Program Pina Bausch x Germaine Acogny
Pina Bausch
Germaine Acogny
Ecole des Sables
© Maarten Vanden Abeele © Pina Bausch Foundation
In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting the Shanghai International Dance Center Theater and the China Shanghai International Arts Festival for the presentation of a Pina Bausch x Germaine Acogny three-part program interpreted by the Ecole des Sables.
This special three-part program marks the first collaboration between the Pina Bausch Foundation in Germany, the École des Sables in Senegal and a Sadler’s Wells in the United Kingdom, a world-renowned organization dedicated to international dance.
Pina Bausch’s seminal work The Rite of Spring (1975) is performed by a cast of dancers from 14 African countries. Faithful to Stravinsky’s composition, this monumental work examines unyielding ritual, with the sacrifice of a Chosen One required for the advent of spring.
The first part of the evening is made up of two solos. PHILIPS 836 887 DSY, rarely performed, was created by Pina Bausch in 1971 and is set to the music of French electronic composer Pierre Henry. The title refers to the label and catalogue number of the initial LP release, in 1969, of the 1955 composition Spirale. Though originally performed by Pina Bausch herself, this solo will be interpreted by Eva Pageix.
Homage to the Ancestors was created and will be performed by Germaine Acogny, often credited as the “Mother of contemporary African dance.” The work merges traditional rituals with contemporary dance in tribute to the artist’s lineage. Premiered exclusively in Benin in 2023, this piece has never been performed outside of Africa.
about the artists
Pina Bausch
Over the 36 years in which Pina Bausch (1940—2009) shaped the work of Tanztheater Wuppertal, she created an œuvre that casts an unerring gaze at reality, while simultaneously giving us the courage to be true to our own wishes and desires. Bausch was appointed director of dance for the Wuppertal theater in 1973. The form she developed in those early years was wholly unfamiliar. In her performances the players did not merely dance; they spoke, sang, laughed, and cried. Dance-theater evolved into a unique genre, inspiring choreographers across the globe and influencing theater and all forms of dance in the process. Its success can be attributed to the fact that Bausch made a universal human need the key subject of her work—the need for love, intimacy, and emotional security. Bausch's unique ensemble, now led by Artistic Director Boris Charmatz (with the joint leadership of Managing Director Roger Christmann), maintains Bausch's groundbreaking artistic vision.
Photo: © Ursula Kaufman
© Antoine Tempé
Germaine Acogny
Senegalese French dancer, teacher and choreographer Germaine Acogny is known as the ‘mother of contemporary African dance’. She studied at the École Simon Siegel in Paris and established her first dance studio in Dakar in 1968. There, she developed her own technique for Modern African dance, combining the influence of dances she had inherited from her grandmother, a Yoruba priestess, with her knowledge of traditional African and occidental dance.
Between 1977 and 1982, Germaine Acogny was the artistic director of Mudra Afrique (Dakar), before moving to Toulouse in 1985, where she and her husband, Helmut Vogt, founded the Studio-École-Ballet-Théâtre du 3ème Monde. In 1995, she returned to Senegal and established an international education centre for traditional and contemporary African dances, École des Sables.
In 1998, she started her own dance company, Jant-Bi, whose productions include Les écailles de la mémoire – Scales of memory (2008), a collaboration with Urban Bush Women, and notably, Fagaala, based on the genocide in Rwanda and winner of a Bessie Award (2007). Germaine Acogny’s other prominent works and credits include Sahel (1987), YE’OU (1988 – winner of the London Contemporary Dance and Performance Award 1991), Tchouraï (2001), Bintou Were - a Sahel Opera (2007), Songook Yaakaar (2010), Mon élue noire – Sacre no.2, choreography Olivier Dubois, (2014, based on the original music of The Rite of Spring, winner of a Bessie Award 2018) and A un endroit du début (2015). Acogny is a respected emissary of African Dance and Culture and continues to collaborate with schools, dance centres and teach masterclasses worldwide. In 2021 she won the Golden Lion of the Dance Biennale in Venice.
