Qudus Onikeku: Not living in the shadows

He has had an illustrious career dancing and choreographing.

Qudus Onikeku, one of the new generation Nigerian creative artists, blazes Abuja music and dance floor with his latest innovation, ‘We Almost Forgot’.

The latest work is a feature of six other talented creative minds, including one actress, who will attempt to hold thousands of enthusiastic audience spell bound by their performances on Sunday night at the National University Commission Auditorium in Abuja.

It will be a night of solidarity through dance and music. The artists from various backgrounds with intimidating profiles and identities from Nigeria, Morocco, Gabon, Algeria, Madagascar and France will take the audience through high energy movements, story telling, singing and music, a performance that aims to question the past, present and body memory in a fictionalised story of wars and crisis from an individual perspective.

The dance promises to offer a joyous paean to the pleasures of the body in an area of the city dominated by high finance and lack of entertainment.

For a country that has always loved music and dance, it will be fun to raise the Abuja theatrical temperament to fully embrace Onikekus work.

‘We Almost Forgot’ Abuja is the third in a series that started in Berlin on June 17, 2016, moving to Lagos on June 24 and lastly Abuja on 25.

The dance hopes to feel the genuine sense of fun in a city that sleeps at the weekend and hopefully the night will belong to the privileged ones who will be at the event, enjoying the way it disrupts the spectacle and drabs of everyday life.

Onikeku said in one of his interviews: “I create a movement identity that fuses dance and acrobatics, while I make my Yoruba culture my basis, and combining it with several other influences such as hip hop, capoeira, and contemporary dance vocabularies, to weave a certain understanding of the human nature and condition.”  

Born in Nigeria in 1984, Onikeku, is a graduate of the popular French National Higher School of Circus Arts, who spent 10 years in France studying and honing his skills.

He is known for his solo works and performances, writings and research. He’s had several awards to his credit including Dancer of the year 2009, best solo performance in Mali in 2010 and the New choreographic talent in France in 2012.

This event which is was initiated through by the Germen Embassy in Nigeria and the institute Francais du Nigeria in conjunction with Krump Dance Studios is aimed at improving the contemporary dance in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

The Abuja première of ‘We Almost Forgot’ will be introduced by Kornelia Blitzer-Zenner, cultural attache of the Embassy of Germany in Nigeria and Aude Urcun-Brunel, cultural attache of the Embassy of France.