“Reading Hélène Neveu Kringelbach’s ethnography, Dance Circles, took me on one of the most intellectually stimulating journeys that I have ever experienced…[It] is excellent because the author destroys the enduring belief that dance is innate to Africans. Generous space is given to learning processes, questions of transmission, and performers’ reflective practice…Historians of dance will draw on innovative themes of inquiry in their field. Anthropologists will marvel at the dense ethnographic detail. This grounded ethnography indeed invites a careful reading. In other words, one does not leaf through this book, but must really read it.” · Africa“I enjoyed reading this book, which is very well written, focuses on a well-selected range of performance practices in Senegal and makes an interesting contribution to studies in that field. [It] provides intelligent analysis of performances by relating them in interesting and innovative ways, but its main strength lies in… offering wonderful ethnographic detail that brings out the contested nature of dance in relations between dancers and their audiences.” · Ferdinand de Jong, University of East Anglia“This is an absolutely first-class study. It ranges across space, genre and time, though with contemporary Senegalese perspectives always to the fore. It is artfully narrated, and the voice of a well-qualified and extremely thoughtful author is clear and distinct throughout. I would put it at the forefront of dance studies today, and it also makes a valuable contribution both to anthropological thinking about expressive culture, and to West Africa studies in general.” · Martin Stokes, King’s College, London
