Qudus Onikeku

Trained at the prestigious Ecole Supérieure National Des Arts Du Cirque in France, Qudus has danced and toured widely with renowned choreographers, such as Jean Claude Gallota, Sidi Larbi Charkaoui and Boris Charmatz, and was named the ‘New Choreographic Talent’ in 2012 by the French society of authors.

His international artistic practice intersects between visceral body movements, kinaesthetic memory, disruptive practices and finding new forms for performances that aren’t based in Eurocentric approaches. The QDance Company, founded in 2014, is a contemporary dance company with an international outlook, working with dancers from different cultures and backgrounds in Lagos, Nigeria. Qudus is the founder and curator of Afropolis, a 10-day pan-African gathering of creatives to co-create and innovate across disciplines.

Qudus was a visiting professor of dance at the University of California, Davis in 2013 and Columbia College, Chicago in 2018, a research professor at the College of The Arts and the first “Maker in Residence” at The Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship of the University of Florida until 2023. Qudus is a member of the official Nigerian Artificial Intelligence Research team.