Paper short abstract:

Through the detailed examination of the staging of a 1980 state dance festival, I will analyse how Eurocentric conceptions of correct dance performance were used to relay/construct normative conceptions of time, space and the body in postcolonial nation-building Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

In 1980, during my first year in Nigeria, I was invited to participate in the Bendel State Festival of Arts and Culture as 'Chief Judge of Maiden Dance'. Organised by the Bendel State Arts Council, this festival brought to the state capital, Benin-City, during one week over the Christmas holidays, nearly one hundred dance groups from the state's nineteen Local Government Areas, each group performing in one of five categories of dance (ritual, ceremonial, masquerade, maiden and acrobatic). Using ethnographic material constituted during this event and other related sources from the 1980s, I shall examine how eurocentric conceptions of dance structure, staging and performance permeated all stages of the festival from group training and selection to the marking of presentations and the awarding of prizes, and how these were relayed by personnel of the Arts Council, an institution itself modelled upon its British counterpart.