Conclusion

Abstract “Spirograph,” the book’s epilogue, meditates on loss, disconnection, and failure as West African dance practice’s texture. Despite the fact that dancers are often “dancing down the line” in neat rows, the spaces that this book works to hold are looping networks of relation. This book refuses to evacuate the author’s agential impact on her research; and so she differently discusses gender, sex, and physical assault to hail the kinds of complications that West African dance research can bring forth. This is in the service of making an ultimate argument that violence—gendered, racial, sexed, colonialist—constitutes the spaces in which West African dance takes place. Being present, or dancing beautifully, is not evidence of immunity to harm. Harm is a stage, an audience, and a controlling presence for many.