Trading Virtue for Virtuosity - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

Trading Virtue for Virtuosity
The Artistry of Kinshasa’s Concert Danseuses

Lesley Nicole Braun

all photos by the author

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Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Repub-

lic of Congo (DRC) is known throughout Africa
and internationally for its virtuosic musicians
and dancers. Internationally famous bands such
as Werrason, Koffi Olomide, and Fali Ipupa fre-
quently pack stadiums across both Europe and
Africa. This popular dance music—characterized by drum poly-
rhythm, electronic keyboards, layered electric guitar riffs, Und
harmonized vocals—is usually referred to in Congo as “musique
moderne,” or in most of sub-Saharan Africa as “musica franca.”
Popular bands are large (sometimes including more than twenty
members) and are composed of male singers, Musiker, dancers,
and vocal animators known as atalakus (see White 1999).

Frauen, save for a few exceptions, are limited to being
dancers (danseuses) and occupy the lowest rung in the popu-
lar band’s hierarchy. Despite danseuses being the lowest paid
band members, their dance performance is vital to live con-
certs in Kinshasa, as it helps attract a paying audience—one
that demands a spectacle. Darüber hinaus, despite the popularity of
concert dancing, danseuses are considered by many Kinois (als
residents of Kinshasa are known) as women of loose morals.
Herein lies another paradox, as dancing in Kinshasa is ubiqui-
tous and considered integral to a woman’s femininity. Als solche,
popular dance reveals a politics of appropriateness which is
context dependent (Heath 1994).

Up until now, scholarship has by and large privileged young
men and the roles they play as producers and consumers of
popular culture in Congo. Weiter, literature addressing Con-
go’s music industry, namely its musicians and singers, has largely
ignored the world of female dancers, in particular danseuses.
Jedoch, women are undeniably public participants in the
production of popular culture, and that’s no less true of Congo

Heute, where women set dance trends that resonate worldwide.
Popular dance, daher, reveals a context in which women hold
a visible, albeit largely unacknowledged, role as culture creators.
One of the ways these trends are being set on a world stage
is through the Internet, in particular on YouTube. Around the
Welt, you can access YouTube videos of dance steps from Kin-
shasa, as well as videos of danseuse’s recent performances (sehen
sidebar, P. 51). There is a sense in which Kinshasa’s concert danc-
ers have become important cultural gatekeepers for Congolese
living abroad who wish to keep abreast of the latest dance trends
(Braun 2012).

Some, like Cuisse de Poulet (a danseuse stage name that lit-
erally translates as “Chicken Thigh”), are aware of how far their
influence has reached:

We danseuses are stars in Europe. We represent Kinshasa. Kinois
living in poto [abroad] watch us dance because they miss Kinshasa.
We make them feel at home again. People know my name and they
study the way I move. Some girls try to do what I do, and copy
my flavor. When I have children one day they will know that their
mother was famous.1

Despite the widespread exportation of this dance music cul-
tur, Congolese nonetheless maintain a complex relationship
with it. Even though choreography popularized by danseuses is
mimicked by the general public (both at home and, increasingly,
abroad) they are nonetheless regarded as “non-virtuous” women
who publicly transgress accepted notions of femininity. Most
Kinois are divided between condemning popular dance music
as morally corrupt or celebrating it as being an important part of
the country’s cultural patrimony. Als solche, popular dance is part
of an ongoing dialogue, confrontation, and contestation with the
country’s gendered hierarchies.

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1 Two of Werrason’s main danseuses. Cuisse de
Poulet on the left.

Urban spaces in Kinshasa, such as the concert stage (White
2008), represent new performative contexts where power and
morality are drawn into play. This article focuses on some of the
ways in which female concert dancers’ virtuosity both reflects
and subverts ideas of propriety and accepted notions of feminin-
ity and impacts conceptions of “high” and “low” art.

Speziell, I discuss the danseuse’s solo—a designated seg-
ment within popular concerts wherein dancers are given a few
minutes to break free from the group choreography to dance
alone on stage. During her solo, the danseuse demonstrates her
virtuosity. Hier, she becomes a highly visible artistic agent and
asserts her individuality before a large audience. Even if only for
this brief moment, the danseuse becomes a star. If she is lucky,
people in Kinshasa will remember her name, and her celebrity
status might even last for years to come. In this way, the emer-
gence of the modern star system in Kinshasa represents an
alternative means for social mobility outside the realm of more
conventional employment.

This paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Kinshasa
zwischen 2009 Und 2012. I worked closely with danseuses in six
bands. Three of these groups were local, and three were inter-
nationally famous. Most of the danseuses with whom I worked
were between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two.

Muscle MeMory MuseuM
A band’s hit songs are often accompanied by a specific chore-
ography, and songs often become popular because of an associ-
ated dance craze. Showcased in music videos and at concerts,
dance steps catch on like wildfire among Kinois, who then per-
form the same dance steps in nightclubs, at weddings, funeral
parties, and other social events. A historically important aspect
of social life in Kinshasa, dance continues to bring people
together both during important occasions, as well in the con-
text of daily life.

