Interview with Qudus Onikeku
“If you focus so much on becoming something or like someone, if your focus is on being accepted by those who in the first place don’t have the courage to be free. Then you are not living, you are in fact on the opposite side of living. ” -Qudus Onikeku
I met Qudus Onikeku in Abeokuta, Nigeria at the Ake Arts and Book Festival in November 2014. He performed an electrifying, captivating rendition of My Exile is in My Head. It left the audience short of words. Qudus is a choreographer, teacher and creative thinker. He is making headlines internationally, performing his dances in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. We talk about his art, his journey to date and what drives him. Qudus continues to send a strong, positive message to the younger generation that there are many avenues to creating a livelihood while still living out your passion. Here is my interview with Qudus Onikeku, as he walks his path to greatness.
Tell Us About Qudus Onikeku
Qudus Onikeku is a restless but highly soulful and intuitive individual, a lover of beauty, poetry, paintings, sculpture, music, and everything that sings and manifests the beauty, the loneliness, the comedy, the irony and the tragedy of being here now, often fired up by the feelings of unjust and imbalance, with a great passion for using his gift and wealth to touch lives.
This gift of mine expresses itself mostly in dance and this wealth is the accumulation of my lived experiences. I am a big traveler, a nomad chanting at the borders of different cultures. My deep understanding of art, politics, language, life, beauty and everything in between is what serves as a basis for all my contradictory preoccupations, and my body always create a tunnel for them all, to be channeled through my dance without conflict.
What got you interested in dancing?
I doubt if I will ever be able to answer that question, because I think I was already dancing before I became aware of me dancing. What I can recall is that my first corporal expression goes far back to the years of childhood, when I saw this individual who did (judging with my adult mind now) a simple acrobatics on the playground, and that simple immediate action triggered something in me at the age of five. It is that desire to express something of the self, the unschooled self, the uncolonized self, the unguided self that I now relate to the authentic self. That desire for a true expression must be the element responsible for that interest in dance. 
Tell us about your journey.
My journey is such a long one. I’ve never been able to completely narrate it, one, because I always feel it irrelevant recounting the past, when there is still a lot to be done, secondly, the damn journey is so long that I fear I might bore people, and lastly, it is incredibly complex even for me to make a proper sense of it, at least for now. That said, I’ll just say I started with acrobatics at the age of five, which led me to dance at the age of 13, that discovery messed me up and is still messing me up till date.
I left high school as a disgruntled science student at 16. Quickly began a career that already became international from age 17, but the pressure at home, to go to school began to heat me up, after I decided to get ‘serious’ even if I knew for sure that I was only writing a love letter to depression, at 20 I got an admission into University of Lagos to study Mathematics and statistics, yeah I did, on a merit list. Simultaneously I got a long term contract with a dance company in France. Dilemma, to go or not to go, yes it might seem very obvious now, but I had a tough time deciding whether to continue schooling or pursue my career in dance. Anyway I stepped out of school, and went for the contract, with one ambition in mind – “find your school in France”.
After three years of working, touring, discovering, and finding out what I want for myself, I decided that I would be doing myself a great deal of damage if I go to a dance school in France, so I chose to attend a circus arts school, I know, circus sounds weird, but it’s a contemporary circus, at least that’s what it’s called – no monkeys, lions or elephants. My three years in school was as difficult as hell, because I was already untamable and unschoolable, but it was a great exercise eventually, I left that school at 25, attempted relocating to go change the world from Lagos, but Lagos made a mockery of my claims. Yes I got amazing ideas, but incredibly inexperienced, I was immediately spat out of Lagos, hence my return to France, now with a different status – an exile. That will be the beginning of my artistic journey as a man at the border. Everything after that is where the journey is right now.
What have you learned along the way?
Hmm, defiance. Bold disobedience, because life is a bitch. The society discourages radical existence, but those rascal radicals who succeed, eventually become the society’s heroes. We must continuously reinvent the wheel at will. Negation, history is full of lies and make believe, to combat those lies, we need news stories and new names, we need to create parallel make believes, more than history I’ve learnt to trust in my body memories. In my Intuitions.
Courage. Fear rules everywhere and there are millions out there who want to make you believe they have you in mind when they try to convince you, but they only speak of their fear-ridden conditioned mind. I’ve learnt that to live is to eliminate fear, when there is fear, you are not.
