CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERARINESS IN CULTURAL CREATIVE DANCES PERFORMED IN THE KENYA SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES DRAMA FESTIVALS

Abstract

The Kenya Schools and Colleges Drama Festival is a series of student-theatre competitions in, held from January to April annually. Students across all learning institutions take part in these festivals. The competitive nature of these festivals provides an opportunity for participants to be creative in their submissions. The festivals feature many genres, including cultural creative dances. Traditional dances, as a sub-genre of orature, play are integral to the appreciation and maintenance of traditional cultures. They tell creative or literary stories orally and in a modern context. Therefore, this article seeks to articulate how cultural creative dances performed during drama festivals tell creative or literary stories orally. The study sought to describe the literary stories told and themes addressed through the dances, analyse the dramatic and oral literary features of these stories and the literary features included during performance and adjudication of cultural creative dances. The study used descriptive and analytical methods to underline important practical, philosophical, aesthetic, and psychological considerations in determining the artistic quality of cultural dances in Kenya’s Drama Festivals. It thus relied on qualitative data obtained through textual analysis, interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. The study employed the performance theory and theatre semiotics to examine the unique literary quality of these dances. The study found that cultural creative dances tell stories unique to the cultures from which they are composed. They also address themes of human or universal relevance out of those cultures. Moreover, cultural creative dances exhibit all features of literariness in terms of their composition. Some of these features make it to the stage performance and adjudication process. However, adjudication examines other technical aspects of production based on the themes prescribed for the festival by the government. This research underlines the place of cultural creative dance as dramatic genre and oral literary performance.