Yes.

I will rewrite Chapter Two with a citation in every substantive paragraph, using recent and traceable
academic sources wherever possible. I will also remove weak or difficult-to-verify references from the
previous version.

The rewritten chapter will keep the same supervisor-approved focus: it will not argue that Nollywood
lacks dance; it will examine whether dance already present in films performs narrative functions such as
plot advancement, emotional expression, character development, relationship development,
symbolism, and cultural communication. Recent scholarship supports treating dance as a meaning-
making system rather than only entertainment.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This chapter reviews literature relevant to dance, narrative, film language, African performance,
Nollywood, and the narrative use of dance in cinema. The review is necessary because the present study
is concerned with the storytelling function of dance in King of Thieves (2022) and Omo Ghetto: The Saga
(2020), rather than the mere appearance of dance in Nigerian films. Dance may be present in a film as
celebration, ritual, background action, entertainment, or cultural display; however, it becomes a
narrative device only when it contributes meaningfully to plot, character, relationship, emotion,
symbolism, or theme (Patel-Grosz, 2022).

The chapter is organised into conceptual clarification, dance in African cultural performance, dance and
cinematic storytelling, dance representation in Nollywood, the comparative relevance of Bollywood,
empirical review, theoretical framework, research gap, and summary. The review combines recent
studies with a limited number of foundational texts because theories such as Performance Theory and
Film Semiotics remain relevant for analysing embodied action and visual signs in cinema.

2.2 Conceptual Clarification

2.2.1 Concept of Dance

Dance refers to organised bodily movement that communicates through rhythm, gesture, posture, facial
expression, spatial arrangement, costume, music, and interaction. It can occur in ritual, social, theatrical,
religious, political, recreational, and cinematic contexts. Dance is therefore not simply movement
performed to entertain an audience; it is a communicative practice through which people express ideas,
feelings, values, identities, and relationships (Patel-Grosz, 2022).

Dance can represent actions, events, and relationships even where spoken language is limited. Patel-
Grosz (2022) demonstrates that narrative dance can be examined as a system capable of conveying
meaning through movement and sequence. This perspective is important to the present study because
it supports the argument that dance in a film may communicate story information and should not
automatically be treated as a pause from the narrative.

In film, the meaning of dance depends not only on choreography but also on the way the dance is
presented. Camera framing, editing, music, sound, costume, lighting, setting, and the reaction of other
characters influence how viewers interpret a dance sequence. A dance may communicate joy in one
scene, fear in another, and social tension in another, depending on its cinematic and narrative context
(Yu et al., 2022).

2.2.2 Dance as Communication

Dance is a form of non-verbal communication because the body can convey emotions and ideas without
direct speech. Gesture, movement speed, body posture, eye contact, distance between performers,
rhythm, and use of space may communicate attraction, anger, fear, grief, pride, resistance, unity,
exclusion, or spiritual devotion. In this sense, dance provides an alternative mode of expression that can
complement dialogue in film (Patel-Grosz, 2022).

Dance communication becomes especially important in audio-visual media because viewers interpret
movement alongside sound and image. Yu et al. (2022) explain that dance images on screen are shaped
by visual vocabulary and the imaging environment. This means that the audience does not interpret
dance through movement alone; they also interpret the camera’s attention, the editing rhythm, the
music, the setting, and the emotional atmosphere surrounding the sequence.
A dance scene can therefore communicate inner feelings that characters may not openly express
through dialogue. For example, shared movement may suggest romance or reconciliation, while
separation in a group dance may suggest conflict or exclusion. The narrative usefulness of dance lies in
its ability to make emotion, identity, and relationship visible through the body rather than through
explanation alone (de Lucas, 2024).

2.2.3 Dance and Culture

Dance is closely connected to culture because it carries the values, beliefs, histories, identities, and
social practices of a people. Traditional dance may preserve songs, rhythms, movement patterns,
costumes, symbols, and communal memories that are passed from one generation to another. Dance is
therefore a cultural archive as well as a performance practice (Ayobade, 2021).

