WAXTAAN

The choreographic work of the company Jant-Bi is based on the most beautiful and adaptable (for this work) traditional dances from several African countries. The company Jant-Bi emphasizes the incredible beauty and richness of movements and rhythmic complexities and wants to offer a new perception of those dances of which the usual images are those of popular folklore. The implemented choreographic tools to deconstruct and reorganise those traditional or neo-traditional dance forms are familiar to those used in western contemporary dance. Once purified from certain popular, artificial and spectacular elements appears a reshaped and transformed dance form, astonishingly contemporary according to the western criterias.

The originality of the creation does not only rely on treating those traditional or neo-traditional dance forms. It carries equally a critical look on political African leaders. Indeed, dancers and musicians, through this choreographic creation, parody presidents, ministers, politicians, men of power. They question them in the hope that things could really change and that economic, social and cultural situations cease to degrade.

« WAXTAAN » is a request for excellency, generosity and solidarity. It is an affirmation of our strength and of our capacity to go ahead and a manifestation of our belief that Africa and Africans can come out of the actual negative image !
But it’s also a tribute to the ancestors, to the beauty and richness of their dances they passed on to us, and which we present in a new, todays form.

Waxtaan
Choreographers Germaine Acogny and Patrick Acogny

With seven Senegalese dancers of the Company Jant-Bi :
Cire Beye, Mohamed Abdoulaye Kane, Assane Abib Sow, Tchebe Bertrand Saky, Daouda Camara Ndao, Andre Drame, Abdou Diop, Mamadou Balde
Ibrahima Ndiaye (remplacement if needed)

With five musicians of the Ecole des sables :
Oumar Fandy DIOP, Ndeye SECK, Badara Fatime Penda FALL, Abdoulaye DIOP, Ousmane SENE

Lights creation:Horst Mühlberger
Stage Director: Patrick Acogny
Costumes: Patrick Acogny / Germaine Acogny
Lights technician: Peter Bellinghausen