher). They smile and let out shouts; on both the performative surface and at deeper embodied levels, these contemporary dancers connect jubilantly with their cultural roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrastingly, solos in Vinyago<\/em> are usually performed in a conte <\/em>mode, with spiralling limbs and torsos, contractions and high release, everyday gestures and touch, in the service of dramatising psychological and emotional states. In the fourth section, Halima Masoud paces in a semicircle with one hand touching a glass cabinet, staring at the precolonial mask inside. She swings her free arm across her head, circles it behind her, then reaches back with both arms, before grasping the cabinet again, more tightly and with both hands. Meanwhile, Happiness Majige paces around another cabinet, vigorously shrugging her shoulders and emanating frustration. Abubakar Mkopa clutches his hands to his hips and spirals his torso, before placing his hands repeatedly on the glass surface of another cabinet, as if trying to find an opening, a way to be closer to his cultural heritage. Whilst a shared sense of vexation and injustice is palpable, the conte <\/em>choreography also spotlights the individuality of performers, their unique responses to the masks and their current situation. When the corporeal body is emphasised, so is the present moment.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vinyago, <\/em>Isack Abeneko, Asedeva, Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Omari Athuman. 2 December 2022. Photo: Stefanie Loos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In other vignettes, dance forms are blended and a more complex hybridised identity emerges. Athumani and Mkopa perform a duet which incorporates ngoma <\/em>shapes\u2014flexed wrists and ankles, high knees at right angles\u2014conte <\/em>elements and hip-hop popping and locking techniques. Conte <\/em>movements tend to offer continuous flow and suspension, whilst the other two forms provide sudden slicing and thrusting qualities. This dynamic mix imbues the sequence with an air of temporal transcendence. Later, Athumani is back inside one of the box frames, alternately performing ngoma<\/em>-style arm flicks and hoisting himself up to higher levels; in a show of physical strength, he braces himself against the box frame and slowly cycles his legs through the air, before climbing up further to stand on the box top. Reaching his hands up and out, he gathers in the space and air around him, manifesting the power of a living exhibit that has become free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aural and Oral Histories<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago <\/em>begins in the dark. Through the darkness, a solo male voice begins to sing in Swahili, slow, relaxing and repetitive, like a lullaby. The exterior world is switched off and our attention is focused on the sound, which transports us to the acoustic past and folk cultures, of Tanzania, or the elsewheres of our memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although in such moments the music evokes precolonial cultural heritage, Vinyago\u2019s<\/em> original musical score more often expresses a contemporary, Afro-jazz fusion. It acknowledges international influences, at times veering towards rock, blues and funk, whilst being distinctly Tanzanian. Accompanied by tremulous guitar lines and sweeping chimes, singer Upendo Manase often brings forth melodic spiritual vocalise using non-lexical sounds. The music\u2019s free-form quality is firstly reminiscent of jazz aesthetics, themselves heavily influenced by precolonial African improvisational concepts (see Nii-Yartey 317; and Gottschild 31, 49). Secondly, its dreamy, flowing properties contribute to the objective of temporal convergence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five-piece band is comprised of a lead singer, guitarist, keyboardist and two drummers\u2014one playing a western kit, the other playing a collection of indigenous Tanzanian drums, and traditional and modern percussion. The presence of live musicians is of absolute necessity to this work. Ngoma <\/em>is always more than dance, it is inseparable from music, and the word ngoma <\/em>also describes certain drums and drumming. As Tanzanian scholar Daines Sanga asserts: \u201cdance and drumming are like two sides of the same coin\u201d (Sanga 92). Moreover, drums are pivotal to the masked dances of Tanzania\u2019s Makonde people (Wembah-Rashid 43).