DDF Digital 2025 – Screening: In Conversation with Qudus Onikeku hosted by Tobi Omoteso

This talk was part of Interspaces, a special series of inspirational workshops and discussions for Dublin Dance Festival’s 21st Edition. These events were designed to celebrate and inspire audiences and artists alike and create a meeting space to share ideas and build community.

About Qudus Onikeku

Qudus Onikeku is the founder and Artistic Director of The QDance Center, a world-renowned artist, researcher, innovator, and social impact engineer, who subliminally uses art for non-art outcomes. Over a decade, he has established himself as a major international artist, working with different media: performance, installation, curating and community organising.

His international artistic practice intersects between his interest in visceral body movements, kinesthetic memory, and embracing an artistic vision and a futurist practice that both respects and challenges Yoruba artistic traditions. He has created a substantial body of critically acclaimed work that ranges from solos to group works, as well as artist-to-artist collaborations with visual artists, architects, musicians, writers, multimedia artists, data scientists and technologists.

After his higher education in France in 2009, Qudus created his first company YK projects in Paris, with which he created several solo and group dance pieces of critical acclaim. In 2014 he returned to Lagos with his partner Hajarat, and together they co-founded the QDance Center, an incubator with which they examined and experimented with the possible intersections between arts and society.

Qudus has been a favourite on major international stages, and festivals across 60 countries including Biennale de Lyon, Festival d’Avignon, Centre Pompidou, Philharmonie de Paris in France, TED Global, Venice Biennale, Torinodanza, Roma Europa in Italy, Kalamata Dance Festival Greece, Dance Umbrella in the UK, Bates Dance Festival in the USA, Festival TransAmerique Montreal. His dance works are in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. He has been a visiting professor of dance at the University of California Davis and Columbia College Chicago. Qudus is currently the first “Maker in Residence” at The Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship of the University of Florida. His current research ATUNDA, explores a deep tech solution, an AI-ready dataset for dance recognition and movement analysis, to lay a background for cutting-edge interactive systems to synthesise, preserve, protect, and securely share dance and movement data in the age of virality.

About Tobi Omoteso

Tobi Omoteso is an internationally acclaimed Nigerian/Irish B-boy (Breakin’ /Breakdancer) and Hip-Hop Freestyle dancer, having trained at Broadway Dance Centre, New York and Breakbeat Dance Studios, Ireland. Dancing for over 20 years, Tobi supports the foundations of this dynamic and influential dance form with his B-boy crew – RECESSION SQUAD NINJAS. He is curator and director of the hugely popular TOP 8 STREET DANCE BATTLE, now in its 8th year. He was previously a board member of CoisCéim Dance Theatre and part of Dance Sport Federation of Ireland/Breakin Ireland Head of Athlete Commission. As a dance facilitator, he has designed and delivered youth programmes, bringing his knowledge of Hip-Hop and breakin’ culture into a wide variety of youth, school and academic contexts. As a choreographer and performer, his work has been presented at Dublin Dance Festival, WHAT NEXT dance festival, Cork Midsummer Festival, Glor Dance Platform, Spraoi Festival, Irish Arts Center (New York), Eva Biannual International Contemporary Arts Festival, SODEA Festival, 1916 Easter Rising Commemorations in Croke Park (TG4 & Tyrone Production LAOCHRA), Dancers from the Dancer Irish and International Festival & Bloodlines, RTE’s Commissioned “I am Ireland”, VISUAL Carlow, Fidget Feet & Irish Arial Creation Centre, Thisispopbaby, the Abbey Theatre, and Loud Base Hip-hop induction Africa (Nigeria). On screen he has performed on Sky One's Got to Dance, Penny Dreadful, Apple TV Foundations, RTE, and in numerous music videos and commercials.