Nigerian choreographer, Qudus Onikeku, is returning to stage with Terrapolis, the final part of his acclaimed trilogy on the collective will to transformation.
Coming after Re: Incarnation (2021) and Out of This World (2023), and set against the turbulence of ecological collapse, Terrapolis unfolds as a living prophecy – an African odyssey that summons ancestral wisdom and emergent myths as vital tools for planetary healing.
Sixteen dancers and musicians, trained at TheQSchool and drawn from diverse practices, embody a fractured world where the elemental Orisas – of water, wind and earth – revolt through floods, storms and tremors. In their fury, they demand atonement, renewed kinship with the more-than-human community, and a rewilding of the human spirit.
On stage, Yoruba rituals, philosophy and symbols converge with the energy of contemporary youth culture. Dance fuses with live music, fashion, storytelling, and chant to create a visceral, visual and sonic experience – where myth collides with memory, and dancing bodies become vessels of survival, renewal and resistance.
With Terrapolis, Onikeku offers a poetic meditation on endurance, adaptation and transformation. At once luminous and unrelenting, the work conjures hope from chaos: a carnival ablaze with rhythm and light, carried by an extraordinary new generation of Nigerian artists.
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