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ABSTRACT
Since it took power by putting an end to the 1994 genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has initiated the project of building a new Rwanda. The latter is conceived as a de-ethnicised nation-state which, while being “modern” and open to socioeconomic development and the processes of globalisation, remains rooted in its ancestral past. Hence, Rwandan cultural heritage is integrated in this undertaking to create a unified and developed Rwanda. This article examines the current revitalisation of so-called traditional dances in Kigali as part of the endeavour to build a new national identity. It explores the changes in dance repertoire and dynamics that are brought about in current Rwandan dance performances in order to materialise the utopia of the new Rwanda. Special attention is given to the alliances between old and new, used as a way to establish continuity with an idealised precolonial past: classical pieces alternate with novel creations; long-standing dance forms are the basis for experimenting with new figures; Western-style dresses coexist with purportedly traditional costumes; and songs, performed without the need for innovation by Twa singers and considered tokens of tradition, are joined with constantly changing choreographies staged mainly by university students. While recognising the success of youth dance troupes in embodying the image of the new Rwanda, the article also critically addresses the unacknowledged effects of the imposition of the post-genocide state ideology: the growing uniformisation, spectacularisation and instrumentalisation of dances; persistent ethnic tensions within the troupes and Rwandan youth as well as an increasing divide between rich and poor, centre and periphery; and the marginalisation and exclusion of large parts of the population who cannot access the envisaged ideal.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the artists who have accepted to share their experiences and views on Rwandan dances. I am thankful, in particular, to the members of the Inganzo Ngari troupe who have so generously welcomed me and to the dancers of the Mpore troupe in Paris and their choreographer Nido Uwera for having initiated me into Rwandan dances and introduced me to several renowned singers and dancers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us, 17–18.
2. Hintjens, “Post-Genocide Identity Politics.”
3. MINECOFIN, Rwanda Vision 2020, 2, 8ff.
4. Ibid., 11.
5. D’Hertefelt and Coupez, La royauté sacrée, 76ff; Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, 39, 56; Newbury, The Land Beyond the Mists, 229ff.
6. MINISPOC, Policy on Cultural Heritage, 6.
7. Askew, Performing the Nation, 6.
8. Hughes-Freeland, Embodied Communities.
9. Guss, The Festive State, 14.
10. Neveu-Kringelbach and Skinner, Dancing Cultures, 14.
11. Neveu-Kringelbach, “Moving Shadows of Casamance.”
12. Reyntjnes, Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda; Hasselskog, Rwandan Developmental ‘Social Engineering’.
13. Ingelaere, “Living the Transition,” 454; Reyntjens, Political Governance, 167.
14. Clark, “Negotiating Reconciliation in Rwanda”; Ingelaere, Living the Transition; Thomson, “Whispering Truth to Power.”
15. Ingelaere, Do We Understand Life after Genocide.
16. Breed, Performing the Nation, 27ff.
17. Thomson, “Getting Close to Rwandans.”
18. Nkulikyinka, Initiation à la danse rwandaise traditionnelle.
19. Breed, Performing the Nation, 48.
20. Nkulikiyinka, Initiation à la danse rwandaise traditionnelle, 205.
21. Ibid., 206.
22. Hilker, Everyday Ethnicities, 10.
23. Ibid., 169.
24. Gaspard, Rwanda, The Rising Star, 258ff.
25. For instance, a repertoire of short, rapid pieces with changing rhythms, newly invented by the troupe, has been called igitandatu, which is the name of a part of the dance of the intore; see Nkulikiyinka, Initiation à la danse rwandaise traditionnelle, 256.
26. Breed, Performing the Nation, 10.
27. Since 2004, the organisation of the Arts Azimut festival in the University Centre for Arts in Butare has greatly contributed to familiarising youth with dance forms from other cultures. The festival includes an introduction to several African dances, as well as to Western contemporary dance.
