Motivation

Dance expresses the most arcane voices of the earth.
The Earth, whose preservation and care have always been the values of the Nonino Prize.
Germaine Acogny is considered the mother of contemporary African dance.
Africa, the ancestral parent of our human race.
Taking her art all over the world with performances and founding schools.
But when Madame Acogny dances on the shore or among forest trees her body becomes prayer.
The Persian mystic poet Rumi wrote: whosoever knows the power of the dance dwells in God.
Dance is divine joy and Germaine Acogny is dance.

Biography

Senegalese and French dancer, choreographer and teacher, Germaine Acogny, influenced by the gestural
heritage of her grandmother, a Yoruba priest, developed her technique of modern African dance and all over the world se is considered the mother of Contemporary African dance”.
Born in Benin in 1944 to a Senegalese father, at the age of 10 she moves with her family to Dakar, in Senegal, where she spends the rest of her childhood. In the sixties, after showing a natural talent for dance, she decides to move to France to study modern dance and ballet at the Simon Siegel’s school in Paris. In 1968, at the age of 24, she founds her first dance studio in Dakar. Between 1977 and 1982 she is the artistic director of Mudra Afrique (Dakar), a school created by Maurice Béjart and the Senegalese president and poet Leopold Sedar Senghor. In 1980, she writes her first book untitled “African Dance”, edited in English, German and French.
When Mudra Afrique closes, she moves to Brussels to work with Maurice Béjart’s company and she organizes international African dance workshops. This same experience is repeated in Africa, in Fanghoumé, a small village in the south of Senegal, with stage dancers coming from all over the world. After having been away from the stage for several years, Germaine Acogny has her come back as a dancer and choreographer in 1987.
She works with Peter Gabriel for a video clip and creates her solo “Sahel”. Other choreographies follow. In 1995, she decides to go back to Senegal, with the aim of creating an International Centre for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances: a meeting point for dancers coming from Africa and from all over the world, a place of professional education for dancers from the whole of Africa with the aim to guide them towards a Contemporary African Dance. The construction of the Centre – also called «L’Ecole des Sables» – was achieved in June 2004. But already, every year since 1998, three-month professional workshops for African dancers and choreographers are organized. About 40 dancers from all over Africa meet, exchange and work together each time. Her contributions to the training in dance and choreography of young people in West Africa and the wide dissemination of her work in her home country and around the world have made her one of the autonomous voices most influential in the development of the art of dance. Germaine Acogny believes in the power of dance to change people’s lives and has always been committed to sharing her passion as an act of transformation and regeneration.
She is «Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite», «Officier des Arts et des Lettres» and «Chevalier de l’Ordre de
la Légion d’Honneur» of the French Republic. Besides she is «Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Lion» and «Officier des Arts et des Lettres» of the Republic of Senegal. In 1999, she is decorated as “Pioneer Woman” by the Senegalese Ministry of the Family and the National Solidarity. In 2018 she receives a second BESSIE Award for outstanding performance in the solo “Mon élue noire-sacre # 2” and an Award for Life time achievements in the field of choreography, movement and dance from the Cairo International Festival for Experimental and Contemporary Theatre. In 2019 she receives the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Excellence Award, category Arts and Letters. In 2021, she receives the Golden Lion for “Lifetime Achievement” at the Venice Biennale. In 2023, she first receives the Joan Myers Brown “Keeper of the Flame” Legacy Award from the International Association of Blacks in Dance and then Grand Prix de l’Académie des Beaux Arts in Choreography.