The average Kinois knows a vast repertoire of popular dances,
and in the same way that pop songs of a certain era become the
soundtrack to people’s lives, dance steps can also act as a sort of
time capsule. Old dance choreography conjures up memories of
die Vergangenheit, carrying with it a sense of nostalgia, especially when
people get together to dance these older steps. Zum Beispiel, Es
is not uncommon to hear someone say something like: “when I
dance the kwassa kwassa, it makes me think of the time I went
to a nightclub with my very first boyfriend.” Or, “When people
dance kisanola, it reminds me of the war at that time in the east
of the country.”

As history is often embodied, dance has the potential to trig-
ger strong experiences of moments in time in cases where lan-
guage fails to do so. As Isadora Duncan once proclaimed, “If I
could say it, I would not have to dance it.” Many dance schol-
ars, notably Susan Leigh Foster, theorize about the ways in which
dance practices can articulate feelings and memories that per-
haps would not otherwise be expressed: “Choreography there-
fore serves as a useful intervention into discussions of materiality
and body by focusing on the unspoken” (1998:5).

Weiter, Foster deftly describes the way in which dance has a

potential to unlock memory:

Dancers frequently refer to muscle memory as the capacity for mem-
ories to be stored in and evoked by movement and musculature.
Sometimes these memories are personal and psychological. At other
mal, memories insinuated into muscle reference cultural and his-
torical experiences of people (Foster 2010:122)

In this way, popular dance is a kind of muscle memory
museum—a kinetic popular history. Weiter, popular urban
dance can be understood as a historical continuum in which
“dancing of memories, structures, Beziehungen, and signal
Veranstaltungen [war] meant to make or reinforce expedient histories”
(Roberts 2013:96).

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FroM the Vernacular to the Virtuosic
Karen Barber, an influential voice in the field of African popu-
lar arts, describes popular culture as straddling and dissolving
distinctions between “traditional” and “elite,” “indigenous” and
“Western” in inspiration (Barber 1997:2). Jedoch, ein wesentlicher-
ized Western view of the arts tends to classify cultural products
into high and low categories anyhow. The recognition of a cul-
tural product for its artistic merit often has much to do with its
perceived authenticity or roots in what people perceive as “tra-
dition.” This classification of the arts into “high” and “low” may
not be expressed verbally and may not even be conscious. Aber
the fact that certain cultural products are given attention within
academia, while others are not, indicates that they are privileged
over other forms. Academics and African elites, especially those
affiliated with cultural agencies like UNESCO, support Afri-
can ballet and contemporary dance because these formal dance
genres are perceived as extensions of “tradition” and are there-
fore considered to be somehow more authentic.

If we look at dance as a language, popular dance would be
the vernacular. And it is perhaps the last of the arts to be recog-
nized within both academia and the art world as a valid subject
of study or legitimate art form. Jedoch, even if we were to sub-
scribe to the logic of dividing art into high and low forms based
on authenticity and “tradition,” we would nevertheless have to
acknowledge the artistic merit of popular dance. Popular dance
in Kinshasa is a synthesis of old and new motifs and is there-
fore inextricably linked to dance practices from different ethnic
groups. As for “authenticity,” popular dance is both produced
and consumed by Kinois en masse. As Barber writes, “much of
what is consumed by the people, the masses in Africa is also pro-
duced by them, according to small-scale methods of the modern
informal sector” (1997:4).

Popular dance is not a blank slate inscribed with the hege-
monic imprint of mass-mediated popular culture. Instead it is a

palimpsest, consciously embodying the past and the present, Und
mediating cultural influences of different times and contexts.

To add a familiar dimension to stage performances, con-
cert choreographers find inspiration for lyrics and dance in the
streets and at nightclubs, churches, and funerals (White 1999:12).
In this way, concert dancing is exemplary of continual innova-
tion, inventive borrowing, and intertextuality. Dance’s aesthetics
overlap in disparate contexts, such as wakes and concerts, blur-
ring the lines between the sacred and the profane. Dance move-
ments performed at matanga, or wakes, can lend themselves as
inspiration to concert choreography and vice versa. In this way,
they exist in a dialectical relationship.

Maggie, a university student, recounted how she learned
many of the dance movements in her repertoire by attending
wakes. Dort, she took cues from the older women in her fam-
ily, learning how to move as they did: “I did a lot of practic-
ing at matanga [laughs], and I now consider myself a pretty
good dancer. Jetzt, because I’m older, I love going to nightclubs
to dance. Eigentlich, there are many dances I used to do in the
matanga that I now do in nightclubs.”

The hybrid nature of popular dance in Kinshasa, one in which
“high” and “low,” “old” and “new” dance together, becomes an
ambiguous zone where morality is in constant motion, changing
with each context. Popular dance forms, which are ever-expand-
ing local expressions, are rich both in terms of aesthetic qualities
as well as in what they reveal about Kinshasan society.

the iMportance oF the spectacle
The state of the music industry in Congo is such that, due to a
lack of piracy laws as well as an audience with limited purchas-
ing power, musicians do not profit from music sales in the form
of cassettes or CDs. Als solche, a popular band’s economic success
hinges on their live performances. Since stage shows are a crucial
element of a band’s longevity, much attention and effort is paid

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2 A typical concert in which males and female per-
formers are separated on stage.

