In the face of the world, I'm undoubtedly a Black and an African man, but the question for me has never been in the realm of denying nor romanticizing, not worrying whether I'm black enough or being too African. We live under a construct which have placed more emphasis on defining and outlining who we are, so rather than just dancing and communicating ourselves in our own simple and naive manners, we now - through the obligation of the other - spend time imitating an idea of ourselves. For me, there will be no denying nor romanticizing, for this is usually the price to pay in acquiring that legitimacy that is offered to traveling artists outside their terrain, but rather I look at things more holistically and all inclusive. So it's always about how to communicate my own ideas of the world, how to defend my name without dissociating myself from and above misrepresentation? I don't require any validation for that.
For clarity of motive, I begin by stating that my real given name is Adul-Quddus, an Arabic root name which translates to 'the servant of The Holy' but if simply called Quddus, it means Holy. in Aramaic language, Quddus transforms to Qaddish.
In 2009/2010 all my personal preoccupations were concerned mostly with question of exile and solitude, deconstructing the concept of home as static four walls, but gravely in search of aloneness and alienation, and seeking ways of gaining access to the deepest part of my inner self, a process that was so required when the rupturing divorce with Nigeria blatantly stares me strongly in the face, then I created 'My Exile is in my Head'. In 2011/2012, the quest moves further to trying to undo the myriad lies and errors in human history, denying the very existence of history and nation-states, but to argue that the sole motive that makes up a society, are different individuals, making selfish decisions to support their personal interests, and so I created STILL/life, wondering what it is that prop up the minds of men, that they set up ideas which they later think they can bow down and offer sacrifices to, and in the process transforms them into murderous monsters.
Now again, the quest has led into newer byways. From recreation of the self, to the negation of history, and now to the quest for memory. As my dance practice intensifies, the perception becomes even clearer, my body protest that there are things to remember, things that I never knew that I know, body memory that is. When I dance I remember, when I stop dancing, my conscious memory becomes too short and perhaps too corrupted to go that far and clear. So my preoccupation lately have been to return - in a manner of speaking - to somewhere deep in the earth, to link the far past with the present, the living with the dead, the human with the divine and the present with the near future. I have began work on a new piece, QADDISH which is the last part of this existential trilogy of mine, in which I've initiated a journey with my 80 years old father, a journey we are starting from his hometown Abeokuta.
Journeys in general term serves as trope for the Yoruba, in cognitive aesthetic terms. Its aesthetics development, even in everyday speech, serves as a primed prefix to any wise saying, rendered as Yorùbábọ, that is, the "Yoruba retorts or returns", "Retorts" in this sense shares a verb and semantic equivalence with "returns". In other words, Knowledge and discovery are predicated on a temporal and spatio-spiritual journey. Qaddish will exhibit several dimensions of this spiritual journey in space and time. Time present, past and future dialogue will compete for attention. An aspect of this will be evident in the display of an interactive Wheelchair, whose presence in space will trigger a dialog with the past, and its auto movement in space compels us to acknowledge the present.
Drawing from the Yoruba cosmogony and collaborating with modern day use of robotic technology, the Wheelchair will embody the metaphor of the space-time continuum as in most African masks. Breaking the words literally, we get 'wheel', usually used to pierce time and space, and 'chair' as a static designed object slowing down time and marking a static space, since time cannot be separated from space, we have 'time-space,' in other words, the undecoded 'wheel-chair' is fossilized message, a single instance that is representative of other instances, other spaces and times, it is a repository of the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spacial relationship, of a time past and of current knowledge such as myth, legend and the history such paradox exhibits.
Through its evocation of several dimensions of time, realized in the congealed narratives of the figurative sculpture of condensed myths, current discourses, and a power to prognosticate, the wheelchair suggests a multimedia event, even in its static state, it compel a visual discourse. The chair will exercise an anarchic force upon perceptions, breaking down compartmentalizing categories by being able to move unaided by living beings and uninhibited between reality and magic, the referential and the semantic.
In my approach to art, one thing is clear, this one thing however, might be seen as connection of many things that have simultaneously come to rest within my restless mind, and my body have created a precept and a refuge for these complexities. My personal need for comprehension, for finding answers to the many questions that surfaces on my mind on a daily basis, together with my own personal artistic preoccupation, with a dire need to heel and to advance art and humanity, and to be a bridge between aesthetics that has either been wrongly understood or dismissed as low art, and in all of that i have also find a space for my spirituality, in search of unity with the cosmos, with God and hoping to recover a certain verticality, to recover the authentic self that is neither subjugated to norms, history, the past nor thrown aback in his right to the assured presence. This meant for me tapping into age long Yoruba philosophies, which already neatly outlined the part of the self, of alterity, of the commune and of the divine, in its imagination and the role of aesthetic beauty and of art. With enough skills, talent, experience and knowledge, that i have been able to gather and exercise through my practice, i hope to take from this diverse sources aesthetic and transpose them into contemporary, and urban context.
