We live in a world devoid of varieties in expressive forms. A world where there is so much to express, but the only way to communicate our reflection and express our views, feelings, ideas and emotion, has been limited to either oral or literary means. However, the human mind often takes us to a conceptual and complex realm, which we sometimes are unable to convey in words. So one thing I have realized as a dancer is that, the body has a whole lot of intelligence that is able to express multitude of meanings in just one move or pose. These make corporal expressions the most significant and widely understood language of all time.

I dance to fulfill a need and quench a thirst for life. To live is like fleeing from one question to the other, hell is coupled with good intention, suffering and joy, love and hatred, normal winds of life. I trust in my wings because my answers are floating in my wind.

I like what I dance because I dance what I like, I dance when I most feel it become indispensable for me to let out my personal frustration, I don't get personal on the public dance floor and neither am I a coward that will go seek a hand in marriage and run back for his parents to arrange the marriage rites.

I dance what I think, I think what I dance, my dance is exact and underlined with truth, backed with intelligence and wide open to criticism at both ends. It’s my truth; it’s not necessarily the truth. It’s my truth so I'll defend it. If you like, you hate me for it, if you like, you kill me for it, I'll however be remembered for the values I defended.

I know what I dance, I dance what I know, I know what affects our societies today is the absence of air where it smells real bad, I know that the oppressed like back doors and escape routes. I know that nothing moves the oppressor than the naked truth. My dance stage has with time mutated into a space where I carefully chip in my thoughts and emotions. It’s an open gossip. It’s a private part that challenges the public arena.

I see myself pack a handful of sand amidst this endless desert and poured it all into the air, as small as my palms may seem, the sand still arrives at struggling with the bad odor in the atmosphere, and it rained down in dust particles. It touched everyone close to the space I occupy. Some smiled over it and took it all for fun but others dwelled over the dust as though they have no hands to dust away the dust.

If dance gestures can be weighed on a scale, mine weigh a ton, its velocity is speed over time, to every dance I dance, I leave room for an equal and opposite reaction from my audience. If you have issues with me, tell me, don't tell my friend, If you feel threatened by my version of the truth, get over it and let life pass through you, today it’s my stage, yesterday it was someone else's, so tomorrow life goes on, because I know change will never seize from being the only permanent element in life.

If we visualize our 4000 years human history per minute spent. If we scale this minutes spent in 4000 years, per good or bad human deeds. We'll realize how little impact our best or worst efforts have on the human existence and civilization.

...To live a fulfilled life is to dance what you feel
...only if you truthfully feel what you dance!

By his dance steps, you shall know Qudus

Curled from The Guardian Life Magazine, Edition 202, 
Cover story for September 13 - 19, 2009 
BY CHUKS NWANNE.

Born and raised in Lagos, dancer Qudus Aderemilekun Onikeku now considers himself a complete Lagosian, even when his parents originally hail from Abeokuta, Ogun State. “Until the age of 17, I had never stepped my foot out of Lagos. Despite my Abeokuta and Ijebu heritage, I still consider myself a full-time Lagosian.” 

Qudus’ journey into the artistic world started at the age of five when he began to feel the hyperactive pulse and curiosity that sustains his adrenaline up till date. “I could vividly remember seeing a guy do a back flip during inter-house sport in my primary school. It’s not as if I’ve never seen better acrobats on TV, especially during Olympics games, but seeing someone close to me do it, gave me the audacity to attempt it again and again.” After series of falls, with injuries sustained, Qudus found himself jumping up and down in flips. “My flips sometimes raise the blood pressure of my mum and concerned elders around. This perhaps was the most honest period of performance for me, and in all I do, I still try to do everything to retrace that path again,” he enthuses. 

With his kind of energy, Qudus described his primary school days as brilliant, yet he considers his hooliganism more dominant in those days. “I got pardoned most times for my brilliance,” he recalls. “It was a moment I really had to confront my energy by easing it on something external; the issue of positive or negative was not in my mind.” The decision by the mum of the young positively-rascal boy to move him from public to private school at the age of eight, finally paved way for the making of the Qudus of today. “I was taken to Brown Memorial Nursery and Primary School, Lagos; that was where I began to lose my old bad habits. After the entrance test, I was taken to Class Five instead of Four; I was glad that I would be finishing before my mates.” 

Reality dawned on Qudus when he dropped from his usual first position in his former school to seventh. “This calmed me a whole lot; I realised that success is not served with crispy fried chicken and strawberry milk shake.” With the dream of becoming a Chemical Engineer at the back of his mind, Qudus approached his secondary education with more seriousness. “I once heard my siblings chat about how the oil workers live large. But that half-baked dream was flushed away when I discovered dance in my senior secondary. But instead of taking art courses, ego would not let me stay away from sciences. Yet, the only remarkable moment of my secondary school days was the fact that I was an active member of the Music and Theatre Art Club, where I was later the dance captain.” 

