Choreographer Qudus Onikeku: ‘I want to mirror the real world – vibrant, chaotic, problematic’

When Onikeku was younger, he didn’t think he could work with the corruption and cronyism he saw around him. “What matters most in Nigeria is: ‘How much is in it for me?’” he says in an essay on his website. So what made him come back? “With all the money we were given in France, I really felt like I was working for the government,” says the now 40-year-old. “Like I was a civil servant, and I didn’t like that.” In Paris, Onikeku would perform at theatres with a handful of Black people in the audience, not at all a reflection of the streets outside. “I said to myself: I want to mirror the real world – vibrant, chaotic, problematic.” He wanted artistic freedom and no strings. Some people in France told him his work was too political, but he wasn’t interested in fighting the establishment; he just wanted to “invent a world that I was not given”, he says, “go to a space where there is nothing and start to rebuild”.