Germaine Acogny

Germaine Acogny followed the training of the École Simon Siegel in Paris from 1962 to 1965. In 1968, in Dakar (Senegal) she founded her first dance studio. Influenced by the gestural heritage of her grandmother, the priestess Yoruba, and thanks to her apprenticeship in traditional African dances as well as (classical and modern) Western dances, she has honed her own technique of modern African dance. From 1977 to 1982, she was the artistic director of the Mudra Afrique school, founded by Maurice Béjart, before joining Béjart’s company in Brussels. She has since danced, choreographed and taught worldwide. In 1995, she went back to Senegal to set up an international centre of traditional and contemporary African dance, as a place for exchanges between African dancers and other dancers from around the world. Since 1998, she has been bringing together thirty dancers from the entire African continent for a three months’ professional training. The École des Sables opened in 2004. Her pièce Fagaala about the Rwandan genocide, co-signed by Kota Yamazaki, won a Bessie Award in 2007.

Accompanied by a percussionist, Germaine Acogny is proposing an initiation into the modern African dance which she has been developing since the 1960s. As a form of dance in an ongoing dialogue with the cosmos, the work will be based around the spinal column, considered to be the tree of life: with contractions, undulations, tremors, movements inspired by nature, plants or animals, and the everyday life of Africa.