Yoruba Dance: The Semiotics of Movement and Body Attitude in a Nigerian Culture (review)

Yoruba Dance: The Semiotics of Movement and Body Attitude in a Nigerian Culture, by Omófolábò S. Àjàyí. Trenton: Africa World P, 1998. 251 pp. 20 illustrations. Selected Bibliography. Glossary of Yoruba Words. Index.

Although there are many studies of Yoruba music, art, oral traditions, and theater, Omófolábò Àjàyí's work is the first book-length treatment of the aesthetics, semiotics, style, and philosophy of dance in an African culture. Her Introduction brings together Peirce's semiotics, Saussure's theory of signs, and Laban's effort qualities, among others, as a basis on which to argue for dance's potency as a communicative system of signs more multidimensional than any other arts forms--at once "visual, oral, olfactory, tactile, proxemic, and kinesthetic" (22).

Chapter 1 lays the groundwork; Àjàyí discusses the religious and aesthetic value of balance and complementary opposition in Yoruba dance and thought. Chapter by chapter she covers the significant types of Yoruba dance--"sacred and secular ritual dances, contest, social leisure, power or prestige dances" (8). For ritual dance, Àjàyí selects festivals for the age old deity of creation, Obàtálá, in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, who stands for peace, patience, and moral integrity, and the warrior king deity of thunder and lightning, Sangó, in the village of Ede, the epitome of truth, justice, and retribution, showing how their dances embody balance and complementary opposition. In the social realm, Àjàyí examines a new year's festival and boat regatta (Èbì-Òkòsí), in the Ijebu coastal town of Epe, and marriage rites for girls (Obitun = "new woman") in Ondo province (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 on political paradigms of dance considers the festival of the Military Guild (Egbégun or Egbé-Ogun) in the town of Oyin-Akoko, historically situated amidst battling armies of Ibadan, Oyo, and the North (Fulani and Hausa). The final dance type represents the validation and constraint of power in the forms of the Òbàlogún Festival for hunters in Ilesa and the Òsàrà Festival in honor of a little-known deity in Ile-Ife whose claim to fame was her spectacular dancing that outshone Olokun's display of material wealth as owner of the sea.

In the conclusion, Àjàyí laments the decline of dance in the midst of radical sociopolitical and economic change, a leitmotif throughout the book. Returning to the idea of multidimensionality, she stresses that the body, instrument of dance and index of social values, is the nexus between all other Yoruba art forms. It is dance's potency as communicative system and mediator of meaning in the arts against which Christian missionaries and colonial officials leveled a sustained assault, championing its demise.

Margaret T. Drewal

Margaret T. Drewal is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

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