By the time Qudus made up his mind to study Theatre Arts in the university, he met brick walls. “It was absolutely impossible to switch from the sciences to the arts, even when you can practically prove yourself; that was how I lost interest in the Nigerian educational system.” Left with no other option, Qudus began to seek knowledge in all possible angles. At a point, he became a regular at the French Cultural Centre workshops. He had a stint with the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture, before joining the renowned repertory dance troupe, Gongbeat Arts, where he remained until he got a job with an Ibadan-based dance company, The Alajotas, at the age of 17. “This was an essential period for both my artistic and intellectual upbringing. With Alajotas, the stark beauty of being away from one’s family confronted me; I began to gain the individuality I’ve continually been denied”. 

Meeting Heddy Maalem at the French Cultural Center in 2004, gave a lifeline to Qudus’ dance career. “Heddy happens to be one of my mentors presently. He approached me for a contract proposition and since 2004 till date, I’ve been a permanent dancer with his Dance Company based in Toulouse – France. During tours with Heddy, I would engage him in a whole range of discussions. He is a father figure to me and I trust him. He was the one that gave me the idea of studying in a Circus Arts School, when I explained to him how I had let down my merit list admission to study Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Lagos in 2003.” 

After few research on Circus Art Phenomenon that began to take over the performing art scene of France, Qudus finally decided to give the idea a trial in 2006. “I went for the selection at the National Higher School of Circus Arts, and fortunately, I was selected amongst the 19 successful ones out of the over 120 that took part in the process. On getting to Lagos, I shook my networks a bit and I got the full scholarship of the French Embassy for the two years period of my studies.” After three years of acquiring knowledge in the field, Qudus has resolved to return home to begin his one-man dance revolution. 

“While in Chalons en Champagne in my little apartment all alone for three years, I dreamt, I wrote and I talked to myself; sometimes, I recorded my words. The gateway to the dance revolution in Nigeria was clear in my head. The more I remained abroad, the more I get closer to the Nigerian reality.” In 2007, Qudus started with Do We Need Cola Cola to Dance? project, touring round Africa. By 2008, he planned making ewaBAMIJO the next step, but was really busy with traveling. “The same thing was about to happen in 2009, but I said to myself, ‘this must not go past 2009.’ 

During my previous returns to Nigeria from time to time, I would find myself in the midst of poets, musicians, comedians, writers, journalists, photographers, painters, sculptors, actors as well as dancers. But I realised that, there is no genuine link bringing all these art genres together in Nigeria. “In this present day, where boundaries are beginning to fall away between visual, performing, graphic and literary arts, Nigerian artistes are still feeling comfortable in their various corners. Most of my works have never been about just dance. No, you will always feel the space of visual art, music, new media etc in my works. So, this is what informed the notion of having an interdisciplinary arts festival. 

“The international arts scene is really getting really vicious, lacking fresh air and very boring. With ewaBAMIJO, we are doing everything possible to make the Nigerian arts scene begin to set a new pace, with fresh breeds, inspired by whatever happens on Lagos streets, and will in turn affect whatever happens in the arts world.” According to the dancer, the idea of ewaBAMIJO is to negate all conventional ideas and misconceptions of what the Euro-American power players think our art-face should look like. “We are not here to romanticise our beliefs; we are here to create something entirely different that fulfills our socio-economic and socio-cultural needs.

With this edition, we want to renovate the theories and praxis of contemporary art in our part of the world, to depart from the all pervasive discourse and fantasies of the art world.” Organized in partnership with the Creative Arts Department of the University of Lagos, ewaBAMIJO is scheduled to open October 27 through November 4. YK Projects, organizers of the event, has unveiled plans to make the event a bi-annual international festival. “We are not replicating or competing with other big arts festival already existing in Nigeria, but we seek to be a support and intellectual backing for the growing art network for Africans; ewaBAMIJO is more like a principle than any other thing. For that reason, we are going into a full partnership with the Creative Arts Department of the University of Lagos. All the events linked to ewaBAMIJO shall be taking place around both venues.” 

To Qudus, ewaBAMIJO will make all the difference. “We want to set the pace for ourselves to start. We don’t know how we are going to do it, but we believe in the power of dreams. We shall continue to dream until we see the change we hope for. ewaBAMIJO is not just about dance, it’s about the power of dream, its about hope, its about the dance industry, its about creating a sustainable dance market for the dancers yet to come, its about doing what we believe in and about inspiring confidence in those who could stand up against those bad habits that have hindered our collective development as a people.”

EBJ CALLS FOR SUBMISSION - 'WRITERS' FORUM'

DEADLINE: 20 SEPTEMBER 2009 

From 27 October to 4 November 2009, SPARCK will host the first WiAiA: an international workshop dedicated to innovative writing and publishing about contemporary creation in the African world. 

WiAiA stands for Word into Art into Africa. It is one of several SPARCK projects. SPARCK – Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge – is a multi-sited, multi-disciplinary and network-driven programme of arts and literature residencies, workshops, performances, exhibitions and publications centred on emergent and cutting-edge creativity across the African world - both on the continent and in the Diaspora. It is a programme of the Africa Centre, a South African non-profit organisation focused on contemporary artistic practice. 