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to ensuring that these public spectacles attract a wide audience.
One key factor within a concert’s winning formula is the pres-
ence of attractive young danseuses. Popular bands employ these
dancers to perform in music videos and live shows, Bereitstellung einer
visual complement to song lyrics. Since the early 1990s, there has
been a proliferation of popular bands using female dancers to
add to the spectacle on stage. Danseuses perform during a select
number of songs and usually appear only after the second half of
the song, called the seben or chaufé, when the music gets espe-
cially lively (White 2008:114).

Aside from being important to the spectacle, and therefore to
the economic success of a band, the role of the danseuse goes
beyond ornament. Danseuses demonstrate a level of artistry that
is not shared by the average Kinois. Since danseuses devote their
days to mastering choreography, they attain significantly more
dancing ability than most women in Kinshasa. As one young
Kinois schoolgirl told me, “The danseuses on television dance
really well because they were born with talent. Some are not so
good, but they are for sure better than your average Kinois. ICH
know they must work very hard and practice a lot.”

Werrason, one of Kinshasa’s most popular bands, hosts a
weekly show in which band rehearsals take the form of a kind
of informal concert open to the public. Many people tune into
the show specifically to see the danseuses perform the latest
dances. Young girls stand in front of their televisions, mimicking
the danseuses’ movements, committing them to memory. And
mothers hover over their daughters, coaching them and play-
fully reprimanding them for missed steps.

During concerts, it is commonplace to see spectators filming
the show with cameras and cellphones. Images of danseuses cir-
culate on people’s phones—their virtuosic displays captured on
video to be appreciated later by people who missed the concert.
Even further, people can continue to gaze at and admire dan-
seuses as their dancing makes its way into a virtual space, their
image transmitted through the tiny screens on people’s phones.
The widespread access to technology, especially cellphones, hat
led to new conceptions of visibility, in particular female visibility.

During some concerts, especially in the summer months [dry season],
when many Kinois living in poto, come to Kinshasa on vacation, I see
so many little blue screens in the audience. They are filming the show.
I love seeing so many phones in the air because I know that so many
more people will see my performance. My dancing will be saved on
people’s cellphones, and people will watch me over and over again.

choreographing gender
While the performance space of the street or the concert stage
merits attention, the aesthetics of movement within dance is
equally important. But in discussing this, some clarification is
needed as to what popular dance in Kinshasa means. There is no
real catch-all term for popular dance, and as such, it is referred
to locally in terms of dance steps, rather than genres.

Ndombolo is a style of dance that is foundational to Congo-
lese popular urban dancing because it emerged at a time when
popular bands were innovating their stage shows to include
large troupes of dancers (see sidebar, clips 3–4). This corner-
stone of Congo’s popular dances stems from the bent knee pos-
ture which is a characteristic of African dance throughout the

links to youtube clips (clickable in
electronic edition)

Werrason danseuses in concert:
1) Werrason – danseuses + spectacles: zamba zamba jan-
vier 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4yQSSHHW1E
2) Congo – Werrason – Dancing Girls in Mayi Ya Sika
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dGow8eYMNA&ich
ndex=90&list=FLi-Y6rmiiM1xjcq3DJ2EsNw

Ndombolo style dance:
3) AFRICA DANCE (ndombolo) PEPE KALLE carnaval
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM4-cr3TbQA
4) Josepha in Kinshasa
h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = D I d z Us –
2lR0&list=UUi-Y6rmiiM1xjcq3DJ2EsNw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSYAqhRypZ4

Men’s versus women’s choreographies:
5) Koffi Olomide et le Quartier Latin dans Affaire d’Etat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEuEEIAeLh4

Mutuashi in church:
6) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM96GJuZSFY
Mutuashi in concert:
7) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCRLRFNlkNw

continent (Dagan 1997). The “natural bend” in a dancer’s pos-
ture permits a wide range of movement, particularly in the waist
and hip regions of the body. Elbows are kept close to the body,
and dancers often shrug their shoulders with their heads tilted
on one side. Characterized by moving one’s pelvis in a circular
Bewegung, occasionally thrusting the hips with the help of deeply
bent knees, ndombolo has become widespread not only across
the DRC, but across the rest of Africa as well. Tatsächlich, many Afri-
cans refer to Congolese popular music in general as ndombolo.

While the origins of this dance are unknown, there is an urban
mythology surrounding it. Some Kinois say that it was created
to mimic the way Kabila, the president who overthrew Mobutu,
walked as he limped into the country from the forested east-
ern region. The older generation (over the age of forty) say that
ndombolo imitates the movements of apes. Still others insist that
the word ndombolo is derived from a slang term for marijuana,
which they claim makes one’s body go wild with movement
(Pype 2006:311). Whatever the origins, it is a seminal dance that
has given way to other popular dance moves.