Trust. I’ve also leant to trust myself first, which leads to the trust in my intuition and eventually trust for fellow humans, no matter how much it hurts over and over again, there is always a chance for change and advancement.
What or who inspire you?
Everything. Because the inspiration is not in the what or the who, I can do nothing else but be opened up, my pores, my brain, my heart and my entire being, and this impeccable sensation, as though the outer layer of my flesh is continuously being peeled off my skin, as though I no longer have a barrier between me and the world, as though I am the world, and the world is me, as though I am a fetus in complete unison with the cosmos, as though I am the dog that waits patiently all day, the long lasting aged tree that keeps the memories of the space in time, as though I am every collateral damage, every child soldier, every woman raped in war or peace time, as though I am Gaza, as though I am Kabul, Baga, Kivu, Chibok and every other distressed corners of the earth, as though I am the tiny red fish swimming in the ocean of sensations. In there, everything inspires you to dance, to write, to sing, to scream, to yell, to want to believe in your powers to change the entire world.
Qudus with children in Yaoundé, Cameroun
What has been the most challenging aspects of what you do?
Knowing that I’ll always get the support, despite the fact that I sometimes wonder if I deserve it, now the challenge lies in the hope to deliver again and again. It is the ultimate terror most successful creative people face I guess. The terror of not maintaining a previously conquered height.
What should we be expecting from you in the future?
One step at a time, as long as my life is restored, I’ll continue to make it count doing things I love, for those I hope to touch.
What advise will you give particularly young people who are yet to identify their passion?
Don’t hope to fit within the structure of this society. The society is supposed to balance itself between the psychological stability of the individual, and his or her social well being. Every science, every policy, every religion, every need for understanding must first see to this basic need, for it to be even worthy of any consideration, because social cohesion will be utterly impossible if our collective and economic, and political, and social need continues to weigh so much more than the individual’s psychological, mental and spiritual needs. There will be no much room left for passion, for creativity, for playfulness, for spirituality, for just being as opposed to having, that’s where the arts come from, that’s where it makes sense. If you focus so much on becoming something or like someone, if your focus is on being accepted by those who in the first place don’t have the courage to be free. Then you are not living, you are in fact on the opposite side of living.
You were recently at the Ake Arts and Book Festival, what was that experience like for you?
At Ake something happened, and for that something to happen, I have waited for a decade. At Ake it was as if the gates of that enigma called ‘home’, finally opened up and embraced my decision to move back to Lagos. It was really a nod to the next level of my career as an artistic voice coming from Lagos. Anywhere I go now, I feel proud to represent that jungle.
Also performing in the gathering of literary giants, those whose mastery or words and letters I’ve not only admired, but I’ve used as a strong base during my formative years as a young artist. Reading and music were the first muse that led me towards my own discoveries, so performing in such gathering was like an unspoken dream that suddenly came true. In essence Ake was a brilliant opportunity on different levels.
My Exile is in my Head with Ese Brume at Ake Arts and Book Festival, Abeokuta, November 2014
You are also quite vocal on social media when it comes to national and international issues, would you consider yourself an activist? Do you see your art as a form of activism?
Actually I have constantly refused to either regard myself or allow others refer to me as an activist, because I don’t deal in certainty. I change my mind too often to be an activist, I love my unpredictable ability to contradict myself at will, I too often give in to the complexity of my existence, but like I said, injustice is something that I link to one of those human vices which I just can’t swallow easily, but just like the activist, the artist is also a social commentator, and my slogan these days is, “every space is a space and must be occupied.” The leitmotiv of my work will not only be found in my works on stage, but everywhere I find myself including the social media, even in the way my body is presented and clothed. My entire being is entrenched in my continuous wish to heal, to touch, to mediate, and to translate and to contribute. That I guess is where all the energy comes from.
Where and how can people contact you to learn about your upcoming shows, and those interested in getting into what you do?
I’m the easiest-to-get artist in the world. I’m visible everywhere. My Facebook page is where you’ll always find me updated facebook.com/qudus.onikeku
Followed by my website qudusonikeku.com, or my organisation’s website ykprojects.com or the project we are onto In lagos qdancecenter.com, then I’m on twitter @ykprojects, Instagram on @qudusonikeku, my YouTube channel also got most of works at Qudus Onikeku.
Looking forward to greater things from Qudus who is walking his path to greatness.