WiAiA is designed to address the need, and to respond to active calls from arts practitioners with whom SPARCK collaborates, for (more) creative and (more) ethically engaged writing about 
the production of contemporary art in the African world – writing that addresses in original ways intersections between the arts and social, political and economic concerns in a globalised 
world. 

The goal of WiAiA is to provide a platform for fostering such writing and to assist in developing a strong readership for it. In the middle and longer term, WiAiA’s aim is to connect, grow and 
sustain a community of young writers who will shape, share and propel the project’s engaged discourse forward as part of an ongoing online publication project. The Lagos workshop is the first in a series of three intimate and highly focused writers’ workshops, which will be staged in 2009-2010 in three cities: Lagos, Dakar and Kinshasa. 

Each workshop will take the form of a master class and revolve around a particular art form. Each will take place in parallel with an emergent festival or exhibition. WiAiA Lagos will focus on 
writing about contemporary dance and related performance genres (experimental circus; martial and trance arts; social dancing with historical roots in community activism). WiAiA Dakar will address writing on experimental video and WiAiA Kinshasa will centre on writing about installation art and network thinking. 

FACILITATORS 

Each class will be facilitated by a team of two practitioners: an established writer and an artist, each of whose work highlights intersections between creative processes and political and 
ethical engagement. WiAiA Lagos will occur in tandem with ewaBAMIJO, an innovative festival of contemporary dance and performance founded by the much-heralded Nigerian choreographer and dancer Qudus Onikeku. The workshop will be facilitated by Onikeku and award-winning London-based writer and blogger Sokari Ekine. 

PARTICIPANTS 

Participants in each of the three workshops will be confirmed, full-time writers. While an interest on their part in art as a subject will naturally be relevant, it is not expected that the 
participants will be art critics. A key focus, in all three workshops, is to encourage thinking out of the box: reflection that questions and challenges disciplinary boundaries. Participants as well as facilitators will accordingly hail from a range of fields. They will be journalists, essayists, poets, novelists and short story writers, bloggers and/or spoken word artists. 

SPARCK has established and is further growing plans with several culture-focused websites in Africa, Europe and North America to publish on a regular basis for a period of two years short pieces by WiAiA writers on contemporary creation in the African world. Participation in WiAiA Lagos will accordingly not be a one-time, short-term venture. It will involve serious, sustained writing both during the workshop itself and following the workshop. Participants actively engaged in the process can expect to be published in highly visible online fora read across the African world. 

Applications to participate in WiAiA Lagos are sought from published writers as well as writers aspiring to be published. Particular consideration will be given to applicants who have a 
demonstrated interest in developing original approaches to writing about contemporary culture and creativity as they relate to globally driven social, economic and political phenomena and 
for whom writing is an integral part of a larger, ethically engaged and forward-thinking vision of life in a global world. 

Participants shall be selected from an open call for submissions. The number of participants will be kept small (4-5 participants per workshop) to ensure that the experience is direct and intense and that it requires of all involved a highly personal investment. 

All participants will be persons (hailing) from and/or based in West Africa, typically (though not exclusively) in Nigeria. Travel assistance may be provided for participants living outside Lagos. 

PROGRAMME 

Workshop participants will attend the entirety of the ewaBAMIJO festival (27-31 October 2009). The workshop proper will begin immediately following the festival, on 1 November 2009, and will 
last 4 days, ending on 4 November 2009. Participation throughout both the festival and the workshop proper will be full-time and will involve daily evening events and writing projects. 

The language of the Lagos workshop will be English. 

Accommodation, meals during the workshop and transportation to and from all events associated with the workshop will be provided. 

HOW TO APPLY 
Persons interested in participating in the workshop are invited to apply with the following 
materials: 

• Detailed CV 

• Letter stating why WiAiA is of interest to the applicant 

• Submission of at least two (but no more than 5) writing samples: 

‐ 
1 manuscript of no less than 10 pages single spaced, published or in 
progress: 

= a collection of 10 (or more) poems 
= or 1 chapter (or more) of a novel 
= or 1 short story 
= or 1 essay 
= or 1 article 
= or 1 play 
= or a combination of the above 

AND 
‐ 
1 text developed for the present workshop submission, of no fewer than 5 pages single spaced: an essay, article, short story, poem or related form that addresses/points to questions relating to contemporary art/creativity. 


The deadline for submissions from writers interested in participating in WiAiA Lagos is September 20, 2009. Applications will be screened by the WiAiA Lagos facilitators and the SPARCK team. The names of selected candidates will be announced on 10 October 2009. Nomination will be by majority vote. 

Applications should be sent by email no later than midnight on September 20, 2009 to the following email address: 

WiAiA.Lagos@gmail.com 

Queries are welcome at the above-cited address. 
For more information on SPARCK, the Africa Centre and ewaBAMIJO, see: 
SPARCK – Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge on Facebook 
http://africacentre.net 
http://www.ewabamijo.com/