Dandyism

Tuesday 29 October

Dances at 11am & 1.30pm in Museum Street 

Dandyism is centuries old, and for the original African dandies, it represented male empowerment and post-colonial freedom.

African Dandies appropriated the flamboyance of the 18th Century English & French gentlemen in defiance against slavery, referred to by some as a resistance movement.

By the 1960s it had become a phenomenon, a way to preserve a legacy of African culture and challenge conventional male stereotypes.

Dandyism is a celebration of style and cool as well as a concern for humanism, gender and identity in our increasingly divided society.

In this new dance work choreographer Patrick Ziza explores the Dandy’s fashion and style as an assertion of freedom, the evolution of this cultural phenomenon into a modern-day norm, and how it relates to black masculinity in the 21st Century.

Dandyism is flamboyance: dress sharp and present your best self!

FREE / Suitable for all ages 

About the artist:

Capuagate choreographer, Patrick Ziza, came to live in Gateshead from Rwanda as a teenager. Following his degree at Sunderland University he taught contemporary dance and afro-fusion across the North East region, in Germany and France. As a choreographer he has developed his own style of movement, embodying the raw, unrefined energy and expressive dynamism of dances originating in Central East Africa

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