I am particularly animated by body memory, rather than history, by the will to reach out and communicate with the audience, above the will to express something of the self, and in so, I've constantly searched for ways to fuse poetic attitudes with a particularly traditional satirical and fictitious modes of story telling, as in the griot tradition, combining both social history, collective memory or collective amnesia with personal autobiography, as a critical lunching pad in the process of myth reading and communal rejuvenation. In most of my works - including group pieces - the dancer is always given the dramaturgic and choreographic liberty, to present himself as himself but pointing to something else, there is restricted level of show off, but a responsibility of an interpreter and the humility of a messenger. Through self exposure and auto derision, or self fortification and self proclamation, the dancer also weans his audience from any license of criticism they might have of both his art and the message thereon.
I have by no means felt at ease with the saying that "Dance is a language" or a 'form' of 'expression' and often outraged by audiences who want - by all means - to understand my performance, as one probably understands a piece of writing. Language can do less when dance is in view, and 'forms' denote something fixed. Body movement, or simply put, action has always been a superior mode of thought and of communication, therefore, the contextual meanings in my performances are neither eternal nor immutable, but mere signifiers in time and space. For me, a performance is simply an experience, not a cerebral one however, it is rather a brief shared moment of vitality, of healing, of social purification, where i sometimes make allusions to antisocial behaviors, but above all it is to mediate between the here and then and to make balance.
My audience are invited to share communicative experience through many different sensory channels simultaneously; verbal, musical, choreographic and visual aesthetic dimensions, they all become part of the components of the total message, whereby there exist a personal alchemy between the 'performers' and every member of the audience, because in the Yoruba tradition, we believe that the eyes has got only two foods that feeds it, one is Iran, a magical spectacle or a choreographic display and the other is ewa, which is beauty. As beauty is relative, magical spectacle and choreographic display takes more of my attention, because it creates its own beauty in its own terms.
This shows the importance the Yoruba attaches to intense and visceral body movements, artistic, acrobatic, or magical display, as a means of securing attention and thereby influencing both the human and the divine. Spectacle (Iran) in this sense denotes an happening that seldom occurs in everyday life, and hence a relish for the eyes. Conversely, Iran spanning from the root word iranti (remembering) is a memorable experience, lingering visually and aurally in the subconscious. In the visual art, an image or sculpture is called Aworan, a contraction of A-wo-ranti (a visual reminder) literally "what we look at to remember." Beyond and above the need to delight the senses alone by entertaining or educating it, a performance is also to establish a direct (active) body to (passive) body transmission, as well as a framework for regulating the social and cosmic orders.
Dance has always been at the centre of the Afrovibes Festival. This year's visitors should not miss the strong dance piece My Exile is in my Head by emerging choreographer and dancer Qudus Onikeku (1984). He is a performer from Nigeria who is spreading his art via France to the rest of the world. The performance he will present at Afrovibes is inspired by the writings of Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, as well as by his own experience of living far away from home.
The performance is introduced in Qudus' own voice. He talks about how he used to hide in the attic of his family's house, where he tried to create a space for himself. 'I didn't want to create a dialogue in which I address the audience. I wanted to create an interior monologue. This part is like an intimate diary. It is a memory from my childhood that permits me to deal with certain discoveries about solitude', he explains.
Qudus Onikeku was born and raised in Lagos, one of the most crowded cities on earth. During adolescence he gave up his talent for science to switch to the performing arts. This choice in the end brought him to France where he was given the opportunity to take his dancing skills one step further. The change was huge for the young dancer. 'I lived alone in a very small town called Châlons-en-Champagne where I attended the National Centre for Circus Arts. At the age of seventeen I lived in an apartment alone. Before that time I had never even been outside my hometown.' He began to write, as he would talk to himself, and this became the starting point of his authentic manner of expression. 'The longer I remained abroad, the closer I got to Nigerian reality.'
It is not surprising that the prison notes of famous writer Soyinka touched him and became his source of inspiration for My Exile is in my Head. He explains why: 'His expressions of extreme solitude strongly echoed my feelings of exile.' Onikeku refers to the book The Man Died which Soyinka wrote while he was in jail during the civil war in Nigeria in the late 1960s. 'I aimed to create a monologue in which I would use movement instead of words. The structure of Soyinka's book is like a poetic movement. It is not a book with separate chapters or scenes. That is also how I see my performance. Instead of using text as a narrative, I let words appear in my work like a flash, like emotions that pass through the movement.'
The result is a dance solo that integrates live music, lighting effects and video. Onikeku premiered the piece in Paris two years ago. He also performed it on the African continent in places like Johannesburg and Bamako. A review in The South African called the dance piece 'sophisticated, slick and enjoyable'. Artslink.co.za wrote: 'In a country where we have a big expatriate community and xenophobia riots, it is psychologically interesting to go on this journey with him'. The theme of being in exile far from home is still very much present in Onikeku's life. However, now he has managed to turn the pain of it into something that is beneficial to him. 'It would be different if I would be living in a country like the UK or the United States, because there are large Nigerian communities. Here, in France, I have retained and perhaps even nurtured my sense of solitude and loneliness. It is the feeling of being a foreigner that keeps me at a healthy distance. As an artist I need that. So France to me is the right place to be right now. I can keep that distance and yet enjoy a lot of support for my work.'
The French audiences will see much more of the young artist because My Exile is in my Head is the first part of a trilogy. He already presented the second part and the third will premiere next year at the prestigious Festival d' Avignon. Onikeku explains how he incorporates all those global influences: 'While my artistic upbringing took place at the boundaries of different cultures, I try to erase all these different encounters and live with only the imprints they've made on my body. It is through the memory of my body that I search for my own style of movement.' Over the past five years the essence of his experiences has become clear to him: 'I have been occupied with the existential questions and this has paved the way for the discovery of my authentic self. You can find those deep insights not only in my work on stage, but in everything around me. I am the piece.'
