Veteran Nollywood actress Omotola Jolade Ekeinde has said she enjoys dancing but will not do it as a compulsory tool to sell a film.
She shared the view during a recent appearance on TVC Entertainment. A clip from the interview circulated on Instagram on Tuesday.
“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.”
Omotola said the growing criticism around dance led promotions is tied to pressure, not creativity.
“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.
She clarified that spontaneous fun during promotions is not the issue.
“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.
The actress added that her duty is to deliver strong performances, not carry the weight of marketing strategies.
“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.
Recall that NigeriaTodayTimes 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.”