In Nigeria, dance is associated with festivals, weddings, funerals, religious events, royal occasions, rites
of passage, community celebrations, and popular entertainment. Its meanings vary across ethnic
communities and social settings. Dance can communicate respect for authority, spiritual belief,
communal unity, praise, mourning, social hierarchy, resistance, and celebration. Nigerian film can
therefore draw from a wide range of dance traditions and contemporary dance cultures when
representing local life (Aondover & Aondover, 2023).

However, the cultural presence of dance does not automatically make it narratively useful in a film. A
film may include dance to establish a Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or urban Nigerian setting without allowing
that dance to influence plot, character, or theme. The present study therefore distinguishes between
dance as cultural representation and dance as narrative action. Dance becomes narratively important
when its cultural meaning affects how the audience understands events, conflicts, characters, or themes
(Vitalis et al., 2024).

2.2.4 Dance as a Narrative Device

A narrative device is a technique used by a storyteller to communicate information, organise events,

reveal character, establish setting, create suspense, express themes, or guide audience interpretation. In
film, narrative devices may include dialogue, flashback, montage, voice-over, music, costume, gesture,
editing, lighting, and movement. Dance functions as a narrative device when it performs one or more of
these storytelling roles (de Lucas, 2024).
Dance can advance plot when it introduces or causes an important event, reveals information, creates a
meeting between characters, exposes conflict, or prepares the audience for later action. A dance
sequence may also reveal character by showing confidence, fear, grief, attraction, rebellion, pride,
emotional restraint, or transformation. These functions make dance part of the dramatic action rather
than a decorative interruption (Kim & Choi, 2023).

The issue of integration is central. A dance sequence is narratively integrated when it connects with
events before and after it, changes the audience’s understanding of a situation, or contributes to later
developments. Where a dance sequence can be removed without changing plot, character, relationship,
or theme, it is likely functioning mainly as spectacle, celebration, or entertainment. This criterion guides
the analysis of the selected Nollywood films in the present study (Kim & Choi, 2023).

2.3 Dance in African Cultural Performance

Dance occupies a central position in African cultural performance because it is often connected with
music, drumming, chanting, costume, ritual, storytelling, and audience participation. In many African
contexts, dance is not treated as an isolated art form; it is part of communal life and is performed during
ceremonies that mark important social, political, and spiritual occasions. This relationship between
dance and community gives African dance strong communicative and symbolic value (Ayobade, 2021).

African dance is frequently communal because performers and spectators may participate together
through clapping, singing, call-and-response, chanting, drumming, or physical involvement. This
participation reinforces collective identity and social belonging. When represented in film, communal
dance can establish a sense of place and show the relationship between an individual character and the
wider community (Abdulsalam, 2023).

African dance also contains symbolic meanings. Costume, rhythm, formations, masks, movement style,
performance space, and music may communicate authority, spirituality, mourning, celebration, fertility,
transition, conflict, or historical memory. These meanings become important to film analysis because a
director may use them to create visual signs that support the story’s cultural and thematic meanings
(Ajiwe & Gladys, 2023).
2.3.1 Dance as Cultural Memory and Identity

Dance preserves cultural memory because it transmits gestures, rhythms, songs, costumes, stories, and
values across generations. It enables communities to remember their histories and reinforce their
cultural identities through repeated performance. In this sense, dance can function as a visible
expression of heritage and belonging (Ayobade, 2021).

Nollywood frequently draws from cultural practices because Nigerian audiences respond positively to
films that represent familiar traditions, beliefs, oral forms, and communal experiences. Abdulsalam
(2023) found that many Nigerian audiences value culture-oriented films because such films allow them
to recognise and enjoy their traditions and beliefs. This suggests that dance in Nollywood can serve an
important cultural function even before its narrative value is considered.

For the present study, cultural identity is relevant because King of Thieves is situated within a Yoruba
epic environment where performance, kingship, ritual, costume, music, and communal life are central to
the film’s world. The study will examine whether dance in this context merely confirms Yoruba cultural
atmosphere or whether it also communicates authority, danger, communal tension, spiritual meaning,
or plot movement (Adesemoye et al., 2023).