28. Brandstetter, “Contested Pasts,” 13; Buckley-Zistel, “Nation, Narration, Unification”; Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us, 18; Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda, 9, 111.
29. NURC, The Rwandan Conflict, 5.
30. Chrétien, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs, 161ff; Mamdami, When Victims Become Killers, 59, 70, 74ff; Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression, 3, 9ff, 51ff; Vansina, L’évolution du royaume rwanda des origines à 1900, 91ff; Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, 36ff.
31. This discourse denies the inequalities in power that have characterised the Rwandan kingdom since the 18th century, especially since the reign of Rwabugiri. See Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression, 11, 19; Chrétien, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs, 162–165; Vansina, Antecedents to Modern Rwanda, 67–195; Newbury, The Land beyond the Mists, 331ff).
32. NURC, The Role of Women, 7.
33. NURC, The Rwandan Conflict, 5; NURC, The Role of Women, 7ff; NURC, Community Conflict in Rwanda, 15.
34. NURC, The Rwandan Conflict, 7, 10; NURC, The Role of Women, 7; NURC, Community Conflict in Rwanda, 4, 18ff.
35. Chrétien, “Hutu et Tutsi au Rwanda”; Chrétien, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs, 236ff; Chrétien and Kabanda, “Rwanda, Racisme et génocide”; Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 35, 87ff; Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda, 15.
36. NURC, The Rwandan Conflict, 10; NURC, The Role of Women, 7ff, 2007: 21ff.
37. IJR, Republic of Rwanda, 5.
38. NURC, Le rôle de la femme, 27.
39. MINECOFIN, Rwanda Vision 2020, 12.
40. Ibid., 20.
41. “Rwanda Folk Dancers Thrill Singaporeans.”
42. For instance, Kinzer, A Thousand Hills, 1ff; Zakaria, Africa’s New Path.
43. Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us, 38; Reyntjens, Political Governance, xvi, 163ff.
44. It is interesting to make a parallel in this respect between the current government and the government of Habyarimana (1973–1994). According to De Lame (“Mighty Secrets,” 293), under the Second Republic, Rwanda was the showcase of Western development policies. The president was successful in producing the image the West desired. He appealed to the theme of cultural authenticity by “folklorizing” popular events and lent legitimacy to the ostentation of tokens of modernity, contrary to the traditional value of discretion (“Mighty Secrets,” 306).
45. Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us, 219.
46. Eramian, “Ethnicity Without Labels.”
47. Buckley-Zistel, “Remembering to Forget”; Vandenginste, “Governing Ethnicity After Genocide.”
48. Kiwuwa, Ethnic Politics and Democratic Transition, 161.
49. Begley, Resolved to Fight the Ideology of Genocide; Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us, 11; Eltringham, “The Past is Elsewhere.”
50. Vidal, “La commémoration du genocide.”
51. Begley, Resolved to Fight the Ideology of Genocide; Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central-Africa, 96; Waldorf, “Instrumentalizing Genocide.”
52. Longman, “Limitations to Political Reform”; Meierhenrich, “Topographies of Remembering and Forgetting”; Reyntjens, Political Governance; Straus and Waldorf, “Seeing Like a Post-Conflict State.”
53. Beswick, “Democracy, Identity and the Politics of Exclusion.”
54. Ansoms, “Rwanda’s Post-Genocide Economic Reconstruction.”
55. Pells, Pontalti, and Williams, “Promising Developments”; Sommers, Stuck.
56. The workshop was co-organised with Andrea Grant, Elizabeth Spackman and Ariane Zaytzeff.
57. Except with reference to the Twa, whose ethnic identity is sometimes mentioned.
58. Hilker, Everyday Ethnicities.
59. Hughes-Freeland, Embodied Communities, 19, 237.
60. Barz, “Music and (Re)Translating Unity.”
61. Grant, “The Making of a ‘Super-Star’.”
62. Breed, “Theatre in Post-Genocide Rwanda.”
63. Ibid., 48.