This September the dance piece My Exile is in my Head by Qudus Onikeku will be performed during the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam and Eindhoven, to then continue its tour in the UK leg of the festival in October.
Afrovibes is a biennial festival presenting (South) African dance, music and theatre. The festival takes place in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Between
two decades before independence and two decades after, is a period Femi
Osofisan refers to as the ‘age of
innocence’. Nigeria knew its golden age of extremely creative talents who
shook the world; they are so many that I have decided to pick one of them as
the matter of this article, one with whom I feel closest to. Wole Soyinka. That
lone tree, which might not make a forest in this ‘age of madness’.
As a
Dancer/Choreographer and one of the most privileged young artists in
contemporary Nigeria, with a wide access to the international art market. I
consider myself one of the very rare remaining Nigerians – not to say
Africans – who have access to the prerequisite elements for creating, and
able to retain the precise mental balance that their creative temperament
requires. Get residencies when needed, an access to theatres to conclude
technical aspects of creations, and a ready network for touring. Those who are
however aware of the loss that comes with negotiating one’s space of influence
and cultural backdrop before the unforgiving gaze of the ‘other’, will
understand that every traveling artist, especially of this contemporary times
of flux and mixing, where every notion of ‘roots’ and ‘home’ is perpetually
shifting, the need for a locality is much stronger than any time.
As a
traveling artist who continuously struggles to fix his sense of locality on Nigerian terrain – like many of my likes – I have mostly relied on the brains of such writers as Wole Soyinka to regain the memory of a time before time. For the purpose of authenticity and that of choice, I recognize the need for a body memory, which has lived longer than my own lived power or freedom. Soyinka’s writings have helped me a great deal in recognizing such mental territory of existence, but that is a locality solely based in a psychic asylum.
Let
me get back to earth; let’s take a quick excursion around the nation state
called Nigeria.
Qudus Onikeku : fulgurance centripète et centrifuge !!!
Observer Qudus danser est une réjouissance simple, puissante, inouie.
Ce jeune homme a reçu le don de la danse et le cultive.
Il sait tout faire, sauter, tomber, rebondir, aller à toute birzingue et s’arrêter net en souriant.
Il s’envoie en l’air sans prévenir, comme une déflagration. Il défie et s’amuse de la gravité.
Ses déséquilibres permanents sont insaisissables. Pure énergie.
Fluidité, rebonds, flip flap, sauts périlleux arrières, il rebondit comme une balle folle.
Et son sourire, il faut l’avoir vu sourire.
Lorsque son visage s’illumine comme pour nous prendre à témoin, en nous questionnant : et ça,
vous l’aviez imaginé??? Et bien, non, cher Qudus !!!
Qudus est un rêve ambulant et un guerrier à la recherche de l’absolu.
Il s’accapare de l’espace pour l’exploser. C’est le Nijinski d’aujourd’hui.
Il s’élève avec une vélocité maximale, tant et si bien que nous nous frottons les yeux
comme après un mirage. Equilibres sur la tête, sur les mains, sur le dos, sur les genoux,
il défie en permanence les lois de l’apesanteur. Ses chutes au ralenti sont un miracle du carrefour de l’horizontalité et de la verticalité.
Son engagement est un bonheur qu’il partage avec une générosité
irrésistible. Enjoy for ever, la danse phénoménale de Qudus Onikeku
Regine Chopinot le 24/04/2012 (Pour La remise de Prix SACD - Nouveaux Talent Chorégraphie)
English Translation
Qudus Onikeku: fulgurant centripetal and centrifugal!!!
Observing Qudus dance is simply a joy, powerful, amazing. This young man has received the gift of dance and cultivates it. He can do everything, jump, fall, rebound, go to all birzingue and stops instantly, yet with a smile.
He goes into the air without warning, like a deflagration. He defies gravity while having fun with it. His permanent imbalances are imperceptible.
Pure energy. Fluidity, rebounds, flip flap, back somersaults, he rebounds like a crazy ball.
And his smile, you have to see him smiling. When his face illuminates, its like taking us to witness, by questioning us: and that, you imagined it??? well, no, dear Qudus!!!
Qudus is a travelling dream and a warrior in search of the absolute.
He monopolizes space to explode it. He is the Nijinski of today.
He rises with a maximum swiftness, so much and so well that we wipe our eyes as in after a mirage. Balancing on the head, the hands, the back, the knees, he defies the laws of gravity permanently. His slow motioned falls are a miracle at the crossroads of horizontality and verticality.
His engagement is a joy which he shares with an irresistible generosity. Enjoy for ever, the phenomenal dance of Qudus Onikeku
Regine Chopinot le 24/04/2012 (For the handing-over of 2012 SACD Price - New Choreographic Talent)
In my other life I am an activist. I grew up in a nation that naturally makes political activists out of its citizens, a nation that might as well exist as a fictional story, a fable spun from the imagination of very strange storytellers. Nigeria is where I come from, but like most progressive living beings, where we come from is not as important as where we are heading. Unlike many Nigerians, I have been unable to shake off this hereditary calling of an activist even as I head my own solo way, I have however managed to make my career be mostly situated in the arts world, not so political – in the conventional sense of the word. This nation situated in an artificial place in the midst of an artificial situation, has been a better metaphor for me to understand what culture is tending towards in many parts of the world.