2.3.2 Dance, Ritual and Symbolism

Ritual dance refers to dance performed within spiritual, ceremonial, religious, or traditional contexts. It
may involve chanting, drumming, costume, procession, symbolic movement, communal participation, or
sacred objects. Ritual dance can communicate reverence, fear, authority, transition, collective belief,
and the relationship between human beings and spiritual forces (Ajiwe & Gladys, 2023).

In film, ritual dance can be used to establish the seriousness of a conflict, communicate a warning,
foreshadow danger, reveal the beliefs of a community, or show the authority of a ruler or spiritual
figure. Its meaning is strengthened by cinematic elements such as lighting, sound, editing, costume,
camera angle, and the reaction of characters within the scene (Yu et al., 2022).

This is particularly relevant to King of Thieves, where ritualised and traditional performance may be
connected to the film’s representation of kingship, community, spirituality, and conflict. The present
study will examine whether such dance scenes influence the movement of the story or whether they
remain mainly ceremonial and visually decorative.

2.4 Dance and Cinematic Storytelling

Film communicates through a combination of visual and audio-visual elements. Dialogue is important,
but stories are also told through framing, editing, sound, music, lighting, costume, setting, facial
expression, gesture, and bodily movement. Dance can therefore become part of cinematic language
when it helps viewers understand what characters feel, what relationships exist, and what changes are
taking place in the story (Yu et al., 2022).

Dance is particularly useful in cinema because it combines body movement, rhythm, music, emotion,
and visual composition. A carefully constructed dance sequence can communicate several layers of
meaning at once. It may establish mood, show a relationship, reveal a character’s state of mind, indicate
a social setting, and advance the plot within a short period of screen time (de Lucas, 2024).

de Lucas (2024) explains that narrative dance has both a story level and a performance level. The story
level concerns the events, characters, relationships, and changes that the dance communicates. The
performance level concerns how those meanings are presented through movement, staging, costume,
music, and audience interpretation. This distinction is useful because the present study examines both
what dance means in the selected films and how the films present that meaning.

2.4.1 Dance and Plot Development

Dance advances plot when it introduces, causes, reveals, or prepares for a significant event. A dance
may occur during a festival, wedding, coronation, party, ritual, competition, or public gathering, but its
narrative importance depends on whether something meaningful happens through it. It may create an
encounter, expose a rivalry, communicate a warning, reveal a secret, or produce a decision that affects
later events (Kim & Choi, 2023).

A dance scene does not advance plot simply because it appears during an important occasion. Its
narrative function must be evident in the consequences of the scene. If a dance introduces a conflict,
changes a relationship, establishes a threat, or helps the audience understand why a later event occurs,
it performs plot-related work. If it has no consequence beyond visual excitement, it remains largely
spectacular (de Lucas, 2024).

The present study will examine the selected films by asking what occurs immediately before, during, and
after each dance sequence. This will make it possible to determine whether dance contributes to the
chain of events or functions only as an interval of celebration, ritual, comedy, or entertainment.

2.4.2 Dance and Characterisation

Characterisation refers to the way a film reveals a character’s personality, emotions, motivations,
identity, and development. Dance can contribute to characterisation because the way a character
moves, responds to rhythm, occupies space, interacts with others, or refuses to participate can
communicate aspects of personality that dialogue may not directly state (Patel-Grosz, 2022).

A confident character may dance openly and command attention, while a fearful or troubled character
may move cautiously, remain isolated, or avoid the dance entirely. Dance may also reveal attraction,
jealousy, grief, pride, rebellion, insecurity, freedom, or emotional change. Therefore, a character’s
movement can become a source of narrative information (Kim & Choi, 2023).

Dance can further reveal social identity through costume, music, movement style, location, and group
participation. A royal, ritual, street, party, or youth dance may show the community to which a character
belongs and the social position that character occupies. This makes dance relevant to both King of
Thieves and Omo Ghetto: The Saga, which represent different cultural and social environments.

2.4.3 Dance and Relationship Development

Dance can communicate relationships between characters because shared movement can make
closeness, attraction, rivalry, power, competition, trust, tension, reconciliation, and group loyalty visible.
A dance between two characters may show romantic interest or conflict even where the characters do
not verbally explain their feelings (de Lucas, 2024).
Group dance can also communicate inclusion and exclusion. A character who is welcomed into a group
performance may be represented as accepted, while a character who is ignored, mocked, or physically
separated may be represented as isolated. The arrangement of bodies, eye contact, rhythm, and
distance can therefore reveal social relationships in a visual manner (Patel-Grosz, 2022).

