Finally, I will use these two articles to expand and cement my argument with additional nuance on the discourses of colonial legacy and culturally constructions of authenticity through movement.

I. working (with) dance: Notes on contemporary dance and choreography in Morocco and Tunisia by Sandra Noeth

In “working (with) dance: Notes on contemporary dance and choreography in Morocco and Tunisia,” Sandra Noeth reflects on the structural and geo-political conditions in which contemporary dance is created and confronted in Morocco and Tunisia. She uses a critical dance/performing arts studies methodology and the concept of contemporaneity to examine her observations and interviews from 2012 visits to two festivals, one in Marrakech and one in Tunis. She argues that contemporary dance artists navigate the “complex question of the body in relationship to religion and society,” (82) that in these environments “the physical as well as societal body is an important means of communication and of reading, grasping and acting in this ever-changing texture,” (83) and that “in a continuous act of translating and emergence, of break-up, interruption and faint, the bodies on stage and in the streets address the question of how to act, how to move, by measuring continuously the relationship to the Other, an Other who, however, is always already part of us” (85). In the portion located in Marrakech, Noeth examines how the French Institute and Government has historically has played an important role in Morocco when it comes to the development of contemporary dance: bringing in choreographers from the 1990s onwards to teach and perform, creating a complex climate of what is considered possible and a limited amount of space for rehearsals and representation. She argues that contemporary dance, as an artform that is seen as a vestige of colonialism but through which individual Moroccan artists are exploring their cultural history and practice puts “the very concept of contemporary dance as well as the idea of contemporaneity as a practice of ‘belonging to’ and of ‘being-with-an-Other’ into question” exemplified by a prominent choreographer Taoufiq Izzediou, who after returning to Marrakech after ten years of living and working in France, proposed the term danse du jour, a ‘dance of now’ (Izzediou 2012) instead of contemporary dance to highlight “the multitude of expressions and languages co-existing in the terrain” (83). Izzediou asks the important question, “If you enter theatre from the street and what you see is in complete contradiction with what you live, what would the role of art then be beyond making you dream?” (83).

I plan to use this source in relationship to Borni’s piece to further explore the relationship of contemporary dance to the French colonial legacy in Morocco and how dancers navigate their relationship to the religious/political climate of Morocco in relation to their bodies and art form. As Borni explains, Moroccan contemporary dancers are often street dancers first and thus we must explore the practices of Moroccan contemporary dance to fully assess the positioning of street dance within Moroccan society. I’m also interested in why the discourse around contemporary dance is much more focused on colonial legacy than breaking/hip hop culture, when both have Western origins, and why street dancers often enter into contemporary dance companies and/or become rappers, djs, producers, or organizers rather than stay street dancers.

Noeth, Sandra. “Working (with) Dance: Notes on Contemporary Dance and Choreography in Morocco and Tunisia.” Performance Research, vol. 17, no. 6, 2012. https://ccl.on.worldcat.org/oclc/4958568167

II. Make Some Noise, Drari: Embodied Listening and Counterpublic Formations in Moroccan Hip Hop

In "Make Some Noise, Drari: Embodied Listening and Counterpublic Formations in Moroccan Hip Hop," Kendra Salois argues that through their stage talk and embodied response to music and sound (including dance), hip hop musicians and their audiences co-construct a counterpublic, creating a new arena in which to enact debates about how to best be young, Moroccan and Muslim. She defines a counterpublic as a network “addressed by local and translocal hip hop media which uses some of the same media infrastructure as a national public sphere, but is not congruent with that sphere’s membership, media consumption, or forms of expression” (1020). Salois explains that, if you were to look at lyrics alone, it’d seem like this counterpublic questions the State’s authority in their discussion of topics like police brutality, unemployment and economic inequity, but that once you analyze hip hop live performance, it's clear that the onus of responsibility for change is placed on the individual instead of society, shifting the focus from political to the personal. She places this within the context of the Moroccan State’s continuing neoliberalization, arguing that in contrast to older conceptualizations of Moroccanness which included ethnic, class, or political solidarity as means of resistance, the hip hop counterpublic loses the ability to form resistant solidarity “precisely because it cuts across those divisions and reaches for a normative ethics which, though outspoken, aligns with rather than contradicts the individualization central to the political and economic project of neoliberalization” (1042). Ultimately, Salois finds that the result of this individuation is that hip hop practitioners and fans internalize a form of discipline “in a model of engaged and educated citizenry at both the intellectual and sensory levels, normalizing (neo)liberal conduct to the con-tours of contemporary Moroccan Muslim ethics” (1021). A primary example of this contemporary ethic and self-discipline that she explores is the way in which Moroccans dance to hip hop in relation to the way they move to religious music or local but non-spiritual music. She explains that because secular music genres are viewed as being inherently close to sexuality, it is important for people dancing to hip hop to move in a way that is expressing the music through foreign gestures and comportments, without movement that has local connotations to sex or dishonor. While hip hop practitioners have to authenticate their Moroccanness despite or through their participation in hip hop culture because it is a Western art form, the community is developing an economy of movement that “can signify intensely engaged and embodied listening without fitting into established hierarchies of respectability” (1024). While this article uses a lot of the same language/analysis as the chapter of Salois’s dissertation on counterpublic construction that I plan to use, I wanted to use it here and in my essay, because it makes concise and easy to understand arguments. I plan to connect this article’s discussion of authenticity to Borni’s discussion of authenticity in Moroccan contemporary dance, and will also reference the discussion of bodily comportment and adoption of foreign economy of movement in my discussion of the construction of a new youth Muslim, Moroccan globalized subjectivity. 

Salois, Kendra. "Make Some Noise, Drari: Embodied Listening and Counterpublic Formations in Moroccan Hip Hop." Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 87 no. 4, 2014, p. 1017-1048. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/anq.2014.0054.