If I had a metaphorical barometer and put it out there, what it would register is insecurity. There is presently a boosted sense of worry about the inevitably diminished role that places like the United States and Europe (the West) might be playing in the world in the next decades – or less, but that discussion is almost exclusively defined in economic terms. What it means is that basic business practices that have existed in our art world might not continue to exist in the same way, I don’t believe that the arts is a different system to anything else; we will have to adjust to a different way of doing things, the challenge is not to be conservative in terms of content, because it’s the new that excites people, not a feeling of safety.
In difficult times like this, it is certainly immaterial to ask ‘what is the essence of art?’because we are all looking for meaning in our world right now, and can art really provide it? Is art able to maintain a primal relevance in a lay world? But as a 21st century artist with a vocation – each time I think of a new project, I often find myself asking these sets of immaterial questions again and again. What do I wish to build or break with my art?
BREAKING THE THEATRE WALLS
Understanding architecture as a performative condition: acting on us and activated by us, and theatre architecture as civil space, which has impact on human social contracts and relationships. One can then understand the burden of the fourth wall, that imaginary "wall" at the front of the proscenium theatre stage, which creates a great divide between spectator and performer, between seeing and doing, that wall which professed to the audience that, this is a fiction, it will probably have little or no impact in your world, but for sure it will have a little impact on ours, because you have brought out your money to buy into this, and behind these walls are actual people; actors, comedians, dancers, singers, musicians, technicians, creative designers, cleaners, security personnel, sales persons, administrators, programmers, managers etc. all trying to also make a living by keeping the system of the performing arts alive.
If it is true that Dance is the controlled passage of bodies through time and space. Then the essence of dance is felt, from the uniform connection between the experience of the body and the experience of the space that reunites the dancer and his audience. Traditionally, if judging a book by its cover, one could say theatres embody the idea of a closed world where bourgeois and bohemians meet regularly, a luxurious architectural piece that only this privileged few experience from the inside, and it draws concerns to the consumer-based attitude towards art, because if we say talent and creativity is priceless, why then is art only financially accessible?
More like the notion of ‘fixed’ identity, theatres are conserved as something that is unchangeable and stuck in time. Meanwhile, reifying the idea of a “space” dedicated to creative live performance, as something that cannot be influenced, reinterpreted or changed, creates tensions between what has been, what is and what could be. The bounds of the theatre space with its rigidity, however separates time from the real-time, I mean its absolute universe is the proscenium stage with all that it represents, outside of which nothing else exists. The audience is thus bound within a 2-dimensional relationship – through the fourth wall – without the fullness of space and scope.
ANOTHER PROJECT, ANOTHER UTOPIA
Another project may not necessarily be another undertaking, I know I’m not interested in those ideas that hammer meanings into our heads at every opportunity, but just like the saying "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." For me, every project is past from the moment it is done, and ‘repetition’ is only a means of establishing a continual dialogue, with creative materials used in previous project, in order not to suffer a divide between understanding and doing.
I’ve lately been exploring a new utopia. Unlike the Cartesian notion of "Utopia" as a specially planned and designed place of reason and rationality, I thought of treating the public sphere as a found-object to be manipulated and remixed at will, an approach that simultaneously reflects my core African values and basic needs, how art could be a part of life just as a tree or a billboard in an urban space, to create an atmosphere where the audience is brought to be part of an experience critically, without practical consequences, but by means of simple empathy with the performance. Using public spaces, in a manner that doesn't fit neatly together, like putting an AIDS hotspot in the middle of a shopping centre. This kinds of idea put people through a process of intimacy and alienation at the same time: intimacy as in accessibility and the alienation that is intimidating, and necessary to all understanding, out of such conditions come the unexpected encounter, the chance discovery, and the innovation.
The fact that the audience holds a detailed memory of a space and its function, creates a new curiosity when it is used for other purposes, the history they share with the venue, however makes them feel at home and open, they see it as adaptations or additions to existing buildings. My purpose is for the audience to give up every effort to understand ‘art’, because art becomes the most obvious thing in the world, when what is ‘natural’ and what is ‘startling’ share the same force in the same space, at the same time. This contradiction adds a new dynamism to the cultural and theatrical life of a city.
With my little experience in performing in formal and informal venues, for professional and non-professional audiences, I have come to realize that the audience that chose – for whatever reason – to go to the theatre, might have this experience:
- Yes, I sometimes feel that way too, the sufferings of this man touches me, because they are obvious – that was great art, I weep when he weeps, I laugh when he laughs.
There is a semblance to the artiste, he can relate with him, he can in-fact have a drink with the artiste after the show, and their discussion will be about everything but the show he saw, a sort of social climbing you may call it. But for the audience that didn’t expect to see a show, in the most inappropriate venue, and would probably not go to a theatre, might have this experience:
I’d never have thought of that, that’s extraordinary, the sufferings of this man touches me, I don’t know why, perhaps because they are unnecessary – that’s great art, I laugh when he weeps, I weep when he laughs.
