Dance pedagogy and entrepreneurship: a study of Footprints Arts Ambassadors, Lagos

Abstract

This work examines the pedagogy of dance and entrepreneurship in the society. In other words, it seeks to engender dynamic essence between theory and practice, dance scholar and choreographer, and their impact on students/dancers with respect to teaching dance as a career for profit making against art for art sake. The teaching approaches provide for managing dance establishments as well as the art and act of dancing. In doing this, we adopted the managerial system of the Footprints Arts Ambassadors in Lagos, Nigeria as a prototype. We apply some fundamental tools of entrepreneurship that determine efficiency and effectiveness of a particular approach to business to empower the trainees. In the deductive method, we carefully derived some assertions and information that would later become helpful for this study through the structured one-on-one interview held with the director of Footprints Arts Ambassadors. In analytical method, we did cursory analysis of dance pedagogy and entrepreneurial study as well as review related literatures, magazines and journals. We identified some pedagogical yardsticks and entrepreneurial approaches which have been used in successfully managing the fledging dance company. We also discovered some considerable factors to establishing a successful arts entrepreneurial company in Nigeria.We found that economic and social trend, as well as some personal entrepreneurial attributesplay key role in an entrepreneur’s approach to arts and theatre management. Therefore, we conclude that, whatever approach, style or operation mode a dance/theatre entrepreneur chooses; his aim should be for the success and development of both individuals and company. Thus, we recommend that dance scholars and practitioners update their teaching approach to making dance pedagogy a viable and self-reliant endeavour, rather than being a tool for entertainment, body therapy and cultural propagation alone.This will undoubtedlyposition dance on the same pedestrian with other art forms globally making wave in the entertainment industrytoday.

Keywords: Dance pedagogy, Entrepreneurship, Trainees, Footprints Arts Ambassadors, Management