PAST WORKS
Spirit Child is inspired by Azaro, the main character in Ben Okri’s novel, The Famished Road. Azaro is a spirit child, a restless, cyclical child; a child that keeps being born, keeps dying and keeps coming back. It’s a child that doesn’t like reality, because he perceives of reality and existence as very difficult, full of suffering and full of pain, and that human beings don’t have very much of a talent for making life beautiful. His refusal to renounce his connection to the other world makes him perpetually haunted by the search for essence. “Why am I here, why do I stay?"

Yuropa follows the odyssey of three young travelers who left the shores of their homes, heading to an unknown destination over the sea. In this piece for three dancers and one musician, we focus on the difficulties and troubles linked specifically to traveling Africans, specifically those who take to the roads, as a last chance to self-preservation. YUROPA hopes to say something of a world in humanitarian crises. With the believe that the problem of migration, is the problem of the 21st century.

Given the long shadow of colonial domination, especially in the field of knowledge production, 'Infinite Nowness' is an investigation into alternative knowledge production and practice, using performative engagement and instant composition, as a mean of creating an experience, both the performer and for the audience, summoning and activating all our beings; the body pushed to its limit, the mind stretched from and beyond understanding, and the soul drawn to manifest itself in flesh, in forms, in sounds, in emotions and sensations. As we strive to capture and render visible the ephemeral nature of "time", in the production of unnamed and unnamable forms, that objective knowledge and knowing fails to capture completely.

A lyrical and rhythmic piece painting a fictional band of rebels and nomads, not all from the same creed or nation, but who collectively build one unique tribe of like-minded individuals who want to be catalysts for change – As drought encompasses their lands and communities, the tribe seeks to bring back the water with their bodies and souls. They shake things up with their music, songs and dances until the rain pours.

We Almost Forgot imagines the past as an entity, that has returned to tell the present of its own horrors, of what it must hear in order to make proper sense of itself, rather than offering a reconciliation or a realistic account, it has simply come on a cathartic mission, delivering our headlines in unforgettable personal stories. Beyond history and memory, what else has the past got to offer the present?

This piece for four disabled and six non-disabled dancers, speaks of beauty in a non-conventional manner; what really is beautiful and what is not? What are the parameters for judging the beautiful from the ugly? Is there any such thing as a perfect body or a perfect human or a perfect dancer? How does beauty manifest through difference in abilities?

Between dance, performance art, stand-up, singing, conference and a dance class for the audience, this uplifting spectacle portrays a very charismatic dancer, very at ease on the stage. In Africaman Original, Qudus Onikeku takes us on a journey into the universe of African and Afro Diaspora art world, through the sound of Fela Kuti, now imagined as a dancer.