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the glass cabinets displaying the precolonial masks and the two empty box frames which the performers dance with, a further box frame holds a traditional-style Tanzanian drum. Our attention is suddenly drawn to the drum when two dancers lift it out of the frame, handling it between them with care and reverence. This is a further nod to the holism of Tanzanian performance culture, the respect that should be accorded it and the epistemological perspective that argues for dutiful guardianship through continuation of practice, rather than the deathly \u201cprotection\u201d of the ethnological museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago<\/em> uses voiceovers to candidly clarify such positions. They speak to the longstanding history of oral performance (poetry, prose narratives and dramatic narration) in Tanzanian culture. As Penina Mlama elucidates, ngoma <\/em>such as Digubi <\/em>included an essential \u201cinterpreter\u201d role alongside dancers and musicians, to ensure that \u201call relevant knowledge has been imparted\u201d (12). In Vinyago<\/em>, we are informed that colonial governments\u2019 policies of collecting, archiving and displaying masks were motivated by both cowardice and tyranny:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mask on display in a museum. A result of fear. Fear of the uniting power of it. Fear of the supernatural. Fear of the invisible. They said the masks need to be safe. . . They were subjugated to the banality of evil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narration also explains how colonial government agendas were coupled with, whilst undercut by, missionary objectives of banning dances and destroying masks, actions undertaken because the missionaries \u201cknew the spiritual importance of the masks.\u201d It assuredly recalls that, contrary to colonial preoccupations of ownership and objectification, the precolonial making of masks and their performances \u201cwas about developing a culture, . . . living a culture.\u201d The voice takes precedent over movement in this section\u2014another demonstration of how the different media in Vinyago <\/em>integrate with an overlapping rise and fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Present Presence<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Having firmly established our embodied connections to the past and our entangled histories, Vinyago<\/em> springs into a celebratory expression of contemporary Tanzanian culture. The projections display a montage of modern Dar es Salaam, before the room becomes awash with coloured, flashing and moving lights, lending the space a nightclub atmosphere. Performer Thomas Zakaria dons a puffer jacket and sparkly baseball cap, grabs a microphone and raps in Tanzanian Bongo Flava style. He alternates between verses in Kiswahili and a call and response chorus in English: \u201cVinyago<\/em>, eh eh, everybody say Vinyago.\u201d <\/em>The dancers\u2014suddenly wearing trainers instead of bare feet\u2014whoop, shout and demo exuberant modern social dancing, mixing Afro-fusion and hip-hop steps, flinging their arms up, bouncing with a low centre of gravity, crossing their arms and nodding their heads in unison. With this scene, Vinyago\u2019s<\/em> performers powerfully claim cultural, social and political ownership over both the Tanzanian heritage held by the museum and cosmopolitan youth culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, the performers\u2019 vitality and joyful vibe is in sharp opposition to the sight of the majority-white audience sat like prim statues, more visible now under the bright disco lights. Although some smile and bop along gently, most maintain stiff composure. In the final moments, the performers\u2014both dancers and musicians\u2014snap out of their party atmosphere, put on masks once again and slowly walk towards the audience. They stare at us, but we can no longer see them. The masks are powerful, we feel discomfort. A voiceover poses two final challenges: \u201cHow can we perform without reenacting? How can you observe without reviolating?\u201d I argue that the interdisciplinary, transtemporal and intercultural assemblage of Vinyago<\/em>, especially the incorporation of Tanzanian contemporaneity<\/a>, effectively addresses the first problem. The second remains harder to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transcorporeal Masked Performances<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Vinyago <\/em>dramatises the transcorporeal nature of Tanzanian masked performances and their intrinsic ability to connect the living to ancestral spirits. Stacy Alaimo defines transcorporeality as \u201ca new materialist and posthumanist sense of the human as substantially and perpetually interconnected with the flows of substances and the agencies of environments\u201d (477). Whilst this understanding of transcorporeality is grounded in contemporary environmental humanities scholarship, it also has clear affinities with indigenous African epistemologies and philosophies. It relates to widespread Bantu concepts of ubuntu, <\/em>which emphasise the interdependence and of humans and their surroundings. As Nii-Yartey notes, African cosmologies also reflect \u201ca continuity of experience and a re-occurring relationship between the past and the present; the ancestors and the living\u201d (317).