Qudus Onikeku

As CAME’s inaugural Maker in Residence (2020-2024), Qudus Onikeku mixed visionary creative performance with cutting edge technologies and research. Dancer, acrobat, technologist, teacher, researcher, choreographer, curator: Onikeku is a self-described multimodal artist, community organizer, and social engineer who has toured and participated in festivals and major exhibitions across more than 55 countries. His four-year tenure with UF featured performances across the US and abroad, from Paris to Lagos, as well as advanced research at the intersection of dance and artificial intelligence (AI). CAME continues to collaborate with Onikeku on Atunda: An AI Deep-Tech Solution to Economic Health and Mobility. Atunda asks the question: how can AI help protect the intellectual property (IP) of dancers and create economic health and mobility in this digital age? This project was awarded a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  

Qudus Onikeku is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of The QDance Center in Lagos, Nigeria, which has been in operation since 2014 as a creative incubator mixing artistic competence, human resources, innovation, and creativity as capacities for human development. The QDance Center works exclusively with young artists, tech creatives, local communities, and researchers to create new interests and opportunities for culture and tech in Africa and in the diaspora. As a world-renowned choreographer and dancer, Onikeku has brought his creative vision to the international stage through live performances, collaborations with emerging technology, and through high profile media partnerships. In collaboration with Disney and Pan-African studio Kugali Media, he choreographed dance sequences for the animated miniseries Iwájú (2024) on Disney+ streaming services. Iwájú (“front-facing” or “the future” in Yoruba language) is set in a futuristic Lagos, Nigeria. In June 2023, Onikeku premiered Out of this World, a heavily audience-interactive work that mixes performance with installation, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The installation drew from a new software that Onikeku called “Oraqu,” and its framework and mechanics were built on the Ifá divination system of the Yorùbá people. In 2021, QDance Center premiered Re:INCARNATION (2021), a dance piece that pays homage to the complex tapestry of Nigerian Afrobeats music, dance, and urban youth cultures, Yorùbá philosophy, and African aesthetics at the Centre Pompidou in Paris before touring the performance globally.