by “When I was born,” says Germaine Acogny, speaking from her home in Tubab Dialaw, Senegal, “people said I was the reincarnation of my grandmother.” Her grandmother Aloopho, who was a Yoruba priest, is said to have had powers that would be passed down the matrilineal line. But she only had one child – Acogny’s father, Togoun – so Aloopho made an exception. “She said to my father, ‘I will transmit my powers to you, but you must transmit them to your eldest daughter in turn.'”
Acogny gives a megawatt smile and begins to laugh heartily. “I don’t necessarily feel that my father put all the power he could forward,” she says with twinkling eyes. However, the 79-year-old firmly believes that “the dead are not dead”, and thanks her grandmother for giving her ease of movement and respect for the natural world.
People won’t understand you right now, her grandfather said, but be patient – they will
I’m sure Aloopho would be happy to take credit: the woman who speaks to me over Zoom is widely considered to be the mother of contemporary African dance. In 1977, Acogny helped found the Mudra Afrique school with choreographer Maurice Béjart, which produced the first generation of modern and classical dancers on the continent. She has been decorated with honors for her work as a choreographer and dancer, including the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale 2021. 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.
When we speak, she is halfway through an international tour of common ground[s], performed with the 76-year-old dancer and longtime Pina Bausch collaborator Malou Airaudo. Having previously canceled at Sadler’s Wells due to Covid, they will make their long-awaited London debut at the venue’s Elixir festival last April.
Thoughtful and elegant, common ground[s] explores the many shared experiences of the performers as mothers, grandmothers and older women pioneers in dance. Both are interesting in nature and incorporate Senegalese sticks and stones into their performance. And both were inspired by their ancestors, whose images are shown on stage. Unusually for the time, Acogny’s maternal grandfather – a sharp-suited diplomat called Ignatio – encouraged her to pursue a career in dance. “He said, ‘People won’t understand you right now, but be patient, they will.'”
Born in Benin and raised in Senegal, Acogny studied dance at the École Simon-Siégel in Paris. She was the only black student in the school and a teacher criticized her “big butt and flat feet” liberally.
After graduating, Acogny returned to post-independence Senegal and developed a style that blended her classical training with traditional, African-inspired movement – arching spines, quivering torsos and subtle gestures that mimic the natural environment. The hybrid technique belonged to the President at the time, Léopold Sédar Senghor, who was keen to develop an African identity and maintain close ties with the west.
“President Senghor wanted Senegal to become the ‘Greece of Africa’. There were great African visual artists at the time, but he also introduced us [Pierre] Soulages, Picasso, extraordinary painters from Europe,” says Acogny. “So he had all that – literature, cinema, music, extraordinary theater – but he also wanted to develop dance as an art form in Africa. In this context, my work resonated.”
After impressing Senghor with a solo performance of his poem Femme Nue, Femme Noire, Acogny was appointed director of Mudra Afrique. Artists from across Africa and the diaspora have had formative studies, including Burkinabé choreographer Irène Tassembédo, Martinican dancer Djoniba Mouflet and Franco-American Ballet des Amériques founder Carole Alexis.
The school closed in 1983 but its graduates spread the Acogny technique around the world. Today, she leads an equally talented institution, the École des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, where there is an open-air dance studio that frames a spectacular view of the Sahel. After the opening of the studio in 1998, the studio was christened Kër Aloopho – the house of Aloopho in Wolof.
Alesandra Seutin studied under Acogny in the early 2000s and today she is the artistic director of the school. “Most of the great African choreographers came to the École des Sables,” she says. “So in a way, Acogny is the mother of African dance because she is nurturing all these makers on the continent.”
For the past two years, Bausch has had Rite of Spring as part of a touring double bill with Common Ground[s]. In partnership between the École des Sables, Sadler’s Wells and the Pina Bausch Foundation, the Rite cast was gathered from 14 countries across Africa. Although Rite will not be performed at Elixir, the trip was a full-circle moment for Acogny and Airaudo, who have both been sacrificial victims during their careers. “Pina would love that Germaine and I are doing something together,” Airaudo tells me. “It’s very special. I think as we go forward and give us [Rite] with the young people and carry on.”
Acogny is reluctant to talk about upcoming projects – “It’s bad luck” – but she also believes that the future is youth. “I teach my technique and the basics don’t move,” she says. “It’s up to young people to develop it. In each country it develops according to the culture. For me, the archive is in the bodies of the dancers.”
• common ground[s] Part of the Elixir festival at Sadler’s Wells, London, on April 10
