A Night of Sikyi Dance: The Socio-Cultural Sensual Dialectics of Asante Dance through Performance Art

Abstract

Research on Asante's performances and arts overlooks the theme of Sexuality which has been misconstrued as being shrouded in secrecy and out of the public eye of which this paper has proven wrong. Evidence comes from our fieldwork in Asante on their erotic arts from ethnographic, cultural and artistic traditions. Also, a review of the literature on Sikyi and its aesthetic as well as ethical dialectics was thoroughly done. Data was solicited through personal and telephone interviews from respondents who were purposively sampled as well as participant observation. The study revealed that the societal ignorance of or the lack of interest in the Asante cultural eroticism has resulted in its extinction. Sikyi dance provided quite worthy a case to be studied to gather the linkage between the Akan people's sexuality and contexts within their cultural ethos and fragments of its complementarities in ‘sex education' within their standards of living.