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Precolonial masked performances used the physical connection between masks and bodies as a transcorporeal means of promoting ubuntu <\/em>between the living and ancestors. In Mapiko <\/em>performances\u2014a hugely \u201cimportant cultural and cosmological institution of the Makonde people\u201d\u2014masked dancers represented specific ancestral spirits (Paolo 110). Wembah-Rashid argues that bringing ancestral spirits into the present through masked performances gave credence to Makonde social norms and practices, for example, regarding initiation rites: \u201cacceptance by the spirits creates an atmosphere of genuineness, cements its secrecy and elevates its importance and essentiality\u201d (44). Vinyago <\/em>also uses masks to connect to history and ancestors and, thereby, to reinforce presently-held philosophical and political perspectives. Demonstrating the powerful vitality of Tanzanian masks underlines colonial violence. Much as the colonisers took the land to be uninhabited, they took the masks to be, yet as Vinyago<\/em> declares\u2014using the first-person plural to connect Tanzanians across the centuries\u2014\u201cwe knew these objects were inhabited, they weren\u2019t objects after all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vinyago, <\/em>Isack Abeneko, Asedeva, Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Halima Masoud, Happiness Majige. 2 December 2022. Photo: Stefanie Loos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

However, the transcorporeality of precolonial Tanzanian masks is also necessarily disrupted in Vinyago.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What difference does it make to know that the masks the performers handle and wear have been crafted recently\u2014and that the \u201creal\u201d historical masks are all behind glass? Further, that many more such precolonial masks are hidden in sterile archives, only permitted be touched through gloves? As the Humboldt Forum itself admits, the original artistic vision was for performers to dance with precolonial masks from the museum\u2019s collection, but the museum refused on the grounds of conservation (“Vinyago”). It further reveals that a compromise was reached, leading to five precolonial masks being exhibited in glass cabinets, \u201cin tension with\u201d the modern masks (“Vinyago”). The latter were made for the production by a respected Makonde carver, Bernard Piusi, using photographs of the museum\u2019s collection for inspiration. Despite the expressive beauty of Piusi\u2019s masks and this amicable compromise, the issue of touching precolonial masks\u2014which depend on transcorporeal contact to function\u2014points to further inappropriate aspects of colonial acquisitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Tanzanians must physically travel to Germany to simply see these important aspects of their cultural heritage is patently absurd. Moreover, Vinyago <\/em>addresses the inadequacy of looking: \u201cLooking at an object is one thing, but what story is told about this object is another thing.\u201dThe story told about these \u201cobjects\u201d by the \u201cinstituting imaginary\u201d of an ethnological museum in Europe is fundamentally at odds with indigenous Tanzanian epistemologies of time, materiality and corporeality (Mbembe, “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits” 19).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cyril Orji describes Africa as \u201ca ghost-filled continent\u201d (1). He refers not only to the continual presence of African ancestral spirits but also to the ghosts of colonial governments, rulers and settlers that haunt many African landscapes. In addition, I would include spectres of cultural practices, those that were stamped out by colonial repression and those that might have arisen without a colonial presence. Vinyago <\/em>flips the script on several hundred years of white supremacy, imperial violence and necropolitics, by illuminating ghosts in the room. That final moment in which the performers subvert the observer\u2013observed power dynamic and the white gaze by staring out through masks at their majority-white audience, reveals the ghostliness of our presence and implicates us in the deathly nature of European ethnological museum holdings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post-show Limitations and Remains<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Despite the strong criticisms levelled at ethnological museums collectively, by hosting Vinyago<\/em>, the Humboldt Forum, is participating in decolonial dialogue and attempting redress more than most. Post-show discussions were held after every live performance; the one I attended had an impassioned conversational atmosphere. Questions regarding the ownership of intangible culture, artistic communication and audience composition were addressed. Several Afro-German audience members, whilst vocal in their praise of the production and their gratitude for a rare opportunity to connect with Tanzanian perspectives and culture, expressed significant distain for the Humboldt Forum and scepticism that the museum would take further decolonial steps. The problem of members of the African diaspora feeling uncomfortable, or even unable, to visit mainstream German cultural institutions was also raised. White German audience members acknowledged the irony of their benefitting from watching Vinyago<\/em>. Following a solo version presented by Abeneko at Tanzania\u2019s National Museum in 2020, these were the first major performances of Vinyago. <\/em>The producers asserted their commitment to undertaking a Tanzanian tour. Although tour dates are yet to be announced, a performance took place at Dar es Salaam\u2019s Goethe Institut in April 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another pressing \u201cwhat\u2019s next?