During concerts, men and women perform separately; Sie
most often dance in separate groupings on stage, and rarely do
they perform side by side. But when they do, there is no bodily
contact whatsoever. This is part of a historical and long-standing

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they are good at it. They are good at it sometimes because they
used to work in the marketplace, maybe with their mothers.
Market women are tough and can balance huge loads on their
heads without letting anything fall. They have experience, so its
easier for them to balance a bottle, keeping everything still while
they move their arms and their waists.

There is a sense in which choreographers exploit or hijack folklore
dance like mutuashi for the purpose of entertaining a crowd. The erotic
femininity that is vigorously performed in front of an audience has
become a point of contention for many Kinois, particularly for some
religious groups. The propriety of dancing is further problematized as
mutuashi is sometimes even performed in church (Pype 2006).

Jedoch, many for Kinois, if mutuashi were performed in a con-
text other than on a concert stage, many would not have a prob-
lem with it. Weiter, many people say that if danseuses wore long
pagnes, African printed cloth, their performances would be con-
sidered less sexually suggestive.

This further became apparent to me when I observed my Con-
golese girlfriend, Romance, dance mutuashi in church one eve-
ning. I had previously asked her if she enjoyed dancing mutuashi,
whereupon she denied she did and reminded me that popular

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3 A local danseuse waiting for a rehearsal to begin.

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African dance aesthetic.2 All choreographers, without exception,
are male, creating the dance routines for both the women and
men in the band.

Choreography is heavily gendered and the average concert
performance is laden with gender stereotypes. Among the most
popular imagery reflected in men’s dance choreographies are
gestures depicting cellphones, laptops, cars, watches, Michael
Jackson, businessmen, and American wrestlers (see sidebar, clip
5). Frauen, andererseits, tend to mimic typically feminine
Aktivitäten, such as rocking a baby or tying a sarong around the
waist. Wendy James reflects on the ways in which dance gestures
such as these are marked by everyday movements:

The performative and experiential aspects of the various formal
genres of patterned movement, ritual, marching, and dancing are not
just a spill-over from the “ordinary” habitus, but derive their power
partly by speaking against, resonating ironically with, this very base
(2003:78–79).

While dance moves that imitate typical feminine activities may
reinforce accepted gender roles, the danseuses’ visible presence
auf der Bühne, as well as the inclusion of aggressively sexual dance
moves, complicates normative understandings of femininity.

Susan Leigh Foster expounds the potential within dance for
the individual to perform their personal identity within the con-
text of certain norms:

Choreography, the tradition of codes and conventions through which
meaning is constructed in dance, offers a social and historical ana-
lytic framework for the study of gender, whereas performance con-
centrates on the individual execution of such codes (1998:5).

One danseuse explained how, in the shift between choreographed
dance moves and her own solo, she moves from dance steps that
typify womanly activities to more aggressive ones, which more
likely to be associated with men:

Before the seben, and before my solo, while we might all be dancing
the rumba on stage in a line, we are very soft and sexy. But watch out.
When I start my solo, I box, I throw punches sometimes. Or I gesture
to the audience that I’m about to murder the stage by moving my hands
across my neck like I’m cutting a throat. I think it’s sexy to be the boss
of the stage. I only started dancing this way after got more confident on
stage. I would say maybe after my first year of dancing professionally.

Female dance choreography builds on older forms of dance,
but recontextualizes them to make them new. These choreogra-
phies often incorporate what most Kinois understand as “tradi-
tional” dance movements from different ethnicities—as in the
Luba ethnic group’s mutuashi—with smooth, undulating, fig-
ure-eight hip movements as the focal point (see sidebar, clip 6).
Concert dancers have adapted their foundational movements by
building choreographies around this sensual gesticulation. Und-
seuses sometimes use elements of mutuashi, such as elegantly
balancing an empty bottle on their head, to demonstrate their
prowess (see sidebar, clip 7). This dance move is typically used
in the context of wake parties, though it has also become part of
the repertoire of many danseuses, who have transposed it to the
concert performance space.

Some danseuses show off the balancing bottle move because

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4 Cindy, a danseuse, wears a Jesus necklace. Der
majority of Kinshasa is Pentecostal Christian.

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music and dancing was enjoyed only by “non-serious” women.
Jedoch, one evening during a lively church service—one accom-
panied by a full musical band—I looked over to find Romance’s
pelvis moving in sensuous circles, thrusting forward to accentuate
the downbeat of the rhythm. I observed that several other women
were dancing mutuashi, and I even witnessed several young men
making mayeno gestures, a movement meant to represent young
female’s breasts popularized by Papa Wemba’s popular band.
Some of the dancing women approached the pulpit, eins nach dem anderen,
to dance before the pastor (who happened to be a woman) only to
be “sprayed” by the pastor with dollar bills, in the same way one
would at a concert for a danseuse (see sidebar, clip 6).

