The Contextualization of Indigenous Dance Movement. A Critical Appraisal on Tatasoso Dance Performance

Abstract

The level of misinterpretation place on some of our indigenous dance movement has really de-emphasis its communicative potency. In Africa, dance movements are perfectly combined, nice ingenuity in its creation and aesthetically attractive .All these qualities found in our indigenous dance movement, have reduce its context to just a mere entertainment or a source of cultural identification only. But this myopic understanding cum interpretation on indigenous dance movement has really been of great concern to professional dance scholars, thereby motivating them to redress people’s perception in seeing indigenous dance movement as a communicative, educative and informative tool by giving it a contextual interpretation – base on its theme, form, pattern and style. The essence of contextualization in indigenous dance movement especially that of the chosen case study Tatasoso is to x-ray the choreographer’s intention both emotionally, sociologically, environmentally and religiously while creating the dance movements. At this stage the theory of art for art sake becomes secondary while communicative interpretation in dance movement takes the upper edge. This paper therefore will critically appraise Tatasoso dance movement base on its contextualization for effective understanding.