AKINOLA Open Rehearsal & Conversation

AKINOLA Open Rehearsal & Conversation with Adesola Osakalumi & Company
Date & Time: Thursday January 8, 6-7:30PM
FREE! Community Program – Registration Encouraged!

AKINOLA is a deeply personal work by choreographer and artistic director Adesola Osakalumi, written as a letter across generations, both to his younger self and to his son. The piece reflects on the courage, clarity, and bravery required to navigate artistic spaces that have historically minimized Hip-Hop, street, house, and club dance forms as less valid or less legitimate. 

Rooted in lived experience, AKINOLA affirms these forms as powerful, expansive, and essential to the contemporary artistic landscape. The work speaks to the ongoing tension between how widely these styles are used, consumed, and celebrated and how often true respect, authorship, and legitimacy are denied or diluted. Through movement, AKINOLA reminds us that choosing bravery over fear, systems, and self-limiting doubt is what leads to growth, abundance, and artistic freedom. 

What to Expect
This open rehearsal invites the BAC community into the creative process. Audiences will observe sections of the work in development, gaining insight into how movement is shaped, refined, and contextualized. The rehearsal will be followed by a conversation with Adesola Osakalumi and cast, offering space to reflect on the themes of the piece, the lineage of street and club dance forms, and the realities of sustaining artistic integrity within dominant cultural systems. Open to all ages.  

Find Adesola —
Website: https://adesola.com/
Instagram: @adesolaosakalumi 

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This event is an Artist Residency Community Program. As part of a residency at BAC, we ask each artist to build and facilitate a Community Program. Community Programs are a unique opportunity for both artists-in-residence and our local community to gather, engage, and be in conversation with one another through art. Community Programs are free engagements open to the public and/or in collaboration with a local community partner.

This Residency and Community Program are made possible through BAC’s partnership with Works & Process at the Guggenheim. BAC is proud to partner with Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim to support creators of the performing arts and incubate new works. As two organizations committed to supporting artists across disciplines and in various stages of their artistic process, the partnership is a natural fit.