Contemporary theatre in Nigeria, in its attempts at cultural renaissance has demonstrated an atavistic tendency impacting on the natural and the spiritual environments. This paper attempts to study the relationship of theatre texts, the physical and spiritual environments as they affect theatre dance performers and the audience. It examines understanding of reality in performance and how efforts to aesthetically demystify the esoteric in Nigerian theatre end up in further mysicism. Pluralistic cultural analysis method is employed to examine two different productions of Rhythm of Life (a dance theatre) one of which culminated in serious cases of spiritual possession of the performers and some members of the audience. The paper reveals that spiritual reality can be invoked by touching on the cultural codes which appear dormant but ignitable in dance theatre performances in Nigeria and must therefore be carefully managed.
Keywords: Atavism, Dance theatre, Efficacy- entertainment dyad, Environments, and Cultural renaissance.