If such audience stays after the show to have a drink with the artist, his entire discussion will be about the show. A way of climbing ashore of consciousness you may call it, or better still, a sharing of understanding of our worlds. For this two ‘kinds’ of audience, we might also conclude that, the method of understanding depends on the different contexts and ways of presenting the work to the audience, and in any case, it remains fully capable of life.
DANCING IN A FREE SPACE
In different cultures before the 19th Century, public relations were more about theatricality than representation of the self, the former of which is more friendly to public life and had more impact in public life, it was the late 19th century that brought upon the idea of intimacy with openness of expression. Alternative artistes have now become more interiorized and ‘underground’, leading to a high level of social irrelevance.
Modern Western society has lost a key dimension of the notion of ‘public space’; the distinction between the private and the public have been erased. An attempt to the reason for this – will be to say that the loss of a religious order to public life, which once allowed the public and the private to coexist in a greater cosmic order, contributed to the destruction of the public space. A ‘space’ that removes the borders that protects us from each other in daily life. The public/private distinction is crucial to maintaining polite sociability, exchange of worldviews and rational political discussion, which didn’t transformpolitics into a clash of personality and an unending, brutal contest of who will have the last word.
The same process, has transformed the market from a public meeting place into a field for a compulsive quest for self-identification through mass consumption. We have lost not only the public good, but also the public artist in all his creativity and spontaneity and delightfulness. Public performance now has become a mere formality, a quest for the "authentic" self rather than a space for presenting ideas.
It was my quest for spaces of freedom – not as a form of protest, but for personal experience – that provides the foundation for my investigation into this
concept of ‘space’. I began this ‘free’ space project with “Do we need cola cola to dance?” in 2007, It was aimed at taking art outside its proper boundaries, With an investigation into other art making processes, through multiple improvisations, how DANCE, MUSIC, URBAN SCENOGRAPHY, PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO ART, could organically come together almost as a coincidence to coexist in a particular space in time. This approach put accent not just on the performer's body and the audience's eyes, but also the camera’s lens, the music we produce and the communal space that we all re-create.
It is a way to reject certain habits, while we were unconsciously involved in the process of breaking down conventional ideas about what art could mean. It suggests movement, not only as a means on social existence of art in the public sphere, but also reflects the use of ‘movement’ as a social practice linked to our capacity as artists, to continuously orient ourselves to shifting terrain of economic activity and artistic disposition. Thus, the conclusion we tend to draw from this project is on-going, it is an alternative practice that creates its own context, the purpose is not to insert a new style into existing buildings or entice already formed audience away from existing venues, but to be involved in a special broad ‘free space’ art experiment, that extends the community of the arts.
Every professional in the arts world today, are – in their various fields – thinking about innovative and new ways to manage the Arts and its future in a changing world. Certainly what is at stake in this ‘alternative practice’ is not to simply take part in the contemporary nomadism which finds its most impoverished expression in tourism, my choice of research is guided by a fundamental impulse than the quest for performing or travelling. I hope we are not simply globetrotters, roaming the world with the aim of a hedonistic assimilation. This ‘social practice’ is rather a desire to be jostled and disrupted.
BEFORE I LOGOUT
An ending set of immaterial questions my readers might be asking right now might be, why is this important? What does it matter? Be rest assured that I’m asking myself same questions, is dance able to maintain a primal relevance in today’s world? how do I connect to that world beyond the theatre walls? And should art connect with that world, or is it the problem of the world to make connections to the arts? How do I personally choose to make a connection? Is it that I miss all the connections I don`t have and could have had? Do I want to establish a re-connection with my formal audience in traditional venues? Or do I totally want to disconnect? Like I have always done with my works – Rather than offering answers to a world in search of meaning, I’m only using my creative energy to create a critical dialogue open to all, raise further questions and showcase my own experiences in the process, another user-friendly idea that I throw into the world; it can serve different purposes for different people in different places. I’m very much open to that.
And the past is without reference to our identity.
Why in my right to the assured presence I'm thrown aback.
Towards what has never been my deed.
Towards what has never been in my power or in my freedom.
Towards a past that denies my right to the present.
And has never come into memory."
Our collective memory of an immemorial past imposes the division between the north and south, between me and "the other" between rationality and irrationality. Do we not recognize the trap? History is too full of failed Prometheans bathing their wounded spirit in the tragic stream. Summoning history to our aid? But more than history, kindred knowledge, kindred findings, kindred rebellions against the lure of terror; for rage is no longer enough to combat the temptation to subside into unproductive, will-sapping wisdoms.
There are levels of despair from which the human spirit cannot recover, some types of suffering are difficult to explain and difficult for others to understand, the trauma that comes with the memory of our proper amnesia comes with an incomprehensible terror. These persisting events that fabricates time and the other, has made violence "a way of thinking" and an instinct to survive.
Human advancement in the frame of the modern world, is debased by tragedy and violence in many layers. The modern man is very much conditioned by opportunism and greed, quest for power and ambition. Leading to a state of social dysfunction where there is no more society, but a bunch of individual people, poised between solitude and amnesia, making individual choices to promote their individual well being.
The contradictions and tragedy that exists in our collective histories, has made it impossible to represent the other with certitude. There is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our selves, our mortality and ego, an ego that seems to maintain a clear and sharp lines of demarcation between the forces of good and bad, until it eats deeply inwards, without any sharp delimitation.
