To the opening strains of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), a soft glow pulses and the smell of pipe tobacco wafts through the darkness. The music builds, explodes, and Germaine Acogny, the Senegalese artist often called the mother of contemporary African dance, explodes with it.
Created especially for her by Ballet du Nord provocateur Olivier Dubois, this scenically minimalist, emotionally maximalist solo performance draws deep from Acogny’s prodigious well of experience. Confined atop a brutally lit platform of black walls, she confronts the audience with furious presence, fearlessly carving out a space for her artistry in the deepest trenches of Western modernism.
