Akinsipe, Felix2023-04-182023-04-182008-041596-8998https://uilspace.unilorin.edu.ng/handle/20.500.12484/9268The flute summons the first candidate, Ejembi, to present his manifesto. The drums begin to pulsate. The mood is that of celebration on one hand, and that of expectation on the other. Ejembi bursts into the arena, with his acolytes dancing to the drumming which is particular to the Aringa masquerade, now rechristened Ikpokw' lkinabo (Abah 2005:43) emphasis mine. The above excerpt from the account by Abah 2005, described the only appearance of dance in the three scenarios that were performed in the Akpa TID workshop in 1989 in Nigeria. In the account of Abah and Etherton (1981 :9), the first two experiments of TID by Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Northern Nigeria, in 1980 and 1981 respectively, no mention of dance at all was made. Similarly, and almost two decades after, Harding's (1999:99), account of her participation in the Benue theatre for development workshop, left out the appearance of dance in any of the scenarios performed. More recently, in the practice of TID, dance can only be found employed as a means of 'gathering the crowd for the performance' but in the performance per se, it comes up, if ever it does, as an embellishment or spontaneous reaction to music. Dance has never featured as a direct means of communication for the handling a scene or as something on which the meaning or understanding of a scenario dependents. Why this is so is the main thrust of this paper. It is discovered that it is impossible to give what you don't have. For dance to perform and feature effectively in the TIDs it must be handled by trained professionals. But for now in Nigeria these people are very few.enDance studies, Nigerian universities, TfDArticle