WORKSHOP

The workshop will be structured into two sections:

1- Yoga and African dance class. Yoga will prepare the body. The African dance class is to give an understanding of some of the principles that Acogny uses in his work. The class will be adapted to people not trained in dance.

2- The second part will work on two aspects of creating movement, the forms and the meaning. We will see through exercises how to manipulate forms using time and space parameters and how we can manipulate concepts and symbols to adapt them to contemporary issues.

About Patrick Acogny

Choreographer and dancer, Patrick Acogny, has worked in Paris with the Ebene of Irene Tassembedo Company (Burkina Faso), before settling in Birmingham, United Kingdom to direct for six years Kokuma Dance Theatre, an African and Caribbean dance company.  He is now working very closely with his mother, Germaine Acogny, and has co-choreographed with her for the last piece of the Company Jant-Bi’s production of “Waxtaan.”  He teaches regularly at the international school of L’école des Sables of Germaine.  Patrick is based in Brittany, France and is often invited to various European and African countries to work with other professionals and amateurs. Patrick is also a university researcher with the ethnoscenology laboratory of Paris VIII (Saint- Denis). As a director, Acogny explores ways of creating new movements and thus new ways of expressing emotions. He deconstructs and reinvents new forms of African Dance, manipulating symbols and concepts that underlie these dance forms.