‘When I was born,” says Germaine Acogny, speaking from her home in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, “people said I was the reincarnation of my grandmother.” A Yoruba priestess, her grandmother Aloopho was said to possess 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 told my dad, ‘I’ll transmit my powers to you, but you must transmit them to your oldest daughter in turn.’”
Acogny gives a megawatt smile and begins to chuckle heartily. “I don’t necessarily feel that my father passed on all the power he could have done,” she says, eyes glinting. Nonetheless, the 79-year-old firmly believes that “the dead are not dead”, and thanks her grandmother for bestowing upon her an ease of movement and reverence for the natural world.
I’m sure Aloopho would be happy to take credit: the woman speaking to me over Zoom is widely regarded as 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 honours 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.
When we speak, she is partway through an international tour of common ground[s], performed with the 76-year-old dancer and longtime Pina Bausch collaborator Malou Airaudo. Having previously been cancelled at Sadler’s Wells due to Covid, they make their long-awaited London debut at the venue’s Elixir festival this April.
Contemplative and graceful, common ground[s] explores the performers’ many shared experiences as mothers, grandmothers and pioneering older women in dance. Both are fascinated by nature and incorporate sticks and stones from Senegal into their performance. And both were deeply inspired by their grandfathers, images of whom are projected on to the 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 criticised 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 – undulating spines, trembling torsos and subtle gestures that mimic the natural environment. The hybrid technique resonated with then-president Léopold Sédar Senghor, who was keen on both developing African identity and maintaining close ties with the west.
“President Senghor wanted to make Senegal the ‘Greece of Africa’. There were fantastic African visual artists at the time, but he also introduced us to [Pierre] Soulages, Picasso, extraordinary painters from Europe,” says Acogny. “So he had all that – literature, cinema, music, extraordinary theatre – but he also wanted to develop dance as an art form in Africa. In this context, my work found an echo.”
After impressing Senghor with a solo performance to his poem Femme Nue, Femme Noire, Acogny was appointed director at Mudra Afrique. Studying at the school was formative for artists across Africa and the diaspora, including the Burkinabé choreographer Irène Tassembédo, the Martinican dancer Djoniba Mouflet and the French-American founder of Ballet des Amériques, Carole Alexis.
The school closed in 1983 but its graduates disseminated Acogny’s technique around the world. Today, she presides over an equally illustrious institution, the École des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, home to an open-air dance studio which frames a sweeping view of the Sahel. After its opening in 1998, the studio was baptised Kër Aloopho – Aloopho’s house in Wolof.
Alesandra Seutin studied under Acogny in the early 2000s and today she is an artistic director at the school. “Most of the big choreographers in Africa came to the École des Sables,” she says. “So in a way, Acogny is the mother of African dance because she’s nurturing all these makers on the continent.”
Over the past two years, Bausch’s Rite of Spring has been part of a touring double bill with common ground[s]. In a partnership between the École des Sables, Sadler’s Wells and the Pina Bausch Foundation, the Rite cast was gathered from 14 countries across Africa. While Rite will not be performed at Elixir, the tour has been a full-circle moment for Acogny and Airaudo, both of whom played the sacrificial victim during their careers. “Pina would have loved that Germaine and I are doing something together,” Airaudo tells me. “It’s very special. I feel like we go on and we give [Rite] to the young people and keep going.”
Acogny is reluctant to speak about forthcoming projects – “It’s bad luck” – but she too believes the youth are the future. “I teach my technique and the fundamentals don’t move,” she says. “It’s up to young people to develop it. In each country it evolves according to the culture. For me, the archive is in the bodies of the dancers.”