...but the duty of hope is to turn around and heal the world. The mystical significance of today however, is that it constantly provides us with blank pages, in which we shall inscribe our destiny in our own hand writings. The path towards the pure future is to find ways to reintegrate these pairs of contradictions, into an expanded vision of a social experience that is both the same and different, whole and complex.
"STILL/life" is almost paradoxical and against all odds, its non-literal translation into French of "nature morte" that rather places accent on death, seems to be saying the opposite. “STILL/life” is in motion, a tale of the rise and fall of a man, an attempt to conciliation and acceptance of our extremes, an invitation to shed tears with a spark of hope, that coming generations might eventually learn equity from poverty, love from woes and peace from calamities.
We begin this work with the utopia of simultaneously making visible the head and the tail of the same coin at the same time, show the rear of that which is presented in a frontal manner, above all, confront our self-contradictions and oppositions, reflecting on the schizophrenia of the world we live in, and using pure energy as fuel for this first stage of creation.
« UN CORPS EN EXIL »Entretien par DAGARA DAKIN, traduit de l'anglais par Latifa Aït Naceur.
Article issu du N°1286-1287 (numéro double), juillet-octobre 2010 : Les migrations subsahariennes Rubrique : Article de dossier
« L’exil, s’il constitue étrangement un sujet de réflexion fascinant, est terrible à vivre. C’est la fissure à jamais creusée entre l’être humain et sa terre natale, entre l’individu et son vrai foyer, et la tristesse qu’il implique n’est pas surmontable. »Edward W. Said, Réflexions sur l’exil, éd. Actes Sud, p. 241
Diplômé du Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) de Châlons-en-Champagne, en tant que danseur acrobate, Qudus Onikeku a été interprète pendant plus de dix ans sur la scène chorégraphique de la capitale nigériane Lagos. Il est, entre autre, à l’initiative - au printemps 2008 - d’un projet au titre évocateur « Do we need Cola Cola to dance ? » qu’il a mené avec une équipe composée d’un photographe, d’une danseuse et d’un vidéaste. Ce projet de danse dans la rue l’a conduit dans sept villes du continent africain. Interprète dans les créations de Heddy Maalem, notamment Le sacre du printemps en 2009, il a tourné en Europe, aux Etats-Unis et au Brésil.
De décembre 2009 à mai 2010, il était en résidence au 104 à Paris, nous l’avons interroger son approche de la notion d’exil, thème qui sous-tend son spectacle intitulé « My Exile is in my head »
Dagara Dakin : Pouvez-vous nous raconter en quelques mots votre parcours, comment vous êtes devenu danseur ?
Qudus Onikeku : J’ai grandi en faisant des acrobaties, en voyant autour de moi les gens faire des « flips », j’ai surtout vu faire des flips arrières। Alors j’ai commencé à les imiter. Je faisais des séries de cinquante à la suite. Je le faisais surtout à l’extérieur car au domicile familial c’était difficile. Je suis le dernier d’une famille de treize enfants et tous me sommaient de m’arrêter de peur que je ne me fasse mal. C’était leur façon de me protéger. J’étais le plus jeune et cela me frustrait car j’avais très envie de faire des acrobaties chez moi. Alors à la moindre occasion, quand on m’envoyait faire des courses, sur le chemin de l’école, je m’exprimais à travers les acrobaties.
D. D : Quelle place a pris la danse dans votre scolarité ?
Q. Onikeku : À l’école, il y avait ce qu’on appelle « les clubs », des lieux d’expression en quelque sorte। Des membres du « clubs » dédié à la culture « Cultural club » étaient venus dans ma classe et m’avaient proposé de les rejoindre. Ils recherchaient des individus qui aient un don artistique du type chant, danse etc. et lorsqu’ils m’ont parlé d’acrobatie, alors j’ai tout de suite souhaité participer. Au sein de ce « Cultural club », je me suis petit à petit intéressé à la danse et j’ai décidé de m’impliquer aussi dans cette discipline.
D. D : Vous avez donc très tôt fait le choix d’une filière artistique…
Q. Onikeku : J’ai été plutôt surpris, car étant inscrit à l’école dans une filière plutôt scientifique j’avais l’impression que des disciplines telles que la danse n’étaient peut-être pas compatible avec ma filière d’origine। Mes parents pensaient d’ailleurs la même chose et jusqu’à la fin du lycée ils m’ont surtout demandé de me focaliser sur les études scientifiques. Je me suis donc beaucoup moins impliqué dans la danse que je considérais comme un divertissement. A 16 ans, j’ai quitté le lycée et là, j’ai pu reprendre la danse plus sérieusement. C’est à ce moment là que j’ai décidé de devenir danseur professionnel.
D. D : Vous venez de clore une résidence de 6 mois au 104 comment vous êtes vous retrouvé dans ce lieu ? Pouvez-vous nous dire comment est né le projet « My Exile is in my head » ?
Q. Onikeku : Le 104 a fait un appel à projet et j’ai postulé. C’était en 2008, année d’ouverture de ce lieu culturel, je finissais mes études au CNAC. Je pensais à ce moment là à traiter de la question des Sans-abri et de la notion de « homeless », d’être sans domicile fixe, le fait d’être toujours un nomade, à la recherche d’un lieu. C’est de là qu’a émergé le projet.
