By Anote Ajeluorou
Itoya – A Dance for
Africa
It started with A Feast of Return, where he told South Africa in new poetic dance
drama. He confessed to being challenged by a South African what a bloody Nigerian
knew or had to say about the rainbow nation. But his adversity had emerged from
the theatre in London to mumble his apology. That poetic excursion into dance
drama was in far away in London before he settled for his poetry again and
forgot. Or so everyone thought.
But it took several years later before he could settle down
to another dance drama. This time, it’s Nigeria the Beautiful. Indeed, seeing all the melodrama that Nigeria has
become, especially in recent years with the story of sleaze brazenly told on
prime time TV, it’s a wonder such Odia Ofeimun, gadfly of the public space and
social critic, could see something beautiful about he beloved country Nigeria.
His eminent guests didn’t spare him last Friday when he
celebrated on that score. Indeed, what is beautiful about Nigeria? Ofeimu had
his ready answer. So, he asked rethorically, “What is good about Nigeria? It’s
the variousness that we quarrel with. There must be a reason why God made us
various. If we can work it out, the world will be envy us. There are very few
countries in the world where people suffer and still have hope in tomorrow.
There are dreams that just won’t die. That is only possible only in Nigeria”.
It’s this capacity to see hope, light in the midst of
darkness that has become the hallmark of the Nigerian writer for which Ofeimun
is an embodiment. After Nigeria the Beautiful,Ofeimun’s new dance drama is the story of the origin
of Africa’s problems. As literary sage, Chinua Achebe famous propounded, ‘If
you don’t know where the rain started beating you, you will not know when it
stopped beating you’. For Nigeria, or indeed, Africa to be the country and
continent of pride, they must recognize where they are coming from, the story
of the suffering and pain and blood that have become their hallmark (for Itoya means ‘I can’t tell you all the suffering I’ve been
through’).
Although only a sneak preview was put on stage as teaser, it
was clear that Ofeimun has appropriated the dance drama genre for himself in
his masterly evocation of grand poetic idiom, vigorous dance performance and
dramatic output. With his unassuming director, Felix Okolo, it is clear the
future of stage or live theatre belongs Ofeimun. Uniquely also, he does not
charge fees. He manages to find a sponsor who buys his performance wholesale
and throws it open to the public. Certainly, it ‘s only Ofeimun who can pull
off such feat in a season of drought for the live theatre.
And so between Nisi George and ????, the audience is made to
experience the critical, turning point moment when the continent received
visitors from faraway that turned the tide and changed the fate of a once happy
people and exposed them to all manners of indignities ever a race could suffer
for the greed of others. Now, with the African world so twisted out of joint,
Ofeimun does not prescribe a romantic view of returning to past in Negritude
fashion. Rather, he proposes a mastery of the invaders ways as a prelude to
conquering both himself and the wider world!
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