\u201d question concerned whether repatriation of the masks might be achieved. There is some reason for hope, particularly as the Tanzanian ambassador to Germany, who has engaged with the project, is a strong advocate for cultural return and reparations. The artistic team also revealed that a member of the German foreign ministry attended a preview performance. Furthermore, earlier in 2022, Humboldt Forum mangers approved the return of a handful of Namibian, Cameroonian and Tanzanian artefacts\u2014although the specifics of the Tanzanian restitution have yet to be confirmed (Lawson-Tancred).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can also regard the masks as stand-ins for other objects, and question what else might have been lost or stolen. The post-show conversation moved beyond cultural objects to the especially emotive subject of Tanzanian human remains, including hundreds of skulls, that are still housed in German institutions. The return of these remains is the upmost priority for the families of the dead, who believe that, until then, their ancestors will not be at peace. As John Makarius Mbano, a great-great-grandson of Songea Mbano, Maji Maji<\/em> fighter leader, declares: \u201cIt is our custom to bury everything and there we end our mourning days. . . . That is our mission\u201d (“DW News Africa with Tomi Oladipo”). Additionally, as Herrmann acknowledges, returning the masks to Tanzania would be an important symbolic act, but, \u201cit doesn\u2019t solve the question of how we are educated about our history, it doesn\u2019t solve the question of visas, it doesn\u2019t solve structural racism\u201d (\u201cVinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vinyago, <\/em>Isack Abeneko, Asedeva, Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Lilian Malale, Izdor Kondwa, Abubakar Mkopa, Halima Masoud, Omari Athuman, Thomas Zakaria, Happiness Majige, Edson Chiume. 2 December 2022. Photo: Stefanie Loos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Western colonial structures must undergo further interrogation. Decolonising cultural life requires continued effort. Through its production context, Vinyago<\/em> models new avenues for decolonial negotiations between former colonised and colonisers, despite the inherent tensions with, and contradictions of, the ethnological museum. As Paola Ivanov and Kristin Weber-Sinn argue, the decolonising of ethnological museums cannot be achieved unless collaborations are \u201ccreated in the context of a relationship with our partners, built on long-term reciprocity, and in a manner that respects and integrates their agendas\u201d  (76). They also point to the risks of political opportunism, the appropriation of discourse, and replication of stereotypical, divisive binaries, with such projects (76). Vinyago <\/em>does not fall prey to these dangers; it not only respects but is led by the agendas of the Tanzanian artists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through its artistry, Vinyago <\/em>demonstrates how simultaneous engagement with historical and present temporalities, with colonised and coloniser geographies, can effectively communicate intercultural issues and solutions. By drawing our attention to the permanent and the ephemeral, the material, the digital, the body and, most especially, the transcorporeal aspect of the precolonial mask, it advocates for an appreciation of indigenous Tanzanian knowledges. As Mbembe discerns in the novels of Nigerian writer Amos Tutola, \u201cdrum, song, and dance are truly living beings. They have a seductive, even irresistible, power. All three together produce a concatenation of sounds, rhythms, and gestures that gives rise to a half-world of specters and reveals the return of the dead\u201d (Critique of Black Reason<\/em> 141). Through interdisciplinary masked performance, Vinyago <\/em>is also able to bring spirits to life, animating a powerful decolonial proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bibliography<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Alaimo, Stacy. “States of Suspension: Trans-Corporeality at Sea.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment<\/em>, vol. 19, no. 3, 2012, pp. 476\u201393.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlson, Cajsa. “Architects Urged ‘Not to Work with the British Museum’ Due to BP Partnership<\/a>.” Dezeen<\/em>, 17 Jan. 2024. Accessed 26 Jun. 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Collecting and Empire Trail<\/a>.” British Museum<\/em>, 2022. Accessed 26 Jun. 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crawley, Marie-Louise. “‘This a Different Angle’: Dancing at the Louvre.” Danza e Ricerca<\/em>, Dec. 2020, pp. 283\u201396.