All videos and photographs can be enlarged by clicking on them.
The below are a sample of choreographic works with a focus on works I have created in University settings. As well as these samples, you can find a retrospective catalogue of works on the Dancingstrong web-site. Alongside this, for more recent works you can visit Artworks on this web-site.
Passing: I right my own story
Wayne State University, USA [2015]: film, static camera of performance.
Middlesex University, UK [2019]: image from performance (photos: MDX staff)
About: This work was made for the Wayne State University Dance Department, Detroit (see film below). The piece is a reflection and dedication to the dancers who moved with me during a summer school project I did with The Ruth Ellis Center also in Detroit. I later restaged the work in London at the Middlesex University Dance Department where I was able to use live video capture and projection within choreography (see photos below). Passing: I right my own story was a part of a serious of three works exploring the notion of ‘passing’ from a Black or Queer perspective.
Remain
Wayne State University, USA [2016]: film of performance, static camera.
About: This work was created when I was asked to create another work for Wayne State University Dance Department, Detroit (see film and photos below). The piece is in response to the Brexit vote in the UK and the 2016 presidential election in the USA. The piece is a reflection on immigration. ‘Remain’ was the slogan for those people in the UK wanting to vote against Brexit in order to remain in the European Union, while this same word was also used across discussions of the Mexican /USA boarder.
Passing: The price of a ticket
Duet – film of the choreography [2016/17]
Solo – images from performance of solo version performance (photos: Lisa Gilby, John Diehl) [2017/18]
About: The work was originally created as a commission from Serendipity International Festival for a biographical solo. I began the creative process for making the work by making a duet to explore themes around how my Black female body was welcomed /seen/tolerated in the mainstream dance establishment. This work was performed as a duet at CADD. Below is a filmed version of the work with dancers Kara Brody & Miranda Moy. It was also performed as a solo in a number of places internationally (see photos below). This work is another in the ‘passing’ series.
Other works:
Over the past two years (partly due to Covid) I have made a number choreographic works that are site-specific including live Zoom based performance.
Videos below:
Belonging (in The Hop) [2022]: a site-specific dance commissioned by the Hayward Gallery, Southbank London 2022. The piece was commissioned as a choreographic response to The Hop installation by Jyll Bradley.
How do we remember as a society: whispered memory [2021]: Commissioned by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). They write ‘RIBA has commissioned the artist, scholar and choreographer Adesola Akinleye to create a series of new video artworks inspired by the work of Sir David Adjaye OBE as part of the 2021 Royal Gold Medal celebrations. Learn more here (Awards), Akinleye’s pieces respond to a prevalent theme throughout Adjaye’s practice, that of memory, through videos that convey how memories of specific places keep us connected to the sites that we have been physically separated from during the pandemic. The videos invite viewers to be fully present in a cathartic experience that will temporarily take you outside of yourself to share in Akinleye’s multi-layered assemblage of memories.’
A wider range and cross section of my work can be found under Artworks on this web-site and as a retrospective catalogue on the Dancingstrong Movement Lab web-site .