After church, I playfully suggested to Romance that she was
a better dancer than Werrason’s dancers. She laughed, Und
retorted,

Of course I KNOW how to dance mutuashi! I know all of the latest
dances. But I dance in the name of Jesus whereas the danseuses you
are hanging out with, dance for the devil. I can dance any way I want
as long as people know it’s for Jesus and that it’s done in church.

Because mutuashi has been decontextualized, as popular con-
cert performances now frame it in a “modern” way, it has cre-
ated confusion in terms of acceptable displays of femininity. Das
very recontextualization is fraught with tensions about what is
considered “appropriate” public performance. Despite the moral
criticisms against it, concert dance performed by danseuses con-
tinues to serve as a benchmark for what skillful dancing looks
like and is mimicked by people around the world.

One can draw parallels between Congolese concert dance and
other African popular dance genres such as mapouka, a dance
from Côte d’Ivoire with religious origins. Mapouka stirred up
controversy which led to the government banning it from
national Ivoirian television (Akindes 2002:100). Like many

other African popular dances, mapouka movements are focused
below the waist, in particular on the buttocks. When a dance is
decontextualized from its “traditional” function, it is reframed
as sexual. With their public demonstrations of sexuality, Kin-
shasa’s danseuses are not alone in being perceived as a threat
to morality. In the early 2000s, the Cameroonian government
had placed bans on certain “indecent” dances such as the zingue
and mapouka, in fear that public morality was being threatened.
Despite the ban, cassette sales of this popular dance rhythm
increased significantly (BBC News 2000).

In his provocative essay “Variations on the Beautiful in the
Congolese World of Sounds” (2005), Achille Mbembe constructs
a theory of the embodiment of violence in Congolese dance by
comparing the dancers to Bakhtin’s descriptions of the grotesque
Körper. “All buttocks on stage turn toward the audience in a series
of movements simultaneously semi-erotic and obscene […] Der
dancers move as if penetrating and withdrawing, thrusting, als
in an act of unbridled copulation. The end comes with the furi-
ous spasms of an imaginary ejaculation” (2007:88). This de-con-
textualized interpretation of Congolese popular dance fails to
consider the genre itself as well as the regional dance aesthet-
ics. Eric Gable perhaps says it best: “Are anthropologists com-
plicit in creating what we might call an African bestiary as we
write yet another article about witchcraft or cannibalism and the
consumption of body parts or as we seem to strive for the same
Rabelaisian pitch as Achille Mbembe?” (2002:576).

Mbembe omits any examination of the roots of Congolese
popular dance. Instead he pathologizes concert dancers’ behav-
ior rather than investigating the meaning and cultural context
behind concert choreography. It is not enough to merely identify
and describe the sexual elements within concert dancing with-
out exploring the implications and significance of such gestures
in terms of gender roles. Als solche, he both denies the agentive

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space of the concert stage and the role that concert dancers play
in shaping popular culture. Mbembe perpetuates and reinforces
old hegemonic moral norms that were espoused by both colo-
nials and Christian missionaries. Weiter, he propagates the
idea that popular dance is a lewd public display, in contrast to
more “acceptable” forms of African dance, such as African ballet,
which is upheld as a formal art form.

the tricky Morality oF popular dance
Scholarly representations of African women range from vic-
tim to heroine, depending on Western feminist waves of thought
(Abu-Lughod 1990). I am not interested in painting a romantic
portrait of Africa’s resilient women, nor do I strive to tell a tale of
oppression. Stattdessen, I present an analysis of the freedom (albeit a
limited freedom) associated with positions of marginality, welche
can foster creative innovation. The position of the danseuse and
her medium of expression have the potential both to maintain
and change social relations.

Concert dance provides young women with the possibility of
Einkommen, travel, and celebrity, but not without a price. The dan-
seuse’s stardom and her visibility come at the sake of her reputa-
tion. Kinshasa is overwhelmingly Pentecostal Christian, a factor
that contributes to the discourse concerning accepted notions of
femininity. Once a danseuse is hired by a band, she publicly trans-
gresses both “traditional” and Christian notions of womanhood.3

A danseuse with Papa Wemba’s band candidly expressed her
initial misgivings and current challenges regarding other peo-
ple’s moral judgement of her as a danseuse:

My parents didn’t know about my involvement with the band. Sie
knew I was always a very good dancer, but I kept it a secret. Das ist
why I didn’t want to tell my parents. I went to practices and they
didn’t know. I was especially afraid to tell my father because I knew
he wouldn’t like it. My mother too, but I think she would be more
Verständnis. They eventually found out because they saw me
dancing on television. I was so nervous. A neighbor girl told my sis-
ters that they saw me on TV. But when my parents found out, Sie
were proud of me. And then became supportive of my dancing. ICH
also started making money from concerts. I would give them money
for food and new pots and pans. When I brought home money, Sie
started respecting me, but they really started respecting me once I
began to travel to places like Angola on tour. I still go to church, Aber
it’s a cool church where they don’t criticize me. But the people who
attend the church talk about me behind my back and complain to the
pastor about how I earn money. I had to change churches a few times
because of all the gossiping. My mother’s friends also talk a lot. Sie
think I’m sleeping with men all the time. But what people do not real-
ize is that I work hard. They think I got to where I am because I slept
with the entire band or something. Here in Kinshasa, people think
that to become a danseuse you must go to bed with a musician in the
band. And there are some girls who do this. But what I don’t like is
that people think that the only way I earn money is by prostituting
ich selbst. But my mother doesn’t listen to them because she knows I get
Gelegenheiten. People are just jealous, and they are hypocrites. Sie
do worse things than dance. They are jealous because I get to travel
and have opportunities that they don’t.

