AFTER a successful showcase in Berlin, Germany, the much talked about Nigerian dance show, We Almost Forgot, WAF, returned with a bang, leaving so much to desire by the Lagos and Abuja audiences.
The Lagos premiere which was part of the Lagos Live Arts Festival at the Freedom Park, Broad Street, Lagos State, on Friday June 24, gave Qudus Onikeku more than the one thousand people he’d estimated will watch his show.
Taking a sweeping glance at the audience, you’d see in their countenance, a seriousness with which they watch the 6-cast create a non-verbal dance with so much melee (albeit bloodless) and a craze that typifies today’s society which in his creative philosophy suggests how ‘we almost forgot’ that the world was created with sanity and mankind was meant to co-exist peacefully.
“The performance aims at exploring memory and amnesia, what has the past got to offer the present beyond history? The idea is to make a fiction of witness accounts, of stories of individuals who have witnessed wars and crises, and to evoke the capacity of our bodies to also keep such memories of trauma,” says Onikeku, artistic director and founder of YK Projects Paris and the QDanceCenter, Lagos.
Onikeku’s play is reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s Man In The Mirror: “I’m Starting With The Man In The Mirror; I’m Asking Him To Change His Ways; And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer; If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place; Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change…” says the late pop singer.
Onikuku himself takes the lead in the one-hour drama, with an actress whose narrative further provoked the thoughts of the audience. WAF is as energetic and soft at the same time, thanks to the dancers whose flexibility speaks of a high degree of rehearsal and mastery of the body language.
Complex but clear, Onikeku’s play uses high energy movements, singing and intricate music to tell a potpourri of stories of war, crime, starvation, abuse and weirdness where everyone is victim and villain at some point.
“I want to dance about peace, but since the world denies me of such proximity with beauty from all around me, that out of the sorrows and tears, the discordance and the screams one could extract art works that are essentially both beautiful, meditative and contemplative,” he says, adding that “our world is a world of casualities and like so many survivors, I still jump at the sound of a loud noise, sights and sounds smells-anything can unexpectedly take us to those memorial spaces, where we’d rather not go.”
The underlining message is that while the unusual has become the norm, we are reminded once in a while, of the law of retributive justice.
Every step, twist of the waist, of the finger, of the head and eye show how much an actor the cast members are. And because the stage leaves nothing to virtual imagination, the actors excite, even more, with their original stunts, just as the stage transports spectators to the countryside of great hills, mountains, valleys and caverns in a forest of weathering leaves.
The Lagos leg of the show was followed by another in Abuja on Sunday June 26, hosted by the National Universities Commission, just as he is planning a Paris premiere on November 3.
The project has received active support from developmental agencies such as Bank of Industry, Goethe Institut, The French Institut and the German Embassy.
This work, which is Onikeku’s latest creation, pooled its cast from Nigeria, Gabon, Morocco, Algeria, Madagascar and France.
Onikeku is a graduate of The National Higher School of Circus Arts, France. For close to two decades now, he has constantly pushed the limits of dance beyond the shores of Africa. He is part of the new generation of international creators, whose works are redefining and refining African cultures and philosophy. He is known globally for his solo works, writings and research projects.
He was awarded “Dancer of the year” by the Future Awards in Nigeria in 2009, while in October 2010, his solo piece titled My Exile is in my head won “the best solo performance” during the Africa-wide dance encounters “Danse l’Afrique danse” in Bamako – Mali, and the 2012 “New choreographic talent” in France. A TED global fellow nominee and a visiting professor to the University of California, Davis, Qudus is a fluid traveller who shares his time between borders, but presently involved in various artistic projects, teachings and collaborations in Lagos, through The QDanceCenter.
