DANCE IN YORUBA RITUALS

Abstract

This paper does a critical survey of dance performances within the process of worshipping the pantheons of gods in Yorubaland. Using the Ifa ritual as a model, this article, through an anthropological approach, uses dances performed during worship by Ifa adherents in Ile-Ife, a Yoruba sub-genealogy in Osun State. Consequently, the paper founds the spiritual connections of these dances to the process of pacifying and adoring Ifa. This finding is eminent because the authors employed the method of movement descriptive analysis of some selected dance vocabularies performed by the worshipers of Ifa within Ife. The movement descriptions were, anthropologically based on the culture and personality and cultural configuration approach (Anya Peterson Royce, 1977, 19) where groups of performances by the Ifa worshipers within the Ife cultural milieu were closely studied. The paper holds that there are symbiotic relationships between dance and the spiritual realm in general, and Ifa in particular. Hence, the power of dance in religious practice lies in its multisensory, emotional, and symbolic capacity to create moods and a sense of a situation in attentionriveting patterns by framing, prolonging, or discontinuing communication (Judith Lynne Hanna, 2004). On this submission therefore, the paper concludes that the efficacy of dance regarding spiritualism and faith is central to the worship of some deities in Yorubaland, and any attempt to remove it from such observances will render the ritual order impotent