Reflections of Gebser’s Myth and Magic in African Masked Dance: Stabilizing Power through Performances of Change

• In Event: When Theater Changed the World: Pivotal Moments in Theater History

Abstract

In this paper the author attempts to offer African masked dance--becoming ancestral or forest spirit as a masking performance to explore identity transformation and expansion to third-subject building through the work of Jean Gebser. Two of Jean Gebser’s modes of consciousness are applied to the concealment of spiritual ancestral visitation in African masked dance. Additionally, a critique is offered that suggests how ritualized ceremonies might integrally make power and social dominance transparent.

Author

• Sakile Camara, California State University, Northridge