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Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

Abstract

In Amharic, Tizita is often referred to as a type of musical scale or ballad, but the word itself means so much more. Tizita is also a way of expressing a feeling of longing and memory for the homeland of Ethiopia. As a practitioner and now researcher of Ethiopian cultural dance, this proposed American Studies Senior Capstone project examines the significance of Ethiopian cultural dance within diasporic identities, how it can unite different people of different ethnic groups within the Ethiopian diaspora through mutual understanding, and how it connects diaspora to roots that we only know through the stories of our parents (missing something we never had). Part of my interests and what I consider to be the urgent stakes of Ethiopian performance arts and building a youth dance community is about resisting assimilation, preserving culture, and creating a peaceful environment with each other while acknowledging history. In this paper, I examine Ethiopian history of politics and culture, and its impact on the diasporic communities in the Twin Cities as various political tensions immigrate to the U.S. with our parents and trickle down to the diaspora. I will analyze how this affects how the diaspora act towards and view each other, looking specifically at the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups in Ethiopia. Traditional Ethiopian dance is also important in terms of representation to younger generations.

This paper is also in part an autoethnographic exploration of my own journey as a choreographer and dancer within two Ethiopian youth cultural organizations for the past 5 years, since 2021. Through this case study I hope to better understand the role dance takes in other dancers' lives and self identity. I aim to show how Ethiopian cultural dance as a practice is an important form of knowledge production because it teaches young people about cultural and political history, values, language, regional dynamics in Ethiopia.

Author Biography

Tsedenia H. Lozenski (she/her) is an Ethiopian-American from Arden Hills, Minnesota. She is an American Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies double major at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She has been a choreographer with two East African student organizations at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities since 2023, and 2026 is her last year with them. After graduating from Macalester, she plans to continue her dancing career as well as continuing her education in graduate school.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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