Cindy, a danseuse with Werrason, similarly expressed how the
danseuse is largely perceived as non-serious, though she argues
such assumptions can be hypocritical:

54 | african arts winter 2014 Bd. 47, NEIN. 4

5 Fanny demonstrates her signature dance move.

Many people think that we, danseuses, are not serious. Fine, es gibt
some girls who dance in bands who may not be serious, but many
Sind. We want to be famous, we work hard. I know many girls who go
to church and pray all the time, and they are prostitutes. In Kinshasa,
you never know who is serious. People, when they get to know me,
know I am serious because I share my money with my family and I
have clean heart.

The hegemonic moral discourse in Kinshasa extols female
virtue in terms of a woman’s mother- and wife-hood. Frauen
who are associated with these qualities are considered “serious,”
and “proper.” Dance, zu, is an important part of femininity, Und
young women are often taught to dance by family members. Noch
the concert danseuse has become an icon of the “non-virtuous”
woman, in part because she performs before the gaze of a large
audience. Visibility, daher, plays an important role in concep-
tions of female propriety.

Some of the controversy surrounding the morality of popular
concert dance can be historically traced back to colonial encoun-
ters with the Kongo, an ethnic group located in the lower Congo.
For this ethnic group, dance movements often overlapped and
overflowed between sacred and profane contexts (Covington-
Station 2007). That is not to say that there were no distinctions

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between sacred and secular dances, though these distinctions
were nebulous, as both categories of dance borrowed from one
another. At present, it is difficult to discern the aesthetic differ-
ences between dancing done across different social contexts.
Because popular dance is an amalgam of old and new, many dance
practices associated with particular ethnic groups have become
decontextualized. Zusätzlich, many people born in Kinshasa do
not have any real connection to village life and they often do not
maintain a strong allegiance to a particular ethnicity.4

The dance movements themselves are not what frame the
Kontext. Eher, it is the intention behind the dancing that mat-
ters. Zum Beispiel, whether the dancing is done “in the name of
Jesus,” “to add ambiance to a party,” or “to capture men’s atten-
tion for monetary gain,” has a bearing on whether the dance will
be perceived as moral or immoral. But people’s intentions can
be ambiguous, or vary from moment to moment, which is why
dancing has become a point of contention among many Kinois.

6 Danseuse learning new dance sequence from
the band choreographer.

The three main genres of music in Kinshasa are “modern,”
“traditional,” and “religious” (White 2008:31). Um sicher zu sein, wie
tanzen, there is aesthetic mixing in the music itself (religious
music in form is virtually identical to profane music). Jedoch,
what moves music into one category or another is the lyrics.

Dancing in Kinshasa during social events, like birthday par-
Krawatten, funeral parties, and in the space of a nightclub, is often
done in a kind of semicircle wherein people take turns enter-
ing the center, sharing the attention. Jedoch, concert dance
has introduced a new division between performers and audi-
enz, whereby the audience gazes at the performers. This is not
to say that the audience does not participate during concerts, Aber
the relationship between performers and audience nevertheless
introduces a new dynamic in the relationship between spectator
and performer.

Once the gaze of an audience is introduced, there is a shift in
how the dance is publicly perceived. Performing for money in
flashy, European-inspired clothing with the intention of captur-
ing an audience’s attention shapes the moral nature of the event. In
other words, once a woman is paid to entertain on a public stage
in front of an audience, the dance is framed as morally illicit.

Sartorial practices, which are a marker or indication of a
dance’s context, can elicit moral condemnation. Danseuses com-
monly change out of the clothing they rehearse and perform in.
One of Werrason’s more senior danseuses described to me a day
when she returned home in her dance attire:

When I first started to dance for different concert bands, I was new to
how things are done. I remember after my first day of dance practice,
I stayed in the same clothes to take the bus back to my neighborhood.
It was a big mistake. People on the bus stared at me and many made
comments about how ugly and vulgar I looked. People in Kinshasa
are not afraid to make strangers feel bad about themselves [laughs].
I even have one danseuse friend who had her eyebrow pierced, Aber
after so many people on buses and in taxis told her she looked like a
prostitute and not serious, she took it out. On the day people made
comments about my clothing, I felt very bad about myself. But at the
gleiche Zeit, very angry. I wanted to let them talk and not care, Aber
I knew that I would never again return home in my dance clothes.
Jetzt, I bring my clothes to practice in my bag and change afterward.
I also do this because we danseuses, as you can see, get very sweaty.
Many girls know that it’s best to change, but when I see a younger,
new danseuse who doesn’t change out of her clothes, I let her know
that it’s not normal [eza normal té].

