Abstract Nkwa umuagbogho is an indigenous maiden dance of the Afikpo people of Southeastern Nigeria. It originally emerged as a part of the Mgba wrestling festival with its attendant ritual performances of young maidens. Before now, the performance was attributed to the men while the women only cheer the wrestlers with ululation and dance movements. There has been disruption to the status-quo While the maidens take centre stage to execute the movements, the men now remain on the sideline to play the music. The involvement and negotiation that brought about the change in the performance generally is one area that have not been adequately explored. This study therefore looks at Nkwa Umuagbogho as a ritual-cum-secular African dance. It also examines the intersections of performance aesthetics and discontinuities in Nkwa umuagbogho dance performance of Afikpo people, Igbo of Nigeria. This study adopts the qualitative research method and performance analysis and is therefore guided by the ethnographic approach. Through this methods, the study exposes the evolution of Nkwa umuagbogho as an adaptive performance that has continued to evolve overtime through some performance mechanisms such as; costumes, music, movements, make-up and paraphernalia as these create gender boundaries and aesthetics.
Casmir Enyeribe Onyemuchara (2026) studied this question.