Decolonising culture, staging traditional dances, creating a new music-dance genre: the National Ballet of Mali’s postcolonial agency

Like many newly independent African countries, Mali turned towards its cultural resources, especially music and dance, to build its national identity as part of the decolonisation process. The National Ballet was one of the national state-sponsored artistic ensembles created at the time of the achievement of independence in 1960 and as such, it had to display the music dance forms of the various Malian populations. Despite the Ballet’s claims of ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’, the traditional dances were adapted on stage by choreographers trained in socialist countries within the broader political context of the Cold War. Infused with Negritude and Pan-Africanism and entangled at the same time within a discourse on modernity, the theoretical ambition of the National Ballet was articulated in contradistinction to the colonial legacy. The article interrogates therefore the intricacy of this ideological and political background in order to apprehend the constellation of international relations and currents of thoughts that gave birth to the National Ballet. While examining the various means of postcolonial agency performed through the Ballet’s repertoire, the article demonstrates how a new music-dance genre emerged that spread widely in the postcolonial world within the subsequent decades.