Patrick Acogny De SouzaProfesseur de danse africainecontemporaine, chorégraphe, chercheur

120706 Patrick sur Waxtaan dv

11 Aug 2012 · 4 min

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3:31

In this interview, Patrick Acogny de Souza explains the conception and execution of the dance work Wakh'tan, created by the École des Sables. He describes the piece as a politically‑themed satire inspired by the behavior of politicians, using African humor and irony to comment on the gap between political decisions and the populace. The choreography draws on traditional African dance vocabularies from Congo, Ivory Coast, Benin, Mali, and Guinea‑Conakry, which are deliberately deconstructed with contemporary choreographic tools to create a new movement language. The company consists mainly of Senegalese dancers with one Ivorian, all seasoned performers who have previously worked with Germaine Acogny and other choreographers; their experience made the politically charged work joyful and collaborative. Acogny de Souza also reflects on contemporary dance theatre, arguing that it should continuously reinvent its definitions by rooting itself in African sources and treating each new work as an opportunity to create a fresh definition. He emphasizes that contemporary dance theatre is fundamentally a collective creative process, where dancers actively contribute under the guidance of a choreographer.

Chapters

Rolling. Wartak is a dance piece from the École des Sables, and it finds its inspiration from politicians, from men of state who lead countries, or ministers of government who usually get together to talk about things, very important things. And very, very often they, they're like actors. They seduce, they charm, And it's like a theater play, and that's what was the inspiration for Wachtan. And we tried to tackle the issue of politics with a lot of humor, African humor, but with a lot of also irony, you know, because we hardly see the changes from the population perspective. Now, the dance technique we use in Wakh'tan derives from African dance. We decided for Wakh'tan to have a certain different type of dance from different countries, like from Congo, from Ivory Coast, from Benin, from Mali, from Guinea-Conakry, and they were the foundation for the dancing, and we use choreographic tools, choreographic tools to actually deconstruct these traditional dance forms and make them interesting pieces of dance. The members of the company, all of them are Senegalese but one who is from Ivory Coast, and they were already part of the company when I worked with them, and they had a lot of experience in regards to choreography, and they worked with Germaine Acogny, of course, but other choreographers And so they were very experienced, and the work for them was very joyful and inspiring since it was about politicians. In regards to contemporary dance theater, I do not really define it because I believe that we're trying to actually stretch whatever definition we may have of contemporary dance. And I think what we're trying to do is to try— we get really our inspiration from African sources, whether they're dances or context, and we try to reinvent whatever rules exist, whatever way of doing things exist, and we really try to find our— to invent every time we do a new piece, invent our new definition of what contemporary dance theater is. But overall, it's probably, you know, contemporary dance is probably the work anyway of a collective as far as I'm concerned, because the dancers are very much part of the creative process under the leadership of a choreographer who inspires them, who brings them together, who brings the best out of them. So I would say, you know, that probably contemporary dance theatre for me is a collective work, a creative collective work. So anyway, it was the case for Wartan.