CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
According to Innocent Akioya (2006) he stressed that, to a typical African child, music is life. There is music in almost everything that happens around him. His mother sings when washing cloths. The sister sings while sweeping. The father whistles to tune while on the farm. When the family gathers together for a ceremony, singing is done, singing being an important part of music; music is therefore that thing that makes activities around him come alive.
According to Innocent Akinoya (2006) he defined music as sound that please the ears. According to Abolagba J. A. (2003) he sees music as the combination of organized sounds that is pleasant to the ears. Sound, therefore, is the main source of music. It must be pleasing to the ear, if it is organized, if not it will be regarded as noise.
DANCE
Abolagba J. A. (2003) defines dance, as an act in its form, is a rhythmic movement to music either along or with a partner or in a group. Dance is also use of the body to communicate a message. However, while drama is rooted in words, music in songs, dance is rooted in body movement. There is this saying that Africans are dancers. This is because Africans dance to any music they listen to:
Dance as an art plays various roles in an individual or group of individuals. This includes:
1. People dance to glorify God.
2. People dance to express their feelings
3. Dance is used for entertainment
4. People also dance to exercise their bodies.
5. It is used to appease the gods.
DANCE PATTERNS
A dancer must master the techniques for his profession, since dance has its own methodology. Also, dance differs from one culture to another. This is why Europeans dance Ballat, while Nigerians have either the Bata dance of the Yoruba, Antilogous of the Igbo or the dance of the Hausa. Each of these different dances have their own peculiarities, hence their techniques must be mastered before they can be performed.
There are some basic denominators that are found in basically all dances. They are the factors that underline techniques. Once they are mastered, the dancer has no problem in dancing. They are the dancers tool, the “body”, the place he occupies during performance either on stage, or on an open area called the “space” the way he responds to rhythm either slowly or very fast called the “time”.
TYPES OF DANCE
Dance in Nigeria is of two main types, these are: free dance and stylized dance. In the free dancing, there are no specifications as to how each dancers move in terms of space, relationship to other dancers and body movement. Rather, each dancer expresses his inner feeling independent of what other dancers or other parts of the body do.
Stylized dance on the other hand, is concerned with purposeful and uniformity in movements. The movements are planned in such a way that body relationship and individual relationship are all meaningful examples is the atilogwu dance.