« Movement is a form of spirituality » – Liberation

It may seem paradoxical. While the Parisian Africapital Festival is interested, each year, in major African cities in terms of cultural bastion, the godmother of this fourth edition Book Mantras intrinsically linked to the preserved nature of any urban attack. This figure is Germaine Acogny80 years old, Franco-Senegalese choreographer and dancer, nicknamed « The mother of African dance ». In addition to fifty years of career, she has brought a dance that she combined in the plural, on the biggest international stages.

The city to which Afrocapital is dedicated this year? Dakar. A metropolis that is judged as a permanent site, constantly metamorphosis, concreted at envy. But, it houses a cultural pool, a hubbub and an atmosphere imbued with a shape of saudade or the sea which borders it, and whose only view sends you back to the imagery shaped by Mambety. City of strong contradictions where, at 24, Germaine Acogny founded his very first dance studio before climbing with Maurice Béjart, met through Léopold Sédar Senghor, the « Mudra Afrique » school in 1977. She collaborated in particular with the master of the Sabar, the late Ndiaye Rose.

Defined paradox… Germaine Acogny undeniably enters the artistic genealogy of the Senegalese capital. “I like to remember the post-independence Dakar. Senghor so