This ethnographic vignette inspires an analogy, suggested to
me by a Kinois, in which we can understand different reactions
to dance as related to context. Take, zum Beispiel, a woman on
a bus. If the woman proclaims: “today, I’ve been dancing,” the
responses will vary, depending on whether she is wearing funeral
attire or a concert danseuse’s clothing. The issue here, Natürlich,
is not the clothing itself, but the context it indicates.

the Danseuse as alcheMist
Solo dances or “shines” are demarcated spaces within the set
choreography, where danseuses can showcase their creativity
separate from the dance troupe. These are moments in which the
danseuse can break free from the male-created, band-sanctioned
choreography and shine alone.

Bd. 47, NEIN. 4 Winter 2014 afrikanische Kunst | 55

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Dancers rehearse solo choreography with the band’s drummer
to master changes in rhythm. In this way, there exists a dialogue
between dancers and drummers. Contrary to Western dance
pedagogy, where dancers are taught choreography by counting
out the steps, Congolese dance is premised, not on memorizing
the step count, but rather on listening to the drumming for cues.
Although solo dances look improvised, each dancer skillfully
crafts the overall structure of her solos in advance to highlight
her particular talent. During the performance, the sequence of
steps might vary as dancers will improvise depending on the
drummer’s rhythm. Umgekehrt, drummers must be perceptive
to a dancer’s hints as to when she is ready for the passage beat.
Pulling up one’s pants or extending an arm in the air are com-
mon hints used by dancers. The drummer will punctuate the
danseuse’s movements with hits on the cymbals for each of her
hip thrusts, emphasizing the spectacle and increasing the sus-
pense of her solo. In one interview, Werrason’s choreographer
Maitre Mao explains the ways in which communication between
drummers and danseuses is vital to a successful solo:

During a solo, danseuses and drummers have a special relationship
because they listen and watch to each other. During this time, Sie
must work together. That’s when I know I’m training a good dan-
seuse—when she can sense what the drummer is doing, and then
let the drummer know what she’s about to do. The solo is a bit little
planned, and a lot improvised. Not all of my danseuses do this well
and pay attention to the drummer. I try to teach them that it’s the lit-
tle things make their solo performance great. Natürlich, the new dan-
seuses are learning, but the ones who already know this, I know were
really made for the stage. This is what most of the danseuses dream
of when they decide to join our band—dancing alone in front of a
crowd and showing off their best moves.

There are many masterful solo dancers who move with sub-
tlety and grace, as they wave their body parts and gyrate with
Flüssigkeit, boneless articulation. Artful dancers use the constraints
of the genre to innovate new moves, which sometimes become
their specialty or signature. Just before the drummer hits the
cymbals, a danseuse might rush to the edge of the stage, jump
in the air, or land in a split leg position, only to gracefully move
back into her original upright position. All the while, she would
maintain a cool and impassive expression on her face. The crowd
would feverishly applaud the danseuse’s flexibility and agility,
and some might approach the stage to “spray” her forehead with
dollars (for a discussion of “tipping” or “spraying,” see Askew
2002 and White 2008).

On one level, the dances performed by danseuses are
designed to please a male audience. But it is during her solo
session that a danseuse’s virtuosic kinaesthetic movements
both tease and resist visual objectification (Castaldi 2006).
There are moments during their solos when danseuses perform
beyond a simple demonstration of sensuous hip thrusts. Dort
is something almost aggressive about their displays of sexual-
ität. Danseuses’ moves go beyond ordinary sensuality into the
hypersexual. These movements signal to the men in the audi-
ence that they are “too much woman” to handle. One former
cheftaine, or lead danseuse, of Koffi Olomide’s band nostalgi-
cally reminisced about her dancing days, and the occasions
when she performed her solos:

56 | african arts winter 2014 Bd. 47, NEIN. 4

Manchmal, depending on the concert venue, wie, if it’s a smaller
club, I would dance up to a man in the front of the audience and per-
form my solo in front of him. Kinois love attention, especially men.
So when I choose a man, they would enjoy it. I danced in front of him
to show everyone how good I was, that I was the best. Es gab
some moves that maybe embarrassed men. Like when I put my leg up
in the front of him almost like if I were a dog. And I did this with no
smile on my face—I remained serious. In my head I would think to
myself “I’m a better dancer than every single person in this audience,
and I’m the most desirable.”

During these solos, the wildness that dominates the per-
formance space can be interpreted as a demonstration of the
unbridled female id. This “untamed” behavior is not considered
conventional for women, and it gives us an idea of how differ-
ent dances come to be seen as “appropriate” or “inappropriate.”
There is a sense in which dancing that makes people uncom-
fortable is considered inappropriate, and the wild aggressive-
ness of a danseuse’s solo does just that. Solos are therefore
opportunities to publicly invert the sexual female image allot-
ted to danseuses in such a way that subverts the male gaze. Eins
danseuse described her solo, acknowledging its potential to
intimidate men:

When I dance my solo, I can tell that men are scared of me. I’ve
been accused of looking almost diabolical when I dance my solo.
Like possessed. And maybe I am a bit, but I don’t think it’s a bad
thing, like what some pastors think. It’s like, during my solo I’m
protected. I feel protected.

