Workshop
Contemporary

Qudus Onikeku is a movement artiste made of diversity. Over the decade, he has established himself as one of the preeminent multitalented artistes, working today with different media: performance, research, installation, curating and community organizing. He is the co-founder and artistic director of QDance Center Lagos. Qudus’ artistic practice intersects between his interest in visceral body movements, kinesthetic memory, disruptive practices and finding new vocabularies for performances that aren’t centralizing Eurocentric approaches, embracing an artistic vision and a futurist practice that both respects and challenges Yoruba culture and contemporary dance. He has created a substantial body of work that ranges from solos to group works, as well as artiste-to-artist collaborations with visual artists or architects, musicians or writers, multimedia artistes or scientists. He has participated in major exhibitions and festivals including Venice Biennale, Biennale de Lyon, Festival d’Avignon, Roma Europa, TED Global, Torino Danza, Kalamata Dance Festival, Dance Umbrella, Bates Dance Festival etc. His dance works is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. He has been a visiting professor of dance at the University of California Davis and Columbia College Chicago. He is currently the first “Maker in Residence” at The Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship of the University of Florida 2019-2022. Qudus Onikeku lives and works in Lagos NG and Gainesville, USA.

The corporal investigation in my pedagogical approach, works mostly with a dance philosophy that is looking for ways of creating dualities, oppositions and tasking the body for multiple expressions, which includes basic rules of improvisation; using repetition, andparoxysm, strength and fluidity, stillness and nothingness. This investigation also examines how constraints, restrictions and limitations creates a new kind of freedom for the dancing body, and in the process creating new ways of moving, and finding a balance between what we control and what transcends us. This could eventually lead to a mode of writing that is party improvised and loosely written.