DANCE AND NIGERIA’S DEVELOPMENT: LOVERS OF THE ECONOMY SURELY HAVE MAJOR ROLES TO PLAY

Hard work, commitment, experience and intelligence at work

Stories of battles fought, won or loss, the effects and remedies in the now and future, the consequences, responses and reactions that followed the visits and message of emissaries and harbingers of war and the peace efforts, processes and resolutions that trail them are told through dance. Similarly, various forms of reconciliations; conflicts, abuses and the nature of engagements: peace building, peace enforcement and peace maintenance operations of different times are also told through dance. Stories of love, hatred and intimidation, harassment and denial; the good, the bad and ugly leadership and governance systems are sometimes revealed by choreographers in dance formats designed by them for public performance by dancers in arts theaters: open or closed, formal or informal; at the community arenas, family compounds and halls of different kinds and sizes.

Dance is an art under the creative economy and like other professions requires specific skills, orientation, exposure and character by the practitioners. Success in the industry demands strength, hard work, intelligence and commitment, just as other professions do. Dancers and the team of technical crew of the various dance groups are important, indeed fundamental to the growth and development of the Nigerian economy, which is not feasible if they are discriminated against rather than supported to play their role of building the economy through enhancing the capacity of other men and women gifted with the art of dancing and preparing them actively to be able to create a significant shift necessary to open up the economic space in the country.

Every lover of growth and sustainable development of Nigeria must be interested in pushing for the development of the dance sector of the economy by advocating that the right things should be done, and that various skills and abilities of different people should be identified, encouraged and promoted, especially, the creative industry. All lovers of the economy must promote genuinely diversification and sustainability, advocate and encourage strongly individual and group initiatives and as a matter of fact seek wider coverage and reach (national, state and local governments) of every development efforts in leading and stimulating increasingly economic activities.

Idea’s engineering, unwavering commitment by lovers of the economy to push hard for enabling environment reforms, and equally demonstrate willingness to inspire and motivate the public and private sector actors in the economy to raise in various forms and formats workable platforms that will enable opportunities for experiment by those with unique ideas to be created, to enable them to demonstrate their ideas and receive commendations, suggestions and criticisms; a way of promoting creativity, innovation and wealth generation activities in the economy. Apart from attracting the attention, input and sometimes buy-in of investors, giving people the room to experiment will improve their confidence, give them a sense of community and support, in addition to providing the system with the opportunity to accommodate varied ideas, skills and interests, views and opinions necessary to aggregate and streamline efforts and also channel the obviously lean resources more effectively for greater impact across board.

Aware that lovers of the economy are people who are unflinchingly committed to doing the right things and to keep pushing and supporting genuine, massive oriented capacity building, wealth generation and job creation, employment driven and cost effective economic activities, the need to draw their attention on the need to support and promote dance and the activities associated by it, which is what this piece stands for is propagated beyond this write-up.

The need for support, encouragement and promotion of the dance art in the Nigerian economy is overwhelmingly self-evident. There is abundance of talents in the area. Research experts in the academics and practicing Professionals in the area abound, and the country is endowed with rich heritage, arts and culture. That the country is the next tourist destination in the globe is another huge attraction. Graduate and none graduate dancers and their technical crew members exist in large numbers within the dance community. Dance groups of different age categories, sex and interest, skills and orientation practice for years at different corners and locations of the country and without any support from the authorities yet have never been deterred.

With the right support, commitment and encouragement of the various lead agencies and authorities, the dance community in Nigeria will create a major shift in economic activities of the country and by so doing open up the economic space, throw up new challenges and reveal new gaps and bring fresh perspectives to interrogate seriously the status quo, to excavate and shine light on the things that were not properly done, that were either neglected or rejected, leading in some cases to finding new ways of doing old things, or breaking into old ways of doing new things. The relevance of all these to job creation, wealth generation and harnessing of skills and relationship building between honing of skills and talent for the purpose of economic expansion are glaringly obvious.

Learning from the fact that it is by identifying, engaging and deploying effectively the available machineries needed for any meaningful outing and promoting objectively the product or output of the efforts that the issue of tapping maximally the benefits, in this case substantial growth and sustainable development of the economy is achieved. This development lays credence on the need to drag lovers of the economy to lend their voice and push actively for support and encouragement of the Dance community.

Looking down on the dance community or any other community of professionals for that matter; and projecting with positive attributions and encouragement any other community of professionals will do the economy no good. Rather than treat a skill like dance with disdain, efforts and commitment of all lovers of the economy should be directed at identifying, projecting and marketing the benefits and contributions of Dance to the growth and sustainable development of the economy and sharing these positive attributions consistently.

 

Nnabugwu Chizoba