Evocations of the Sun in Modernity

This article situates the French dancer and choreographer of color Nyota Inyoka’s Egyptian-inspired work within the context of modern Orientalist Egyptomania and relates her to the avant-garde. Drawing out Inyoka’s ambiguous positionality the article not only demonstrates how Inyoka’s work disrupted the phenomenon of Egyptomania, most notably in her performance Prière aux dieux solaires ( Prayer to the Sun Gods ) (1921), but also unearths the ways in which her work, as it performed ‘ancient Egypt,’ deserves to be held alongside related and more canonized avant-garde practices.