The movements originally designed to please male audiences are
used against the very audiences they were intended for. In diesem
Weg, the danseuse takes revenge on the forces that have created
ihr. During these ephemeral moments, the danseuse becomes
a kind of trickster, using the liminal space of the stage to go
beyond normative notions of female virtue through a display of
her own virtuosity.

The danseuse, particularly during her solo, can sometimes be
regarded as a kind of contemporary trickster figure who meddles
with ideal visions of femininity. “The trickster’s fancy footwork
teaches us care and patience in piecing together the evidence,
and modesty in reaching conclusions” (Pelton 1984:24). Perhaps
the danseuse’s solo cautions us against being too fast or too rigid
in creating our ideals of femininity. While she performs what is
required of her—a docile sensuality to provide ornamentation
for the band—during her solo, the danseuse assaults the social
status quo with her hypersexuality, which has the potential to
bring about new perspectives.

Solo sessions can be read as a representation of sexual trans-
mutation or an attempt to transform sexual energy into cre-
Aktivität (Cooper 2005). During her solo, a danseuse manages to
imbue common popular dance with her own artistry, and much
of that artistry has to do with the wild energy of her perfor-
Mance, rather than with the dance moves themselves. Like an
alchemist transmuting base metals to gold, the danseuse elevates
common popular dance to an expression of virtuosity.

For the danseuse, her solo is a moment for expression or
“moment of freedom” as Johannes Fabian would put it (1998).
And while a danseuse occupies a low position within society and

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within a band, it is through these moments that she ceases to be
just a background dancer and becomes an artist and visible cul-
ture creator in her own right.

dancing the paradox
Kinshasa’s concert danseuses, so vital to the contemporary expe-
Rience, are nonetheless marginalized figures in Kinshasa. Viele
young women in Kinshasa strive to master movements exhibited
by danseuses. But even though many girls and women dream of
performing on stage, danseuses continue to be treated as marginal
members within both society and within their own bands.

Because “good” women do not perform on stage in front of
a male gaze for money, there is a public perception that only
women with questionable morals become danseuses in popular
bands. There is a sense in which a danseuse sacrifices her mem-
bership in the dominant culture to help create a popular culture
which everyone is welcome to enjoy. Weiter, as she is consid-
ered by society at large to be an immoral woman, and band
members exploit her because she has no other economic oppor-
tunities, thus reflecting and reinforcing the gender imbalances
within Kinshasa’s society.

As discussed earlier, sexually suggestive dance movements
for women are stylized versions of ethnic dances such as the
Luba ethnic group’s mutuashi. While movement and gestures
may resemble or even be a direct replica of older folkloric
dance practices, costumes worn on stage recontextualize the
tanzen, provoking moral confusion. It can be said that the dan-
seuse is a reminder of the strict gender norms and social behav-

ior in this society where “tradition” and “modernity” are not so
clearly demarcated.

According to Bauman, performers are both admired and feared,
“admired for their artistic skill and power […] feared because of the
potential they represent for subverting and transforming the status
quo” (1977:45). In der Tat, concert dance offers women the potential
to communicate their selfhoods through dance solos. These solos
also enable the danseuses to become visible actors, which in itself
upsets conventions of accepted female behavior within the public
Kugel. Danseuses embody a tension in that they reproduce notions
of femininity as espoused by Kinshasa’s patriarchal society while
at the same time contradicting those notions in their dance solos.
Dance choreography lays bare gender dynamics and social norms,
as well as social paradoxes within public discourse.

Concerts are cultural sites for the creation and dissemination
of symbols and ideologies which inform the lived realities of its
performers. Popular dance in Africa merits more attention as it
is a medium and context for expressing social mores, social rela-
tionen, and in particular, the social position of young women.

Lesley Nicole Braun is a PhD candidate at Université de Montréal in
the department of anthropology. Her research focuses on the ways in which
dance in its embodied and symbolic forms participates in the constitution
of an urban experience. Most recently, she explored the dance of popu-
lar concert dancers in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Wo
she lived for a year. Braun is recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier
award, granted by the Canadian Humanities and Social Science Research
Council. lesnbraun@gmail.com

Notes

1 All quotes are from field interviews conducted by

the author between 20011–2012 in Kinshasa, DRC.
In Kinshasa, during slow ballads, rooted in

classic Congolese rumba music, people in the audience
(depending on how much space is available on the dance
floor) partner up to dance together. Partner dancing
speaks to a history of hybridity between Caribbean and
Congolese musical genres, which accounts for the intro-
duction of partner dancing in Congo in the late 1930s.

Biaya 1996 and Gondola 1997 examine several

historical factors which contribute to the public per-
ception that concert dance is inappropriate mode of
employment for women.

4 Because of the increase in ethnic intermixing,
many young people often have parents from different
ethnicities.

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