Artists

Senegalese-French dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny is considered the mother of contemporary African dance. Owing to the influence of her grandmother, a Yoruba priest, and her training in African and Occidental movement styles, she created her own form of modern dance; in 1980 she published African Dance, a book that details the technique. From 1977 to 1982 Acogny was the artistic director of Mudra Afrique, a company founded by Maurice Béjart and Leopold Sedar Senghor, Senegal’s first president. Over the years she has organized and led African dance workshops in Europe and Africa; opened a dance school, Studio Ecole Ballet Théâtre du 3è Monde, in Toulouse; and more recently started the International Centre for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances, or L’Ecole des Sables, in Senegal.