There are no tutus, no point shoes, no perfectly straight lines. The term “ballet” is used across Francophone West Africa to describe a genre of staged folklore that was first made popular in the post-independence era. At a time when newly independent states strove to perform the dignity and uniqueness of African cultural practices, the term “ballet” suggested equivalence between African and European dance forms.

The Republic of Guinea was at the forefront of postcolonial African ballet in the 1960s and 70s, and Guinea’s cultural policy provided a model for similar programs across the continent, including in Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, and Côte D’Ivoire. During Guinea’s socialist period or “First Republic” (1958-84) under independence president Sékou Touré, the national troupes Les Ballets Africains and Le Ballet Djoliba toured the world to enthusiastic audiences. Ballet, percussion-only, and circus troupes followed in the 1990s and 2000s, some of the most renowned of which included Wofa, Les Percussions de Guinée, and Circus Baobab.

While ballet during the First Republic was a key form of state-sponsored media in Guinea, neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and 90s cut state funding for the arts dramatically, leaving room for the emergence of private ballets. In the capital city of Conakry today, there are private dance troupes in nearly every neighborhood and the remaining two national ballets recruit from within the capital, not from the countryside as they did during the Touré era. Artists trained in these dance and percussion troupes animate the city’s social ceremonies and political rallies.