This function is especially relevant to contemporary urban Nollywood, where dance may be associated
with friendship, parties, popular music, humour, group identity, and rivalry. The present study will
examine whether dance scenes in Omo Ghetto: The Saga contribute to the development of relationships
or simply provide entertainment.

2.4.4 Dance, Time, Space and Transformation

Dance can communicate the passage of time through montage, changing costumes, changing locations,
shifts in music, and changes in movement. A dance sequence may show that days, months, or years
have passed without requiring lengthy verbal explanation. It may also show characters moving through
different places, social environments, or emotional stages (Khubchandani, 2025).

Dance can also represent transformation. A character may move differently after experiencing love, loss,
success, fear, conflict, or personal growth. Changes in rhythm, posture, costume, movement quality, and
interaction with others can show that the character has changed. Such transformation becomes
narratively meaningful when it is connected to the character’s earlier and later behaviour (de Lucas,
2024).

This narrative function is commonly visible in Indian popular cinema, where song-and-dance sequences
may condense time, travel, fantasy, desire, and emotional development. The present study uses this
example only to identify possible storytelling functions; it does not suggest that Nollywood should
imitate Bollywood.

2.5 Dance Representation in Nollywood Films

Nollywood represents Nigerian life through language, family relations, spirituality, humour, music,
fashion, social conflict, cultural practice, and everyday experience. Dance appears in many Nollywood
films because it is already part of Nigerian social and cultural life. It can be found in palace scenes,
festivals, rituals, weddings, funerals, religious gatherings, parties, clubs, street performances, and music-
centred scenes (Aondover & Aondover, 2023).

Nollywood’s use of culture has attracted scholarly attention because films can project cultural identity
and influence how audiences understand Nigerian traditions. Vitalis et al. (2024) argue that directorial
decisions influence the construction of cultural authenticity and identity in Southern Nigerian cinema.
This makes it necessary to examine dance not only as an inherited tradition but also as a deliberate
cinematic choice.

Dance in Nollywood may be traditional, ritualised, social, comic, celebratory, urban, or music-driven.
However, the presence of these forms does not automatically prove that dance is narratively integrated.
The key question remains whether the dance changes the audience’s understanding of the plot,
characters, relationships, conflict, or themes.

2.5.1 Dance in Traditional-Themed Nollywood Films

Traditional-themed Nollywood films commonly use dance to establish indigenous settings, royal
authority, ritual practice, spirituality, community identity, celebration, mourning, and historical
atmosphere. These films often depend on costume, music, language, setting, and performance to create
a culturally recognisable world for viewers (Adesemoye et al., 2023).

The cultural richness of traditional dance can make it visually powerful, but visual richness alone is not
enough to establish narrative value. A dance becomes narratively meaningful when it reveals communal
fear, confirms authority, signals spiritual danger, prepares the audience for conflict, introduces a major
event, or affects a character’s decision. This distinction is important for analysing dance in King of
Thieves.

Recent studies of Nollywood cultural representation show that indigenous cultural elements can serve
narrative purposes when they are deliberately encoded within a film’s story world. Ajiwe and Gladys
(2023), for example, show that visual elements in Nollywood epic representation can communicate
African ideologies and cultural realities. The present study extends this concern by examining whether
dance, specifically, performs such narrative work.
2.5.2 Dance in Contemporary Urban Nollywood Films

Contemporary urban Nollywood films often present dance in parties, clubs, social gatherings, street
scenes, celebrations, and music performances. These scenes may reflect Afrobeats culture, youth
identity, fashion, friendship, humour, social aspiration, romance, and group belonging. Dance therefore
has the potential to communicate contemporary Nigerian social experience (Ayobade, 2021).

In Omo Ghetto: The Saga, dance may be connected to group identity, social interaction, comedy,
celebration, rivalry, and popular entertainment. The study will examine whether these dance scenes
reveal character relationships or social status, develop the plot, communicate emotional change, or
remain mainly entertaining additions to the film.

