Twenty-five dance companies from all over Africa met this weekend in a Senegalese fishing village for the African Dance Biennale, the continent's largest showcase for contemporary African dance.
Dozens of dancers dressed in bright colors –orange, green and blue– hammered the ground, jumped and collapsed on the sand of the village Toubab Dialao, sunburned, located an hour from the capital Dakar.
Founded in 1997, the African Dance Biennale spent nearly three decades touring African cities — the latest being Maputo, au Mozambique, in 2023 — with the aim of increasing the visibility of choreographic work on the continent.
This three-day event, which ended Sunday evening, was held at the École des Sables, in Toubab Dialao.
In recent years, this school has become the most important professional dance training institution on the continent. It was founded in 1998 by Germaine Acogny, widely considered the mother of the contemporary African dance.
Its open-air sand studio, emblematic of Germaine Acogny's teaching philosophy, anchored in nature, has attracted dancers from dozens of countries for intensive courses combining her original contemporary technique with traditional West African modern dance styles and black.
The School of Sands has become known internationally in recent years by hosting the first African production of "The Rite of Spring" by Pina Bausch, who was the subject of a world tour from 2021 to 2025.
This biennial comes as the school faces an uncertain future. A billion-dollar deep-water port project, overseen by Dubai Ports World and under construction just south of the fishing village, threatens to expropriate surrounding land, including land the school acquired to protect its natural ecosystem.
Artistic institutions in the region formed an association to oppose this project.
