Veteran Nollywood actress and filmmaker Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde has said she has no issue with dancing for fun while promoting a movie, but will not do so if it feels forced or obligatory.
Omotola said this during a recent appearance on TVC Entertainment.
“I’m sorry, I would not be doing the dancing. I’m very, very sorry. It’s just not me. I dance. I love to dance, I’m sure a lot of us love to dance,” she said.
The actress explained that the growing backlash against dance-driven movie promotions is largely due to the pressure placed on actors to participate, rather than allowing such moments to occur naturally.
“I think the problem and the reason why a lot of people are kicking back at it is because you want to dance because you feel like it, not because you have to,” she said.
According to the actress, there is nothing wrong with cast members dancing during promotional activities, as long as it happens organically.
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“There’s a difference, okay? So there’s nothing wrong with, oh, you know, you’re promoting a movie and you guys are just having fun. That’s different,” she said.
Omotola stressed that her responsibility as an actor ends with delivering a quality performance, noting that marketing and distribution should be handled by professionals in those fields.
“But when it becomes a chore, when it becomes, oh, this is what you have to do to even sell a movie, it’s not professional. I already did the project, You know, I should go around, you know, talk about the project, promote the project, and then let the people whose job are to distribute and do the advertising of the project to do that,” she said.
Her remarks reflect a wider industry debate about how films are promoted, with more creatives questioning whether visibility should come from trends or from structure and proper marketing systems.
The NaijaTimesUSA had earlier reported that Nollywood film director Kunle Afolayan has said he’s willing to release his movies in cinemas only if he’s guaranteed he won’t have to dance to sell them.
Fielding questions during an appearance at The Lagos Business of Film Summit, Afolayan highlighted the trend as one of the reasons why he has been away from cinema.
“I’m one of the people who started this cinema gig. Even all these dancing, I started dancing before anybody. You can ask. Even in London, so it’s not just local,” he said.
He added, “I want to make a film. But if you guarantee me that I don’t have to dance to sell that film… We need to come up with other strategies. How do we sell without exhausting ourselves? I don’t know how Funke and the likes of them are doing it – creating all of those skits, every day changing into different costumes. I cannot.”