The present study does not assume that contemporary dance is less meaningful than traditional dance.
Both traditional and contemporary dance can function as narrative devices when they are connected to
plot, character, emotion, relationship, symbolism, or theme. Their differences lie mainly in cultural
setting, movement style, music, and social context.

2.6 Comparative Perspective: Dance as Narrative in Bollywood Cinema

Bollywood cinema provides a useful comparative perspective because song-and-dance sequences have
long been a visible part of Hindi popular film. Such sequences may communicate romance, desire,
fantasy, memory, social identity, emotional conflict, mobility, and transformation. Dance in Bollywood is
therefore often discussed as more than entertainment, even though some sequences may also function
primarily as spectacle (Khubchandani, 2025).

A Bollywood dance sequence can show that characters are falling in love, experiencing emotional
conflict, imagining a desired future, travelling across several locations, or moving from one stage of life
to another. It can condense time and space while allowing viewers to understand feelings that may not
be openly expressed in dialogue. This makes Bollywood useful as an illustration of the narrative
potential of dance (Patel-Grosz, 2022).

The comparison is not intended to suggest that Nollywood should copy Bollywood. Nollywood has
different languages, performance traditions, audiences, cultural histories, and production conditions.
The comparison is useful because it demonstrates possible narrative functions of dance and helps the
present study ask whether dance in the selected Nigerian films is used to communicate emotion,
change, relationship, time, travel, or thematic meaning.

2.7 Empirical Review

Patel-Grosz (2022) examines narrative dance as a semantic system and argues that dance can represent
actions, events, and relationships. The study is relevant because it provides a strong conceptual basis for
treating dance as a meaning-making practice. However, it focuses on Bharatanatyam and formal
semantic analysis rather than Nigerian film. The present study applies the insight that dance can
communicate narrative information to Nollywood cinema.

Yu et al. (2022) examine dance images in documentary films and show that the visual presentation of
dance influences audience interpretation. The study is relevant because it draws attention to camera
work, framing, editing, sound, and visual environment. However, it focuses on documentary film rather
than fictional Nigerian cinema. The present study applies this concern to the audio-visual presentation
of dance in Nollywood narrative films.

Kim and Choi (2023) investigate the role and function of dance in the film Rumba. Their study shows that
dance and gesture can lead a film’s narrative where dialogue is limited. This study is directly relevant
because it supports the argument that dance can perform substantial storytelling work. However, it
focuses on a non-Nigerian film and does not compare traditional and contemporary dance contexts in
Nollywood.

Aondover and Aondover (2023) examine Nollywood’s representation of Nigerian people and culture and
conclude that Nigerian films reflect and project social realities. The study is useful because it confirms
that Nollywood is an important site of cultural representation. However, it does not specifically examine
dance or its narrative function. The present study narrows the focus to dance as a cinematic storytelling
resource.

Vitalis et al. (2024) investigate cultural representation and authenticity in Southern Nigerian cinema.
Their study shows that directorial agency shapes cultural meaning and audience perception. The study is
relevant because dance representation is also shaped by directorial and production decisions. However,
the study does not focus on choreography or the narrative role of dance; the present study addresses
this specific gap.

Khubchandani (2025) examines Bollywood dance in relation to identity, mobility, morality, and desire.
The study is useful because it demonstrates that dance in popular cinema can communicate social and
emotional meanings beyond spectacle. However, it focuses on Indian cinema. The present study uses it
only as a comparative source for identifying narrative possibilities of dance.

The reviewed studies show that dance, visual storytelling, cultural representation, Nollywood, and
Bollywood have received scholarly attention. However, there remains limited research that closely
investigates whether dance sequences in Nollywood films perform narrative functions such as plot
advancement, character development, relationship development, emotional expression, symbolism, and
thematic communication. There is also limited comparative study of traditional dance in a Yoruba epic
film and contemporary dance in an urban Nollywood film. This study addresses these gaps.

2.8 Theoretical Framework

This study is anchored on Performance Theory and Film Semiotic Theory. The theories are suitable
because they explain how bodily movement, gesture, costume, rhythm, sound, visual composition, and
cultural symbols produce meaning in performance and cinema.