Le titre m’est venu au cours des mois d’avril, mai 2009। Je pensais à cette chose que l’on nomme « Home », la maison. Je me suis posé la question de savoir ce qu’était mon chez-moi. Et en pensant à mon enfance, au caractère polygame de la famille au sein de laquelle j’ai évolué, je me suis rendu compte que très jeune je cherchais déjà ma place.
D. D : Qu’est-ce que l’Exil dont parle le titre de votre spectacle et comment traduire ce concept dans la discipline qu’est la votre?
Q. Onikeku : L’Exil que j’évoque n’a pas seulement à voir avec le fait de voyager, en réalité il a plus trait à un questionnement sur soi, une recherche pour aller à la rencontre de soi, pour se créer selon l’image qui convient à soi-même, de définir ce que l’on veut pour soi-même. L’Exil est selon moi, un passage obligé pour tout artiste. Ça correspond parfois à cette période de la vie où l’on commence à être incompris des gens qui nous entourent, alors commence parfois le genre d’Exil dont je parle.
De nos jours nous vivons dans une société qui nous oblige à nous positionner par rapport à tel ou tel courant politique, religieux etc।, à savoir dire à quel pays nous appartenons. Alors, j’ai moi-même ressenti le besoin de définir d’où je venais ; Mais cette idée me perturbe, je n’aime pas l’idée de devoir appartenir à tel ou tel groupe, qu’il soit ethnique, religieux, politique, etc.
D. D : Votre approche est donc très personnelle même si vous vous êtes nourri de la lecture d’auteurs tels que Wole Sonika, Olu Oguibe ou encore Edward Saïd.
Q. Onikeku : Je ne suis pas à l’aise avec cette idée dedéfinir le reste de l’humanité qui m’entoure comme « les autres »। Voilà, pour moi l’idée de l’exil, c’est de n’appartenir réellement à aucun groupe. Mais attention, je ne souhaite pas que l’on assimile cela à une sorte de « crise existentielle » car ce n’est vraiment pas le cas ici. Je suis, disons, dans une dynamique qui va me permettre de porter attention à la moindre partie de ce qui fait mon « MOI ». Je suis nigérian, je suis yorouba, je suis africain, je suis hétérosexuel, je suis musulman, je suis danseur, je suis tout ça à la fois, aussi pour moi ça ne fait pas sens de ne m’attacher qu’à un seul aspect de ma personnalité. Je ne veux pas avoir à choisir un aspect au détriment des autres. Evidemment, à un moment donné on est obligé de choisir, par la force des choses, de se définir par rapport aux « autres ». Je veux être dans la vie à part entière.
D. D : Il n’est donc pas question d’un exil politique ...
Q. Onikeku : Souvent, le thème de l’exil est associé à une idée politique – évidemment, on ne peut pas nier cet aspect – mais j’ai souhaité lui donner une autre dimension। En tant que danseur j’avoue que j’éprouve une certaine difficulté à m’exprimer avec les mots, et mon corps est pour moi le meilleur outil d’expression. Via la danse j’exprime ce que je suis. On pourra distinguer dans ma danse des éléments de hip-hop, de capoeira, de buto, de danse contemporaine. Ce corps est ce que j’appelle « un corps incarné » parce qu’il s’alimente de différentes choses, différents styles pour finalement n’en faire qu’un.
D. D : La danse vous paraît donc être approprié pour traiter ce thème ?
Q. Onikeku : Le thème de l’Exil pourrait d’après moi, se décliner en une multitude d’expression artistique, autre que la danse, si je voulais aller plus loin dans la réflexion. Je pourrais utiliser l’écriture, la vidéo, la musique, les jeux de lumière mais je ne tienspas à enfermer le public dans mon exil, je veux qu’il vienne me voir performer et qu’il se divertisse devant mon spectacle. Je ne pourrais dire dans un livre, tout ce que je pense sur la question de l’Exil.
The scene was somewhere in the Sahel, in the ancient Malian empire to be precise, it was around 2pm, after a lot of formalities, finally Angelin Preljocaj, president of the jury picks up the microphone to announce
"... and the laureate for the solo category in the 8th edition of the danse l'afrique danse is - Qudus ..."
I can't remember hearing my surname and probably the title of the winning work before I blanked out, none of the claps found their way into my ears, I turned my face down and muttered few words to thank my God. Could that be it? In one word, SUCCESS. I think I already had a feel of it and I know its temporality, I had learnt to clamp down on my pulse. I sensed the excited juice just about to start flowing and immediately I froze it back to normality. Keep still. Be still as water and hang on to your centre I told me. I rose my head up to realise the array of eyes directed towards me, as if something was badly expected of me. Those who didn't know who I was, thought I wasn't present, because all these took me about 3 minutes before Selim my Tunisian friend dragged my bag from me and poked me to go unto the podium.
The clapping and the screaming of my name were gradually taking form in my ears. Walking to the podium that was just 10 meters away, seemed like the longest walk I ever made. As I walked towards the podium, I felt a burden of responsibility on my shoulders and saw myself taking each step closer to the middle of a "disagreement" I have been rigorously engaging through my blog, my small talks in conversations and whenever the opportunity comes for me to air my opinion on certain logic of existence that appears to me illogical.
