Movement Artistry &
Choreography 

Is home a place? A feeling? Can it have the same meaning to different people? 

What happens when you don’t feel comfortable in your own body — does it feel more like a cage than a home? What happens when you’re far away from the physical place you consider to be home? How do you rebuild your sensation of embrace, of safety, of one of the most fundamental things a human needs to survive? These are all questions I’d like to explore, both personally and within a wider community realm.

Home is Where is a collaborative project between myself and ten additional artists from around the globe. 

"The masculine principle within the feminine | The feminine within the masculine"

Choreographer: Bafana Solomon Matea ( @matea_dance_collective_ ) 

Festival| Jazz Arts ReWIRED: Up Close and Personal | @bopjazzuk & @dolliehenrymbe 

Music: @murdahbongz Givethanks | Higher @yorubarecords

"Strength is non-reaction, resilience nourished by the patience to cast a light in the house of darkness. 

To see in those corridors, where the darkness oppresses me, the outline of a window that - opening - welcomes the teaching of what has been.

Strength is pressing against a rusty latch as if it were your heart, insisting on letting go of a breath held for years.

It is maybe that I allow myself to wonder if my intuition was telling the truth."

The performance #Unaltrogenerediforza is the result of a process of meeting and collective choreography. The meeting, which took place around the theme of gender violence, focused on the concept of force as a possible reaction tool to the experience of violence.

The strength that lies in doing together, in building a collective ritual, in thinking together about a feminine and feminist alternative to the heteropatriarchal concept of muscular strength.

The project was developed through workshops for women with women and was preceded by training and exchange meetings with Eleonora Bonvini (General and Social Pedagogy) and Daniela Linguerri (Psychology and psychotherapy).

Tidal is a dance theatre project that underlines the importance of creating bridges and connection through ancient knowledge in challenging modern times. Between ancestry and feminine lineage of  their Welsh, Norman and Yoruba Roots the creators investigate and find common ground within mythology and cosmology.

Tidal underlines the importance of connecting with the water element, which is a symbol of transformation (powerful inner force) sacred knowledge (environment and motherhood), fertility (giver of life) and the illusion of the perspective on the female body and its abilities. The exploration of all these aspects will guide us all into a deeper research of how the myths are connected to our ancestry and how our stories are bound to contemporary perception of the female body.

Tidal is a collaboration with Welsh dancer and choreographer Kimberley Noble

Music by :  Bombo productions and Welsh singer Teifi Emerald

Lupa Caligo an ongoing research between Ismael Lo and Ofelia Balogun on the phenomenon of Call and Response .

The nameless space that intersperses it appears as a continuous conversation that runs through music, dance and life itself.

Lupa Caligo is a reflection on how digitally generated visual and sonic languages combine with movement and the body to reconfigure narratives and to orient new social responses.

"My interaction with the set of calls and responses changes, and at the same time I

remain in a state of alert, suspended until the end. It is a continuous deconstruction and construction to find the essence and to rediscover a new context for the sound" 

(Ismael Lo | Sound & Graphic Designer)

“Through its theatrical, narrative,community, symbolic and archetypal function, dance is an

active but forgotten tool for individual and collective transformation. For example, its usefulness in reconstructing one's ability to discriminate, the deconstruction of one's experiences

and the experience or discovery of one's intersectional identity and

intentionality."

"The Absence of Presence" is a dancing hub that places dance at the centre as a stimulus for reflection on individuality in relation to the Other, on distorted narratives and on conscious activism, emphasizing the need to create a link between personal history and contemporary history as an act of responsibility.

Post Talk with Timothy Raeymekers ( University of Bologna ) on the book “ Corpi e Mediterraneo Nero”.

The hub was made possible with the support of Cantieri Meticci, DnA Dance Company and Comune di Bologna.

Choreography and Artistic Direction by Ofelia Omoyele Balogun

Percussion: Lamin Kjigera

Dancers:

Federica Toffola

Bianca Mangelli

Astrid Delombaerde

Sara Febert

Anna Rolfi

Elisa Peron

Melissa Salimbeni

Cecilia Franceschelli

Trailer Music (I do not own the copyright of the music )

Collaboration with Nix in his song "Moonwalk" . 

Winner Best African video 2021 Gelsen Hip Hop Awards.

 An in-movement reflection on the history and the relationship of African descendants and second generation population and their fluid status of “displaced humans' '. Displaced individuals, displaced in a middle land between the origin and the arrival one.

Dance production developed by O O Balogun & 8 dancers with a 30 minutes documentary about the creation process 

(full documentary available on request)

A multidisciplinary artistic performance that highlights various Italian artists who come from different fields such as music, dance, video installations; these artists in turn highlight the connection between Italy and Africa with their art. The production toured and collaborate with Ballet National (Dakar), Destino Dance Company (Addis Abeba),  UJ Arts and Culture and Moving Into Dance Mopathong company (Johannesburg). 

With  Sidiki Dembele,  Aboubacar Sylla, Baba Galle Kante,Mamadou Keita, Sura  Susso, Christopher Radford, Fumy Opeyemi, Idrissa Camara, Nathan Bartman, Oumar Camara, Patience James, Vanessa Guevara.

Founded by Idrissa Camara of Guinea in 2010, Ballet Nimba has combined traditional dance roots with dynamic young performers and an original musical score. Featuring the rare talents of Fulani Flute, Bolon Bata players from Guinea, an Ngoni player from Cote d’Ivoire, soaring vocals and percussion on Djembe, Doundouns, Kirin and Wassaoumba, the audience are treated by some of West Africa’s most outstanding percussionists.