2.8.1 Performance Theory

Performance Theory is associated with scholars such as Richard Schechner and Victor Turner. It
understands performance as a meaningful social and cultural activity through which communities
express identity, belief, conflict, ritual, authority, and collective experience. Dance, drama, ceremony,
ritual, and public action can therefore be studied as forms of cultural communication (Schechner, 2020).

The theory is relevant to the present study because it treats the body as a medium of meaning. Dance
movements, gestures, rhythms, costumes, and interactions may communicate cultural identity,
spirituality, authority, communal belonging, emotion, and social conflict. This is especially useful for
examining traditional and ritualised dance in King of Thieves.
A limitation of Performance Theory is that it does not provide detailed tools for analysing camera work,
editing, framing, lighting, and sound in film. Since dance in cinema is shaped by these technical
elements, the theory is combined with Film Semiotic Theory.

2.8.2 Film Semiotic Theory

Film Semiotic Theory is associated with scholars such as Christian Metz and Roland Barthes. The theory
examines how films communicate through signs and codes. In cinema, meaning may be produced
through images, costume, gesture, facial expression, music, sound, lighting, editing, setting, camera
angles, and movement (Metz, 1991).

Dance can function as a semiotic sign in film. A particular gesture, rhythm, costume, body formation, or
movement style may communicate celebration, authority, fear, love, grief, conflict, spirituality, identity,
or transformation. The audience interprets these signs in relation to the wider story and the cinematic
techniques used to present them (Yu et al., 2022).

Film Semiotic Theory is useful because it allows the researcher to analyse not only what dancers do but
also how dance is framed, edited, scored, and placed within the film. Its limitation is that it may pay less
attention to the social and cultural context of performance. This is why it is combined with Performance
Theory.

2.8.3 Relevance of the Theories to the Study

Performance Theory and Film Semiotic Theory complement each other. Performance Theory explains
dance as an embodied cultural practice, while Film Semiotic Theory explains how dance becomes
meaningful through visual and audio-visual signs in film. Together, the theories support the analysis of
movement, rhythm, gesture, costume, music, setting, camera work, editing, sound, cultural symbolism,
plot development, character emotion, relationship development, and theme in the selected films.

2.9 Research Gap

Existing studies have examined dance as communication, dance in film, Nollywood cultural
representation, epic film imagery, and Bollywood dance. However, there is limited scholarship that
directly investigates dance as a narrative device in Nollywood films. The problem is not that dance is
absent from Nollywood; rather, there is insufficient detailed analysis of whether dance already present
in Nigerian films performs substantial storytelling work.

There is also limited comparative analysis of dance across different Nollywood settings. King of Thieves
provides a Yoruba epic and ritual context, while Omo Ghetto: The Saga provides a contemporary urban
context. Examining the two films together makes it possible to compare whether traditional and
contemporary dance are differently integrated into plot, character, relationship, culture, and theme.

This study fills the gap by analysing dance as both cultural performance and cinematic language. It
examines whether dance in the selected films advances plot, reveals character psychology, develops
relationships, communicates emotional change, expresses themes, and provides symbolic information,
or whether it functions mainly as spectacle, celebration, background activity, or entertainment.

2.10 Summary of Literature Review

This chapter has reviewed dance as a cultural, communicative, and cinematic practice. The literature
shows that dance can perform narrative functions by advancing plot, revealing character, developing
relationships, communicating emotion, establishing cultural identity, expressing themes, and indicating
transformation.

The review also establishes that dance is already present in Nollywood through rituals, festivals, palace
scenes, weddings, parties, clubs, and social gatherings. The major question is therefore whether these
dance sequences are deliberately integrated into storytelling. The comparative discussion of Bollywood
illustrates possible narrative functions of dance but does not propose imitation of Indian film
conventions.

The reviewed literature reveals a gap in detailed research on dance as a narrative device in Nollywood,
especially in a comparative study of a Yoruba epic film and a contemporary urban film. The next chapter
presents the methodology that will guide the analysis of King of Thieves and Omo Ghetto: The Saga.
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