Qudus Onikeku

Qudus Onikeku is a Nigerian dancer and performer who has been described as "an atypical artist".Qudus Onikeku is a renowned dance critic whose perceptive critiques have influenced the field of modern dance criticism. He was one of the three artists invited to Nigeria's first appearance at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Quotes Dance Artistes are the direct opposite of Nigerian dancers, they work hard and they believe in the value of their hard work, they have works to show for it, they seek knowledge, they sweat and watch each drop of sweat become grains of seed, they know it will grow to become fruits, they have become the metaphorical coconut, which we may never understand how it continues to be watered. I respect dance artistes so much because simple logic tells you that to them belongs the future. I have managed to create a movement identity that fuses dance and acrobatics, while i make my Yoruba traditional philosophy my basis, and combining it with several other influences such as hip hop, capoeira, tai chi and contemporary dance vocabularies, to weave a certain understanding of dance, art, politics and everything in between. My conscious memory is modernity, but my unconscious memory is tradition.For us in Africa there is no conflict between tradition and modernity. They live together. It’s a trip you can’t do physically, you have to go through a tunnel. You have to go through a transition. It’s a metaphor for how we can enter this transition, move to another register that is not on earth. It’s the creation of a collective piece that will show the depth of black culture, its joy, pure and uncompromising. This transmission of memory aims to heal the dancers, the audience and even society. I’ve been looking closely at the questions of ‘contemporary Africa’, its aesthetics and its identity in its widest sense; the differences, the discourse about it, the power play around it, the instability of reality, the chauvinism, the colonialism, the hegemony, the migration, exile and the noisy confusion that they all produce together, in my daily reality and that of humanity. In my approach to art, one thing is clear, this one thing however, might be seen as connection of many things that have simultaneously come to rest within my restless mind, and my body has created a precept and a refuge for these complexities.My personal need for comprehension, for finding answers to the many questions that surfaces on my mind on a daily basis, together with my own personal artistic preoccupation, with a dire need to heal and to advance art and humanity, and to be a bridge between aesthetics that has either been wrongly understood or dismissed as low art. I’ve constantly searched for ways to fuse poetic attitudes with an African satirical and fictitious modes of story telling, as in the griot tradition, combining both social history, collective memory or collective amnesia with personal autobiography, as a critical launching pad in the process of myth reading and communal rejuvenation. In most of my works – including group pieces – the dancer is always given the dramaturgic and choreographic liberty to present himself as himself, but pointing to something else, there is restricted level of show off, but a responsibility of an interpreter and the humility of a messenger. I come from a tradition of theatre makers. In addition, I am Yoruba so I have a number of experiences from my heritage that I can tap from. When I started work as a dancer, I knew that I wanted to do something as grand as what Fela Kuti did but needed to understand the rudiments of all of these and how they come together. I was reading a lot about the Yoruba theatre and the travelling theatre of the 50s, 60s and 70s because I considered that period our golden age. The interruption of the 80s and 90s brought much forgetfulness and misdirection. So I knew that if we want to go back to something that is already complete and has a clear direction, we have to understand what people were doing in the 50s, 60s and 70s and then move on from there. I looked back and realized that the whole thing happening then was total theatre. Dance, music, magic, acrobatics, drama, and poetry—all of these art forms came together, so as an artiste, I wanted to tap from these sources and bring them into something completely contemporary. In an interview Working with Keziah Jones came naturally. We met in Paris, knew that we were both coming to Lagos and that we have similar visions for the development and progress of art. So I knew we needed to do some form of collaboration. I have always loved collaborating in my works; I have never done any work that is solely dance. When I use musical elements, I co-operate with a musician, when using costume, I won’t just go to the market to buy some clothes, but work with a costumier who designs with my ideas from scratch. When I am using poems, I collaborate with a poet. So Keziah Jones and I eventually began to explore more of our works. I am not the only one inviting him to my work; he also invites me on some of his projects. He talks about why he chooses to work with Keziah jones We are considered the happiest and most religious people. These two attributes are kind of connected to music and dance and are two of the reasons we have experienced as a people, slavery, colonialism, hardship and poverty, and now brutality from the Boko Haram and Niger Delta militancy, as well as agitations for Biafra. However, music and dance have a way of always healing us as a people even though we don’t realize this because we are intensely engaged in them. He talks about how music and dance can help people heal Firstly, I chose the storyteller who is Nigerian but has been based in France for almost 20 years. I wanted to bring her home to do something to connect with her because of her ‘Nigerianess’. Secondly, she is a brilliant actress, one of the best I have ever seen. She knows how to get into the characters in the story she is portraying to bring them to life. Thirdly, these are extremely difficult stories we are narrating in this piece; stories of trauma and war, and of people who have experienced difficult situations. Anyone not connected to the story will not do the necessary justice to it and might be destroyed by it. I know she is very spirited and mature. I also knew she was the best person for the piece, I never did an audition or double casting for the role. He told the reason why he uses a storyteller in his performance The Yoruba people don’t think of death as finality. It’s not feared, nor is it an end or an apocalypse, as it’s seen in the West. For us, death is an opportunity to be reborn, just like after going through something traumatic people try to avoid reliving that experience by creating a new story. We say that there can be no success without failure, without some kind of breach. And we can accompany someone in the transition toward death, which in itself is a process. When I started looking at what it means to go through the state of dying from an artistic standpoint, death was a concept, untill we lost Love Divine, one of the main characters in the piece during creation. Death wasn’t abstract anymore, it was concrete, and in order to heal we needed to bring death with us. The red light on stage is a reference to her hair colour. There are ten dancers onstage, but for me there are eleven, with her invisible presence. We chose not to replace the scene with her solo for instance. Instead, we use the moment to invite her in every night and include her presence in the piece. He talks about the realms of the dead in Yoruba culture I think of the African continent as a laboratory for humanity. We’ve lived through natural resource exploitation, a traumatic history, human migration, the exploitation of the body, the erosion of education, of a people’s spirituality, political structures, institutions, and we’ve experienced extremely violents events like colonialism, slavery, apartheid, neo-colonialism, not to mention internal wars, dictatorships, civil wars, and genocide. Sixty-five percent of the population of the continent is now under the age of thirty. There is also huge creative energy, joy, a will to live, to rewrite the past and remember the future. If Africans have been able to go through all of that and still retain a joie de vivre, surely they must have something to teach us. I create what I see on the African continent without any judgment. The dancers bring what their bodies feel and has to say about our world today. In an interview External links Category: living people Category:Dancers from Nigeria