A talk by Jeleel Ojuade (Ojaja University, Nigeria)
Part of the Centre for Comparative Literature’s series of talks ‘Body-thoughts’: The CCL Postcolonial Dance Series, 2025.
Tuesday 13 May 2025, 6pm BST (online)
This paper explores the evolution and significance of dance as a critical postcolonial tool in Africa, highlighting its role in reclaiming cultural identity, resisting colonial narratives, and promoting national consciousness. Postcolonial dance in Africa is not merely an artistic expression; it is a powerful site of memory, resistance, and sociopolitical commentary. Drawing from both traditional and contemporary practices, African choreographers have reimagined movement vocabularies to interrogate histories of subjugation, celebrate indigenous heritage, and respond to modern realities.
Essentially, the paper examines how African dance, once suppressed or misrepresented during colonial regimes, has been revitalised in the post-independence era as a means of self-definition. Through case studies from regions such as Nigeria and few other west African countries, Southern Africa, and the Horn of Africa, the paper highlights how choreographers, dance scholars, and performers use the body as an archive of ancestral wisdom and a voice of political agency. The paper also engages with the theoretical frameworks of postcolonialism, embodiment, and cultural hybridity to situate dance within broader discourses on decolonisation and identity reconstruction.
In reclaiming dance as a living, dynamic form of cultural communication, African societies continue to challenge the lingering effects of colonialism, while embracing innovation and transnational dialogue. Therefore, the paper ultimately positions postcolonial dance as a vital part of Africa’s intellectual, artistic, and political resistance, an embodied language through which histories are contested, futures are envisioned, and identities are constantly negotiated.
The talk will be chaired by Sola Adeyemi (University of East Anglia, UK).
Attendance is free but booking will be essential to receive a link to attend. BOOKING HAS NOW CLOSED. Watch the recording of the seminar:
The participants
Jeleel Olasunkanmi Ojuade is Professor of Performance and Cultural Studies, with particular emphasis on Dance Studies and Practice; and is Vice-Chancellor of Ojaja University in Nigeria.
Jeleel started his dance career with his father’s troupe, Ojuade and his Dance Group, at the tender age of four in the early 1970s, featuring in local, state, national and international performances and competitions. He was the youngest member of the National Theatre of Nigeria, representing his country at the XII Commonwealth Games and the Warana Festival in Brisbane, Australia (1982). His academic works focus on Yoruba Bata, and Dundun.
Sola Adeyemi (chair) is Associate Professor and Director of Drama in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia.
His research centres on world theatres and performance studies; intercultural performance culture; contemporary British theatre; postcolonial literature and theatre (and the themes of decolonial and Global South studies); and diasporic African and Black British theatre in its exploration of the politics of identity on the British stage. Methodologically rooted in dramatic criticism and the practice of theatre, he approaches such work from a sociocultural, political and postmodernist standpoint. He is also interested in questions of collectivity within theatre, the intersections of performance and culture, and experiments in the performer-spectator-spect-actor relationship. He is working on Performing Myths in West and South African Drama and Writing the Past: An Anthology of Early Plays by Femi Osofisan (publication 2025).