The decision - whether or not to partake in this biennial choreographic encounter - had lingered for more than three years before I eventually decided to participate. The decision came slowly along with a thought pattern that was gradually taking form with my understanding of the role of an artist, in his community and within a larger (global) context. My trouble with this phenomenon has been very much linked to my trouble with the term "Contemporary African dance" and my impatience with patterned, predictable reasoning and my refusal to ply the well trodden path.
This biennial has largely added to the systematized manner of thinking for most African choreographers, who systematically arranges themselves within this arrogantly defined box especially in place for them. This aggressive Africanist sentiment have informed the way "we" treat, analyse or consume works coming from Africa, it has succeeded in narrowing perspectives and producing rigidities in place of a creative openness to discovery and knowledge. I personally think that the moral purpose of this festival must be either restored or redefined for it to meet up with the practices and the artistic preoccupation of a new generation of artists who are presently freeing themselves from past attachments and rejecting the notion of a single identity or a single awareness, but rather a composite of cultures, identities and affiliations which marks the advent of new forms, beauties and new interests totally deracinated and dislocated from one place and one time.
As Kettly Noel (the festival director) handed me the microphone, followed by a “please be very brief” the microphone in my hand became a weapon, a tool to distinguish my voice from the voiceless, to gracefully place my words where they belong. I turned my face out into the audience, and suddenly words fail me in the sight of the numerous eyes, looking either down or up upon me. For the first time in my life i felt the intricacy of addressing an ambiguous crowd, where I have to speak and speak well, give hope to some and send a clear message to others. I was overwhelmed by emotion, i could feel myself exercising a deep breath control to stop the down flow of tears from my eyes, and finally I summoned my sinews and my nerves to my rescue.
I spoke “... I don’t know what to say... hmm, initially i didn’t wanted to partake in this competition, the only reason i decided to be here at this time, is to be able to inspire. The African youth has been over-traumatized with questions of political injustice, economic imbalance and societal pressure that they stopped dreaming, my dreams are what got me here today, I urge all you young, brilliant creative artists here today, to continue to dream, you are good enough and I know that very soon change is gonna come."
I recognize that I have moved long beyond compromise and it strikes me more and more that my experience as an artiste, is unique among the one billion Africans spread across the globe. As i walked back to my seat, the numerous congratulations that escorted me didn't help in containing the tear drops; I could hold it back no more. So why did i cry? It remained a question I ask myself till now. Here I am, me, who had to choose between dance and home at some point, me, who had to fight not for recognition but for a mere space of expression. Me, who refused to be "the good boy" because I had a dream, now, I am assuming a place of authority and becoming an example for an entire generation of artists. I can feel the burden of this responsibility already.
Inspired by Wole Soyinka’s prison notes - "THE MAN DIED."
Conception, choreographed and performed by Qudus ONIKEKU. Original music performed live by Charles Amblard. Video conception and performanceIsaak Lartey. Light designer Guillaume Fesneau.
Production : YK Projects
Coproduction : Le CENTQUATRE and CULTURESFRANCE
with the support of: Centre National des Arts du Cirque, Centre National de la Danse, Bates Dance Festival Maine - USA and DRAC Ile de France
...More than a word, exile is a condition. It is a place, a knowledge, a narrative, but most importantly, it is a psychic space which is obvious to those who inhibit it, those who must engage and wrestle with it because only by so doing can they come to terms with it. Exile is poignant because it is bracketed by loss, it is not so much about movement, relocation or departure as it is about loss: of territory, of the familiar and the familial, of certainty, but most frighteningly, by the grave probability of the loss of memory.
Exile is a rupture, the cessation of things previously taken for granted, the collapse of a world of relative certainties, and therein lies its stings. It also underlines the inescapable desirability of belonging. It may be questioned, even ridiculed, but only those who have experience such loss can understand the rootlessness - and ruthlessness - of existence in the shiftless, treacherous territory of exile. Exile offers a refuge, but no consolation or pride. Every engagement with the lived experience of exile finds its most persuasive explanation not in fascination for there is no such thing as fascination for exile, but rather in the individual quest to come to terms with the fact of exile.
Every such effort is an attempt to explain exile more to oneself than to others. Through art the exiled is able to escape the burden of circumstance, even the temptation of bitterness and recrimination, and instead question, explore, ruminate, and attempt to repossess fragments of that which is lost. Through art the exile may return, in a manner of speaking, by reconstituting the past, participating in the present, as well as envisioning a new world.
Olu OGUIBE ( Nigerian artist, art historian and poet exiled in USA)
Through this piece I intend to deal with personal questions of home, belonging, non-belonging and exile. Above that, I also thought about creating a new homogeneous work, adaptable for conventional theatres as well as alternative spaces. At the moment, I am confronted with questions of other art making processes, through multiple improvisations; how DANCE, CIRCUS, LITERATURE, STORY TELLING, MUSIC AND VIDEO ART, could organically come together almost as a coincidence. An approach that involves the performers' bodies and the audience's eyes, the music we produce and the space that reunites us.
All these converging forces involved in this research laboratory will at the end become the incarnation of the performance in any given space and time. It is a challenge for us to think of a collective and new art making process, with an indefinite character, to create a deliberate contrast to the traditional incarceration of our works in-between four walls, and perhaps a response to the changing social and economic realities of the art world.
