Lagos 2025

November was a busy month for me in Lagos.

I was at the Lagos Fringe, where I performed a show, led a workshop and facilitated a discussion on artistic collaboration with AI and co-facilitated a mix-ability performance workshop at the GAS foundation.

My solo show titled In a City, Near a Forest. This was an updated version of my earlier work, Near a Village, Near a Forest. In this new iteration, the narrator evolved into a character named Kemi, who wove together her retelling of folktales with her personal journey toward becoming an ecologist.

In developing the piece, I explored the dialogue between words and movement, discovering how this inquiry shaped the performance’s rhythm and meaning.

The performance was made more special by having a sign interpreter on stage with me. Members of the talented Deaf Can Dance Company were in the audience. Many thanks to Nike Jonah of Pan-African Creative Exchange and Oyindamola Faithful of the Centre for Contemporary Arts Lagos coming up with the idea of that collaboration and supporting it. I got great feedback on the show. I look forward to developing it further and touring it in England.

The room full of creatives that came for the discussion on AI were quite up to speed on Artificial intelligence. We pondered on the usual things: AI taking our jobs and then decided that it AI could not, at least completely. There were too many incidents of AI hallucinating for the human factor to be redundant. Sharing tips on how to use AI as a brainstorming partner, research assistant and text editor was much more fun.

I got to watch the rehearsals of Future of Dance on invitation of Femi Israel one the artistic directors. His dancers are stunning, performing his trade mark choreography which involves a build up of movement strong energetic arc. It was a philosophical piece of contemporary dance the relationship of humans and the planet. Another highlight was co-facilitating the mix-ability lab with choreographer Uche Onah at the GAS foundation (Yinka Shonibare's space) with PACE+ and Oyindamola Faithful.

Big thanks to all the organisations I worked with. It felt like a homecoming.