Priestess of the dance

By BERNADETTE RAE

Madame Germaine Acogny is said to embody the sun, the moon and the stars - and to watch her dance is to open a window on a mystical world.

In her homeland, Senegal, she is respected as the reincarnation of her grandmother, a Yoruba priestess. Mistress of the occult or not, she is also among the world's finest African dancers.

Acogny, aged 57, has danced up a storm in Auckland over the past 10 days, with a workshop for a group of 12, the core of whom are the linchpins of our Maori contemporary dance network.

Stephen Bradshaw, who directed the dance companies Te Kani Kani O Te Rangitahi from 1984 to 1987, and Taiao from 1988 to 1994, initiated Acogny's visit, after working with her in New Caledonia in 1998.

"I was totally inspired by her teaching," he says, "and her use of symbols such as the sun and the stars and the moon, and night and day, represented in different parts of the body, is perfect for Maori contemporary dance.

"We still have links with that ancient, animalist philosophy."

The energy that gave birth to Te Kani Kani O Te Rangitahi and Taiao came to the end of a natural cycle, Bradshaw says. Almost all the dancers involved were into producing babies, and then seeking formal dance qualifications, at university dance courses, Unitec and the New Zealand School of Dance.

"We have stayed in touch, though, and there has been a lot of experimentation going on - but not on stage."

That is due to change next year. Bradshaw and promising young choreographer and dancer Merenia Grey have both received funds for performance works.

Funds also came from Waka Toi for the Acogny workshop.

So there they were, in the dance studio at the Auckland College of Education, with the insistent rhythms of the African drums and the even more insistent demands - vocal inspirations - of the passionate and inventively expressive Acogny.

Her English is rudimentary and few of the dancers could speak much French.

But there was little lack of understanding of what was required.

"Fleshy, flessshhhhhhy!" cried Acogny, slapping vigorously at the front of her thighs when she wanted the dancers to sink lower to the ground and activate their quadriceps muscles.

"Chak! Chak! Rhaga raduk!" she chanted, in one of her many combinations of sounds which, says her German husband, Helmut Vogt, have no meaning at all beyond their onomatopoeia.

And the three basic concepts of her technique - contraction, undulation and "tremulation" - sound similar in French or English.

Contraction refers to the unshakeable base held firm in the core of the lower belly.

The remarkable undulation is centred in the rib cage and, of course, the spine.

"Tremulation," Acogny explains, is a word invented to describe a movement that begins with an undulation and finishes with a series of smaller tremors, added to the dance vocabulary by the poet president of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, after watching Acogny's dances.

Just a session or two into the workshop, some of the participants were obviously struggling with aspects of Acogny's techniques.

It takes a little time, Acogny acknowledged, as the workshoppers undulated on a less than controlled scale.

"At first people do big things. A big step is always easier than a powerful but subtle movement."

In Europe, she says, there is a common perception that African dance is only about feeling. "But before the feeling must come the technique."

So each morning during the workshop the dancers immersed themselves in three-hour technique classes, also "feeling their solid connection to both earth and sky ... feeling that connection as a tangible energy deep in the belly ... connected to the earth through the belly, like the baby to its mother."

Acogny's technique is partly traditional, but also her own, a distillation of her deep and on-going analysis of the ancient dances of West Africa, condensed into some 30 to 40 precise movements, each incorporating at least one of the basic concepts and always performed in rhythm with the breath.

"A movement performed without the breath is mort!" Acogny cries.

Acogny discovered rhythmic dance while studying physical education in France in the early 60s. Back in Senegal, armed with a diploma in harmonic gymnastics, she met American dancer Katherine Dunham, who was trying to establish a school there. Acogny travelled widely with her first husband, studying traditional dance wherever they went. She eventually opened a dance studio in Dakar.

When Maurice Bejart founded Mudra Afrique in Dakar in 1976, the only African centre for traditional and contemporary dance, Acogny became its director.

Her book African Dance was published in French, English and German.

But in 1983 Mudra Afrique closed because of financial problems, and Acogny became a teacher at workshops throughout Europe, America and Asia. In 1984 she established centres for the study of African dance in south Senegal and Toulouse, France.

A new project is underway, the creation of an international centre of traditional and contemporary African dance, in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal.

Acogny began performing again in 1987 after a four-year break. Her solo piece, Ye'Ou, with drummer Arona N'Diaye, was premiered. Later, in 1991, it won the London Dance and Performance Award. