New York Live Arts | Live Ideas 2021: Re:INCARNATION and Afrobeats, Migration and Entrepreneurship

Presented by the New York Live Arts Live Ideas Festival. The annual interdisciplinary humanities festival, Live Ideas is a high point of the New York Live Arts season and was postponed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The rescheduled festival, Live Ideas 2021––Altered-Worlds: Black Utopia and the Age of Acceleration, to be presented May 11-15, will offer a week of both live and virtual activity designed to explore second wave Afrofuturism as an alternative to the social anomie, reactionary impulses and neo-fascism of late capitalism. 

Upcycling Movement Revolutions: Afrobeats from Nigerian streets to world stages - Art Value and Agency

Panel Discussion
12:00 p.m.
Featuring Onye Ozuzu, Qudus Onikeku, Adila Omotosho, Ambrose Idemudia in conversation, moderated by d. Sabela grimes and hosted by Osubi Craig. 

Panel conversation exploring the Afrobeats dance movement with a network of artists featuring Qudus Onikeku (Maker in Residence with the UF Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship) and members of the QDance Company. Discussion will be focused around the tangible and intangible value generated from Afrobeats innovation and cultural production and the negotiation of economic and social justice when art becomes commercial venture.

Re:INCARNATION - U.S. Premiere

Screening
1:30 p.m
The screening is followed by a conversation between Qudus Onikeku & Bill T. Jones, moderated by Onye Ozuzu.

Re:INCARNATION is a 2021 dance, music, fashion and visual art creation, that showcases the depth of ancient Yoruba philosophy, mixed with the current Nigerian youth culture and its pure and uncompromising joy. It is the work of a crop of Nigerian dancers marked by the rhythm and groove of Lagos. Paying tribute to this richness, the choreography is written with a highly musical structure, with an intricate and carefully designed visual aesthetics. Coming from a deep Yoruba cultural understanding, at the core of this multimodal and multi-sensorial composition is the Yoruba central concept of reincarnation (birth, death, re-birth) which offers a distinct way of thinking about time in a cyclical manner. 

The screening and conversation are made possible with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

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