A Conversation on Knowledge, Memory, & the Future of Dance in Nigeria | FAITH OKOH

#trending #dance #art #culture #preservation Dance is one of Nigeria's most visible art forms, and one of its least preserved. In this conversation, Faith Chukwuemeka Okoh, founder and convener of Speaking Dance, sits down to unpack the question behind the conference's fifth anniversary edition: why must the dance not die, and what does it actually mean for a dance to disappear? The conversation moves through what's really at stake when a dancer or choreographer passes without their practice being documented, not the dance itself, which is more visible than ever, but the knowledge it carries: the methods, the failures, the history, the things that never made it past one generation. From there, it opens into what it means for a dance community to have no archive of itself, why research and infrastructure matter for a discipline to be taken seriously, and why a growing wave of young dancers taking up space right now might be the moment this finally changes. Speaking Dance 2026 runs 29–31 October at the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History, Lagos, three days to keep having this conversation in person, and to start building what comes after it. Timestamps 0:00 — Why must the dance not die? 15:58 — A personal story: what made this the work 19:03 — What happens to a dance community with no archive? 28:02 — Five years of Speaking Dance: the journey so far 31:54 — The mental revolution: young people taking up space 34:20 — Who needs to be in the room? The whole dance ecosystem 36:13 — Why dance needs research, not just conversation 39:22 — Speaking Dance 2026: dates, venue, and the call to action Speaking Dance Conference Produced by Beghast Dance & Creative Arts Foundation #SpeakingDance #TheDanceMustNotDie #NigerianDance #DanceResearch #AfricanDance #MovingGrounds #DanceArchive