Terrapolis

After Re:INCARNATION (2021) and Out of This World (2023), Nigerian choreographer Qudus Onikeku returns with TERRAPOLIS, the final part of his acclaimed trilogy on the collective will to transformation.

Set against the turbulence of ecological collapse, TERRAPOLIS unfolds as a living prophecy—an African odyssey that summons ancestral wisdom and emergent myths as vital tools for planetary healing. Sixteen dancers and musicians, trained at TheQSchool and drawn from diverse practices, embody a fractured world where the elemental Òrìṣàs—of water, wind, and earth—revolt through floods, storms, and tremors. In their fury, they demand atonement, renewed kinship with the more-than-human community, and a rewilding of the human spirit.

On stage, Yorùbá rituals, philosophy, and symbols converge with the energy of contemporary youth culture. Dance fuses with live music, fashion, storytelling, and chant to create a visceral, visual, and sonic experience—where myth collides with memory, and dancing bodies become vessels of survival, renewal, and resistance.

With TERRAPOLIS, Onikeku offers a poetic meditation on endurance, adaptation, and transformation. At once luminous and unrelenting, the work conjures hope from chaos: a carnival ablaze with rhythm and light, carried by an extraordinary new generation of Nigerian artists.