“A Reflection of Nature”: Germaine Acogny’s Technique Goes Global

Laura Cappelle

Over the past three decades, dancer, choreographer and teacher Germaine Acogny has turned Senegal’s École des Sables into a globally renowned center for dance, while keeping it deeply rooted in the natural environment that surrounds it. Her contemporary African technique is now taught through programs that draw artists from across the continent and, increasingly, from around the world.

“We naturally have the sun in here,” said Kodro Evry Aoussou-Dettmann, a hand on her chest. In early March, with a group of around 20 dancers watching intently, the Ivorian dancer and teacher went over the basics of the Acogny technique in the École des Sables’ main studio. To the infectious rhythm of drums – the live accompaniment for every class – the dancers’ torsos rippled carefully. “Without tension,” Aoussou-Dettmann corrected as their upper bodies opened and closed. “You need to relax, to listen to your body.”

For eight weeks, the group had been dancing, eating, and living at the École des Sables, a dance haven founded in 1988 by the Senegalese dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny and her husband Helmut Vogt. They had travelled from around the world – from a number of African countries, as well as from Europe and North America – for the school’s certification program. After two three-months sessions, which include basic training in traditional dances that have inspired Germaine Acogny, such as sabar, participants will be allowed to officially teach the technique developed by the woman almost everyone at the École calls “maman.”

Aoussou-Dettmann, who is now based in Germany, was part of the second class of certified instructors to graduate from École des Sables, in the 2010s. She recalls wanting “to learn a technique that is ours, which has also been created by a woman who knows how to stand her ground.” Acogny’s approach was very different from the training Aoussou-Dettmann received in her home country, Ivory Coast, where the primary goal, she says, was to “create dance pieces, and then sell them. Many dancers end up quitting because they aren’t physically prepared to face the world.”

Providing opportunities for professional development to dancers from the African continent has long been a central mission for Acogny, who grew up between Senegal and France. In Paris, she trained in rhythmic dance and ballet as a teenager, and remembers teachers criticizing her “flat feet” and “big butt” – both enduring racist clichés about Black bodies. “Culture is in the hands of white people, and they want us to look like them,” she says. Her technique retains a few nods to ballet positions, like the “Acogny grand plié,” in which the hips shake and sway. 

Upon her return to Senegal, where she directed Mudra Afrique – the first pan-African dance school, a branch of Maurice Béjart’s Brussels training center – from 1977 to 1982, Acogny went on a quest to find her roots. From Benin to Mali and Senegal, she explored West African dances and retained their “essence,” as she puts it now. The Acogny technique pairs their strong connection to the ground with a special focus on the axis of the spine, or “the snake of life,” where “all movements” originate. Animal and plant metaphors are a constant in Acogny’s vocabulary: The body, in her view, is “a reflection of nature.”

Nature is never far at the school, which is nestled in Toubab Dialao, a fishing village overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. From the main studio, which is shaded from the sun by a large tent canopy suspended from columns, trees and the horizon remain visible in all directions. And dancers there practice on sand – an unstable surface which provides “a different energy,” says Acogny. “Sand – that’s Africa.”

For dancers from the African continent, Acogny’s teaching has quickly become a reference point. “Her technique really shaped who I am as a dancer,” says Latif Arafan Wa-hab Diedhiou, 28, who grew up in Dakar. Initially self-taught, he trained for three years at the École des Sables thanks to “Afrique Diaspora,” a program that confers a professional degree to performers and choreographers: “This is what allowed my career to take off,” he says. Now back to train as a teacher, he remains in Toubab Dialao even on his days off. “Here, I feel much more connected to who I am,” he confesses with a smile.

 Fellow student Ilargi Zabaleta Vergara, from Spain, describes Acogny’s work on the spine as “a way to connect to your roots, to your history.” Her goal, she says, is less to teach the Acogny technique – she organizes festivals and cultural travel programs for a living – than to immerse herself in the “spiritual” atmosphere of the École des Sables. “It’s not just dance,” she says during a break. “It’s a form of healing.”

While Aïda de Souza-Nianduillet also traveled from afar, she has a unique connection to the school: she is Acogny’s granddaughter. The 19-year-old, who grew up in Brooklyn, spent regular summers with her family at the École des Sables. “I knew my grandmother was a dancer, but I’ve only recently started to understand how influential she has been,” she says.

Now a dance major at Ohio State University, she wanted to reconnect with her familial roots through the Acogny technique – in the sand studio that bears the name of her great-grandmother, Alopho. The strength of the training program lies in its difference from Western teaching, according to de Souza-Nianduillet: “The school shows that we have a lot to offer on this side of the world, too.”

This philosophy has long been her grandmother’s. Now aged 82, Acogny no longer teaches as much as she used to, but she keeps a close watch as her work is passed on – and remains a staunch advocate for dance forms rooted in the history and cultures of the African continent. “The Acogny technique lives on because it is in their bodies. They can adapt it to the dances of their countries,” she says, pointing to the group of future teachers. “We need contemporary African dances, not ‘contemporary dance’ in Africa.”

Laura Cappelle is a Paris-based journalist and arts sociologist. An associate professor at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, she is the editor of a French-language introduction to dance history, Nouvelle Histoire de la danse en Occident (Seuil, 2020). In 2024, she co-authored its adaptation into a graphic novel (Une histoire dessinée de la danse, with Thomas Gilbert, Seuil, 2024). She is also the author of Créer des ballets au XXI^e siècle (CNRS Éditions, 2024). As a dance and theatre critic, Laura Cappelle has been a regular contributor to the Financial Times since 2010 and to the New York Times since 2017. She is also an editorial consultant for CN D Magazine.

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