MY EXILE IS IN MY HEAD
Saturday, May 8 at 6pm
Sunday, May 9 at 5pm
Venue 400 / 15€, 12€, 10€
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...More than a word, exile is a condition. It is a place, a knowledge, a narrative, but most importantly, it is a psychic space which is obvious to those who inhibit it, those who must engage and wrestle with it because only by so doing can they come to terms with it. Exile is poignant because it is bracketed by loss, it is not so much about movement, relocation or departure as it is about loss: of teritory, of the familiar and the familial, of certainty, but most frighteningly, by the grave probability of the loss of memory.
Exile is a rupture, the cessation of things previously taken for granted, the collapse of a world of relative certainties, and therein lies its stings. It also underlines the inescapable desirability of belonging. It may be questioned, even ridiculed, but only those who have experience such loss can understand the rootlessness - and ruthlessness - of existence in the shiftless, treacherous territory of exile. Exile offers a refuge, but no consolation or pride. Every engagement with the lived experience of exile finds it’s most persuasive explanation not in fascination for there is no such thing as fascination for exile, but rather in the individual quest to come to terms with the fact of exile. Every such effort is an attempt to explain exile more to oneself than to others. How, then, does one cope with the fact of exile? Through art the exile is able to escape the burden of circumstance, even the temptation of bitterness and recrimination, and instead question, explore, ruminate, and attempt to repossess fragments of that which is lost. Through art the exile may return, in a manner of speaking, by reconstituting the past, participating in the present, as well as envisioning a new world.
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Choreography : Qudus Onikeku
Music : Charles Amblard
Video : Isaak Lartey
Light engineer : Guillaume Fesneau
Script by Wole Soyinka and photography by Agnès Chefei
From December 2009 to May 2010 at CENTQUATRE
BIOGRAPHY
Qudus Onikeku, 25 years old, Nigerian, has lived in France for three years, and graduated from Châlons-en-Champagne CNAC as a dancer and acrobat. His end-of-course show, 20ème/ Première, has been performed over 50 times in France and Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia) in 2009. His Yoruba tradition plays a special role in the way he exercises his art. He is one of the new generation of creative artists that is springing up in Africa. Playing an interpretative role in the creative works of Heddy Maalem, he has toured in Europe, the United States and the Caribbean. He is also well known for his artistic research focusing on the African continent. In 2004 he created a dance solo, Lost Face, which toured for two years in Africa and the Caribbean, and directed Do we need Cola-Cola to dance?, a project of urban dances, in various African capital cities; this gave rise to a 50’ film. I must set forth, a 20’ solo and the first stage of his creative project, was presented in August 2009 at the Bates Dance Festival (USA).
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Production: YK Projects / co the CENTQUATRE, Culturesfrance and the Centre National des Arts du Cirque.
With the support of the fonds de dotation du CENTQUATRE and the Centre national de la danse.
To watch this animation, check the Flash version of this site.
