DANSE: A French-American Festival of Performance and Ideas opens with a work by Alain Buffard. The French in America! I do not speak of the emigrating 17th-century Huguenots, or of Alexis de Tocqueville, who journeyed around the U.S. in the 19th-century and said wise things about it. Je ne parle pas de croissants, ni de boeuf bourgignon. Dior? Pouf! Bidets? They never caught on. No, I … [Read more...]
Out of Africa
In the not-so-distant past, white explorers, colonizers, missionaries, and historians referred to Africa as “the dark continent” or dramatized it as “darkest Africa.” They may have been alluding to the skin color of most of its native inhabitants, but certainly to their own inability (and unwillingness) to understand its customs and lore. Over two September weeks, at two different New York … [Read more...]