BIO

Nkeiruka Oruche is an Igbo multimedia creative, cultural organizer, and producer focusing on Afro-Urban culture. Since 2002, she’s been part of key players ushering Afro culture onto the global stage, from being the Editor-in-Chief of Nigerian Entertainment digital magazine, and as co-founder of One3snapshot art collective.  She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a social justice and music organization, and founder and executive artistic director of Afro Urban Society, a hub for Pan African arts and culture. 

In 2022, she created and directed ‘Mixtape of the Dead & Gone #1’- Ahamefula’, a shit-just-got-real dance-theater piece about life, death, and what the fuck comes next. In 2023, she was part of the creative team of the San Francisco Playhouse’s production of ‘Nollywood Dreams’. As guest editor for ‘In Dance’ magazine in 2023, she created ‘Home is Where The Dance Is’ a riveting issue featuring Pan-African reflections on our intimate and informal connections to dance. She is the co-creator of the BBC-Featured ‘Notable & Notorious Nigerian Women Coloring Book’.

Oruche is a 2022 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, Kikwetu Honors Awardee, a 2018 NYFA Immigrant Artist Fellow, YBCA 100 Honoree, Guild of Nigerian Dance Practitioners honoree, and recipient of awards from Creative Work Fund, MAP Fund, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, California Arts Council, Zellerbach Family Foundation, East Bay Community Foundation, and Dancer’s Group/CA$H, among others.

Her work has been featured in BBC Africa, Goethe-Institut, Fjord Review, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Coal City University-Enugu, Oakland Museum of California, and Dance Mission Theater.

Nkeiruka’s immersion into creativity and culture began as a child from her ancestral hometown Amichi and learning popular dance from her Aunt Obiageli. Living in Lagos, Abuja, the Bronx, Stone Mountain, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area inspired her love of diverse cultures. She has shared stages and created with Magic System, Les Twins, Elephant Man, Onyeka Owenu, Monica Hastings-Smith, Amara Tabor-Smith, Ellen Sebastian-Chang, Stern Grove Festival, Youth Speaks, Loco Bloco, and SF Boys & Girls Clubs.

Currently, Nkeiruka is working on ‘Obi gbawara’m//My Heart Shattered or What happens after I die?’, a cultural documentation & multimedia project exploring the art and performance of grief in Igbo traditions, while parenting Orachi, the next-generation of cultural creatives.

A child of Ndi Igbo, and subsequent transnational third-culture kid, Nkeiruka Oruche is a multi-local, multi-interested Igbo multimedia creative who currently works and plays in Huichin, unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory. She be dancing, she be playing music, she be co-conspirating and visualizing…

Written words have always been her jam. You may find her cuddled up in bed battling debilitating pain, while simultaneously planning themed house parties or making spreadsheets to organize the multi-pronged takedown of capitalistcolonialheteropatriarchy. She’s particularly obsessed with Pan Afro-Urban culture and its intersections with personal identity, public wealth, and sociopolitical action, and believes that most of our problems can be cured with a fire-ass playlist, making ‘I hope this is good’ food with ‘whatever we have’, laughing loudly at our problems, and drinking water and minding our mo’fkin business.

Absorb her reverberations through her work with Afro Urban Society, Bakanal de Afrique, BoomShake Music, and House/full of BlackWomen. If direct personal stalking on these internet streets is more your vibe, try your luck at the socials or you could just Send money. Paypal | Venmo | ACH | Zelle, you name it.

Because, Igbo girls don’t swim in water, we swim in wealth.