‘W“When I was born, people said I was the reincarnation of my grandmother,” says Jermaine Acogny from his home in Toubab Dialou, Senegal. Her grandmother Alofo, a Yoruba priestess, was said to have powers passed down through her maternal line. However, Alofo made an exception because she had only one child of hers, Togown, fathered by Acogny. She said, “She said to her father, ‘I pass on my power to you, but you must pass it on to her eldest daughter in turn.'”
Acogny flashes a megawatt smile and starts laughing heartily. “I don’t necessarily think she inherited all the power that her father could,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye. Nevertheless, the 79-year-old firmly believes that “the dead are not dead” and is grateful to her grandmother for giving her mobility and respect for the natural world.
I’m sure Alofo will be happy to take credit. The woman who spoke to me over Zoom is widely known as the mother of modern African dance. In 1977, Acony, along with choreographer Maurice Béjart, helped found the Mudra School of Africa, from which the first generation of modern and classical dancers was born on the African continent. She has received numerous honors for her work as a choreographer and dancer, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2021 Venice Biennale. And her name is synonymous with the style she created, so much so that “Germaine Acogny Technique” and “African Dance” are used interchangeably in studios around the world.
As we speak, she is on an international tour exploring common ground.[s], performed with Marou Airoud, a 76-year-old dancer and longtime Pina Bausch collaborator. Although her show at Sadler’s Wells was canceled due to the coronavirus, she made her long-awaited London debut at the same venue’s Elixir Festival in April this year.
Contemplative and graceful in common[s] It explores the performers’ many shared experiences as mothers, grandmothers, and older women who are pioneers in the dance world. Both are fascinated by nature and incorporate Senegalese sticks and stones into their performances. And both of them are deeply inspired by their grandfathers, whose images are projected onto the stage. Unusually for the time, Acogny’s maternal grandfather, a sharp-suited diplomat named Ignatio, encouraged her to pursue a career in dancing. “He said, ‘People won’t understand you right now, but be patient and they will.’
Acony was born in Benin, raised in Senegal, and studied dance at the École Simon Siegel in Paris. She was the only black student at her school, and her teachers harshly criticized her for her “big butt and flat feet.”
After graduating, Acogny returned to post-independent Senegal and developed a style that blended classical training with traditional African movement: an undulating spine, a quivering torso, and subtle movements that mimic the natural environment. This hybrid technology resonated with then-president Leopold Sédar Senghor, who was keen to both develop African identity and maintain close ties with the West.
“President Senghor wanted to make Senegal the ‘Greece of Africa.’ There were great African visual artists at the time, and he also introduced us to them. [Pierre] Soulages, Picasso, the extraordinary painters of Europe,” Acony says. “So he had everything: literature, film, music, great theater, but he also wanted to develop dance as an art form in Africa. In this context, my work resonated. .”
Acogny was appointed director of Mudra Africa after impressing Senghor with a solo performance of the poem “Femme Noue, Femme Noir”. Studying at the school has been formative for artists from Africa and the diaspora, including Burkina Faso choreographer Irene Tassenbedo, Martinican dancer Gioniba Mouffret, and French-American Carol Alexis, founder of the American Ballet. It became something.
Although the school closed in 1983, its graduates spread the art of Acogny all over the world. She currently presides over the École des Sables of Toubab Dialou, an equally prestigious institution, which includes an outdoor dance studio with expansive views of the Sahel. After opening in 1998, the studio was baptized Care Alofo – Arofo’s house in Wolof.
Alessandra Soutine studied with Acogny in the early 2000s and is currently the school’s artistic director. “Most of Africa’s big choreographers came to the École des Sables,” she says. “In a sense, Acogny is the mother of African dance, because she nurtures all the makers on the continent.”
For the past two years, Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring” has been part of a double bill of tours that have something in common.[s]. A partnership between École des Sables, Sadler’s Wells and the Pina Bausch Foundation, the ceremonial performers were drawn from his 14 countries across Africa. Although Rite will not be performed at Elixir, the tour marked a full-circle moment for Acogny and Airoud. Both men played the role of victims in their careers. “Pina would have been happy for Germaine and I to do something together,” Airoud told me. “It’s very special. I feel like we keep going and giving. [Rite] Please pass this on to young people and keep it going. ”
Although Acogny is reluctant to call future projects “bad luck,” she believes that young people are the future. “Even if you teach them techniques, the basics don’t work,” she says. “It’s up to young people to develop it. In each country, it evolves according to its culture. For me, the archive is in the body of the dancer.”
