We were able to meet Qudus Onikeku at the III International Performing Arts Gathering Africa Moment 2019, where he presented for the first time his first dance lecture Africaman Original at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB). On this occasion, Qudus Onikeku is coming to the city with his entire company to present the piece Re-Incarnation (July 6 and 7) and to perform Afropolis 2021, which will take place from July 10 to 18 at the Graner.
Afropolis is a meeting between artists, thinkers and community promoters who will meet with the objective of investigating new processes of antidisciplinary exchange between performance, design, community commitment and digital technology, to generate creative synergies within a Distributed network of global Africans, to compose new forms and express innovative ideas.
Until last year, Afropolis was known as danceGathering, an annual meeting that took place in the city of Lagos for three years. Last year, due to the health-related circumstances, the meeting took place only virtually and there a new concept and a new baptism for danceGathering emerged, which became Afropolis.
This year Afropolis is expanding geographically as four face-to-face meetings will take place in 2021 in three different cities and one virtual meeting: Barcelona (from July 10 to 18), Lagos (from August 15 to 28), Chicago (from 18 to 26 September) and virtually (from October 2 to October 31).
Qudus Onikeku is a dancer, acrobat, choreographer and one of the leading names on the Nigerian cultural and artistic scene as well as one of a new generation of African creators. His dance is characterized by including traces of traditional Nigerian dance, hip hop, capoeira, acrobatics, and other contemporary artistic vocabularies. This multitude of styles is complemented by the Yoruba culture and other diverse performative traditions of the African continent with which Onikeku explores themes of relevance to contemporary Africa, such as colonialism, exile or political instability.
Africa Moment is a platform, under the artistic direction of the creator Aïda Colmenero Dïaz, dedicated to the cultural diversification of the performing arts, with a non-Eurocentric and gender perspective, through the promotion of African artists and their diaspora in Latin America, Europe and Spain.
Open presentation on July 18
Afropolis 2021 will culminate with a presentation on July 18 in the Drets Humans Garden (next to the Graner). In this process, in addition to the international artists from Afropolis, professional artists from the city of Barcelona will participate.
Schedule: From 17 pm. to 22 pm.
Tickets: Free admission. Limited capacity
Venue and access: Drets Humans Garden (Human Rights Garden; Jane Addams, 7)
A Qudus Onikeku production.
In cooperation with Africa Moment.
With the support of Graner, Center for the creation of dance and living arts.
Price - Admission is free and no reservation is required, but places are limited.
Photography: Ibeabuchi Benson
Space
Carrer de Jane Addams, 14, 08038 Barcelona, Barcelona, Espanya
