Since the 1980s, a number of European citizens travel each year to Senegal, Guinea or Burkina-Faso to participate in dance and drum camps. Amongst this market of African dance, the Senegalese dance and music performance called sabar has become very popular during the last years. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the “transnational social field” of Senegalese dance classes, this paper sheds light on the transactions, identity constructions and routes of mobility that are produced around the teaching of sabar in Europe and in dance workshops organised in Senegal. A first part of this paper describes how these circuits of mobility to Africa continue with migrations of Senegalese dancers and musicians in Europe, and with the network of African dance classes they have developed there. A second part examines the image of Africa that is reproduced and challenged during sabar dance camps in Dakar, and describes the encounters and exchanges between Europeans and Senegalese, analysing the entanglement of material and emotional dimensions that structure these circuits (Cole and Groes, 2016).

Alice Aterianus-Owanga est anthropologue, Maitre-Assistante et boursière Ambizione du Fonds National Suisse àl’Université de Lausanne. Après 8 années de recherche sur le hip-hop et les musiques urbaines au Gabon, elle travaille désormais sur les constructions identitaires et les parcours migratoires développés autour de la circulation des danses sénégalaises en France et en Suisse. Également réalisatrice de documentaires, elle a codirigé deux ouvrages collectifs et plusieurs dossiers de revue (Cahiers d’études africaines, Politique Africaine, Gradhiva, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales). Son livre (Le rap ça vient d’ici ! Musiques, pouvoir et identités dans le Gabon contemporain, éditions de la MSH, 2017) a reçu le Prix « Coup de Coeur » de l’Académie Charles Cros en 2018.