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“DW News Africa with Tomi Oladipo<\/a>.” DW News, 3 Nov. 2023. Accessed 9 Jul. 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ely, Charlie. “Contemporary East African Dance Theatre: Emerging Decoloniality and Choreographic Self-Writing.” Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance<\/em>, edited by Kene Igweonu, Routledge, 2024, pp. 491\u2013505.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gottschild, Brenda. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance Dance and Other Contexts<\/em>. Praeger, 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “German Museums Announce a New Wave of Restitutions, With Plans to Return Objects to Namibia, Cameroon, and Possibly Tanzania<\/a>.” Artnet News<\/em>, 27 June 2022. Accessed 9 Jul. 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason<\/em>. Duke UP, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014. “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits.” Refiguring the Archive<\/em>, David Philip Publishers, 2002, pp. 19\u201326.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mlama, Penina. “Digubi: A Tanzanian Indigenous Theatre Form.” TDR<\/em>, vol. 25, no. 4, 1981, pp. 3\u201312.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Decoloniality as the Future of Africa.” History Compass<\/em>, vol. 13, no. 10, 2015, pp. 485\u201396.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nii-Yartey, Francis. “Principles of African Choreography: Some Perspectives from Ghana.” Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader<\/em>, edited by Jo Butterworth and Liesbeth Wildschut, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2018, pp. 315\u201329.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orji, Cyril. Unmasking the African Ghost: Theology, Politics, and the Nightmare of Failed States<\/em>. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paolo, Israel. “Mapiko Masquerades of the Makonde: Performance and Historicity.” East African Contours: Reviewing Creativity and Visual Culture<\/em>, edited by Hassan Arero and Zachary Kingdon, Horniman Museum and Gardens, 2006, pp. 99\u2013123.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reyels, Lili, et al., editors. Humboldt Lab Tanzania: Objects from the Colonial Wars in the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin<\/em>\u2014A Tanzanian-German Dialogue<\/em>. Ethnologisches Museum, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanga, Daines. “A Critical Analysis of Attitudes of Tanzanian Students towards Dance Courses.” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science<\/em>, vol. 7, no. 3, 2017, p. 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Savoy, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte, and Felwine Sarr. The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics<\/em>. Translated by Drew. S Burk, 2018. Minist\u00e8re de la culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shyllon, Folarin. “Return of Makonde Mask from Switzerland to Tanzania – A Righteous Conclusion?” Art Antiquity and Law<\/em>, vol. 16, 2011, p. 79.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trilling, Daniel. “Has the Humboldt Forum Got It Horribly Wrong?<\/a>” Apollo Magazine<\/em>, 21 Jan. 2022. Accessed 28 May 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Vinyago<\/a>.” Humboldt Forum<\/em>. Accessed 5 Dec. 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies.\u201d Choreographed by Isack Abeneko, performance by Asedeva, 3 Dec. 2022, Humboldt Forum, Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies.\u201d As exhibition. 23 Nov. 2022\u20138 Jan. 2023, Humboldt Forum, Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weber-Sinn, Kristin, and Paola Ivanov. “‘Collaborative’ Provenance Research\u2014About the (Im)Possibility of Smashing Colonial Frameworks.” Museum and Society<\/em>, vol. 18, no. 1, 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 66\u201381.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wembah-Rashid, J. A. R. “Isinyago and Midimu: Masked Dancers of Tanzania and Mozambique.” African Arts<\/em>, vol. 4, no. 2, 1971, pp. 38\u201344. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Charlie Ely<\/strong>\u2019s work explores interdisciplinary and intercultural performance practices in transnational contexts, particularly engaging with feminist and decolonial theories. She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her PhD research explored the training histories, working practices and performance aesthetics of innovative choreographers in the emerging field of East African dance theatre (Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda). Charlie also maintains a professional practice as a collaborative theatre-maker and facilitator. From 2013\u201317, she was the Artistic Director of London Grey & Green Theatre Co, producing and directing female-led new writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2024 Charlie Ely
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, #30, Dec. 2024
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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