Company
Jant-Bi
(Senegal)
About
Jant-Bi
Compagnie
Jant-Bi was created in 1998, with dancers who had participated
in the first professional workshop of the International
Center for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances,
L’École des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal,
under the artistic direction of the Senegalese dancer and
choreographer Germaine Acogny.
The
first choreography of the Company, Le Coq est Mort, was
created for eight male dancers in 1999, by the German choreographer
Susanne Linke, and the Israeli co-choreographer Avi Kaiser.
Le Coq est Mort toured throughout Europe and North America
including such theaters as Theatre de la Ville in Paris,
FIND in Montreal, Jacob’s Pillow, The Kennedy Center
and Arizona State University, among others.
Compagnie
Jant-Bi works closely with the International Center for
Traditional and Contemporary African Dances, L’Ecole
des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, on the coast in the South of
Dakar. The principal aim of the Centre is to supply African
dancers with professional training in traditional and contemporary
African dance, and to develop and promote Contemporary African
Dance. The Center is also a meeting point and a place of
exchange for dancers and choreographers belonging to the
African Diaspora, and different cultures from all over the
world. The Company continues this international cultural
exchange by creating works that reflect the spirit of the
Centre. By creating/forming contacts with choreographers
from other cultures and incorporating different dance styles,
a fusion between their culture and the essence of African
dance is obtained.
Germaine
Acogny
GERMAINE ACOGNY (choreographer) is Senegalese and French
in origin and founded her first dance studio in Dakar in
1968. Thanks to the influence of the body movements she
had inherited from her grandmother, a Yoruba priest, and
to her learning of traditional African dances and Occidental
dances (classical and modern), Acogny gave birth to her
own dance technique; in 1980, she wrote a book on her technique
entitled, African Dance, published in German, English and
French. Between 1977 and 1982, she was director of Mudra
Afrique (Dakar), created by Maurice Béjart and the
Senegal’s President L.S. Senghor. When Mudra Afrique
closed, she moved to Brussels to work with Maurice Béjart’s
company and organized numerous international African dance
workshops, which enjoyed great success among European audiences.
This same experience was repeated in Africa and in Fanghoume,
a small village in the Casamance region of southern Senegal.
Acogny dances, produces choreographies and teaches all over
the world, becoming a real emissary of African Dance and
Culture.
Together with her husband, Helmut Vogt, she founded the
"Studio-Ecole-Ballet-Theatre du 3e Monde” in
1985. In 1987, after a brief respite from performing, she
worked with Peter Gabriel on a video clip and created her
solo Sahel. In 1995, she decided to return to Senegal, with
the aim of creating an International Centre for Traditional
and Contemporary African Dances. The center was created
to serve as a meeting point for dancers coming from Africa
and from all over the world, and as a place of education
for dancers from the whole of Africa that could guide them
towards a Contemporary African Dance.
About
FAGAALA (GENOCIDE)
GERMAINE
ACOGNY (choreographer) was inspired to create a
work dealing with the issue of genocide after having read
Murambi, le livre des ossements, (Book of Bones) by Senegalese
writer, Boubacar Boris Diop, which is the first fictionalized
rendering about the Rwandan genocide. In addition to the
writings of Diop, Acogny conducted personal interviews,
gathering testimonies about genocide. A combination of Diop’s
fiction and these real-life accounts informed Acogny’s
perspective and creative vision.
Germaine
Acogny’s reflections: "This murdering madness
has existed since the dawn of time, and it will probably
never completely disappear. But, in order to reduce this
violence, each one of us must fight against fear, hatred
and vengeance, as those feelings can easily invade us. I
would like everybody, the society and politicians, to become
conscious of the urgent need to find solutions for peace
in order to extinguish the flames of hatred and to avoid
that this type of tragedy will ever happen again. I will
try to find a body language inspired by all the inner distress
to face the collective madness.
This
suffering, the horror and the screaming of pain caused by
this tragedy will be linked with and translated by the dancer’s
bodies, so as to call out to the world, and shock and disturb
the bodies and spirits, but showing at the same time a tiny
light of hope, ready to become a sunray. The guiding texts
of this creation are written in Wolof (widely spoken in
Senegal), French and Japanese, in order to better illustrate
the sad universality of the subject".
KOTA
YAMAZAKI (choreographer) represents the spearhead
of the young generation of Japanese choreographers. His
work is based in Butoh, a performance art that originated
in Post World-War II Japan, combined with other dance and
movement techniques including ballet and modern. His dance
is full of energy and a strong sense of social engagement.
Yamazaki’s
choreographic approach in Fagaala was to find a connection
between the genocide of Rwanda, Butoh and African Dance.
Both choreographers—Acogny and Yamazaki—worked
together to find, through their specific gestures, a common
language capable of creating powerful and touching images
of the human tragedy of genocide. The choreographers use
strong body language coupled with voices and sounds to evoke
both suffering and hope.
Kota
Yamazaki’s reflections:
"Japan lost the Second World War. Although I belong
to the post-war generation, I can understand that artists
from the preceding generation have created new works based
on their traumatic experience of that war. The understanding
of this trauma is one of the factors building my unconscious
world. I believe it is a mission of my generation to seek
the next steps for regeneration. Butoh is said to have been
created on such trauma, and this idea seems to be established
in most of the Western world. I think it is only partly
true. I also think that Butoh was born from many factors
following drastic social change in the ‘sixties in
Japan, when people were forced to radically change the standards
in their lives. I do not want to explain or show only political
genocide in Fagaala. I also want a work that will last forever
filled with beauty and originality. To give this new work
impact, I think that the audience should be told beforehand
that it deals with the genocide of Rwanda."
artistic director/choreographer
Germaine Acogny
assistant
to Germaine Acogny
Longa Fo Eyeoto
choreographer
Kota Yamazaki
assistant
to Kota Yamazaki
Mina Nishimura
dancers
Babacar Ba
Ciré Beye
Abdoulaye Kane
Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye (Kaolack)
Ousmane Bane Ndiaye
Tchebe Saky
Abib Sow
costume
design
Oumou Sy
set
design
Maciej Fiszer
composer
Fabrice Bouillon – Laforest
musician/co-composer
Jean-Yves Gratius
musicians
from the Ecole des Sables
Oumar Fandy Diop
N’deye Seck
Mamadou Traoré
Djibril Ba
Abdourahman Diop
sound
engineer
Michael Widhoff
lighting
design
Horst Mühlberger
lighting
technician
Marco Wehrspann
company
manager
Helmut Vogt
"AFRICAN
BALL" was composed by the musicians of the Ecole des
Sables
For
more information about the company visit:
http://www.jant-bi-acogny.com/
