Senegalese and French, Germaine Acogny was director until 1982 of the Mudra Africa dance school founded by Maurice Béjart. She then settled in Brussels. In 1995 she founded L’Ecole des sables in Senegal as a space for exchange between dancers from all around the world. Her recent works include Fagaala, a show created in 1994 in partnership with the Japanese choreographer, Kota Yamasaki, on the theme of the Rwandan genocide. Her last piece, Waxtaan, is a critical viewpoint on the men who rule us.

Germaine Acogny’s work is a synthesis of traditional dances from West Africa and contemporary dance that demonstrates a particular approach to the individual, with a universal dimension that allows dancers to see their own body language from a different angle in order to analyse and use it with a new creativity.

The first part of the masterclass will focus on the transmission of Germaine Acogny’s techniques. Inspired by nature and daily African life, the movements created allow the dancer to find again the «forgotten body», the ground, the earth, rhythm, the beating of the heart, and to rediscover a new flow of energy in the body. During the second part of the masterclass, Germaine Acogny will invite participants to appropriate this technique through improvisation and to use the elements acquired by combining them with their own dance or customary techniques.

Grande Leçon de Danse with Germaine Acogny

Saturday 20 October at 7pm/ Centre national de la Danse / Grand Studio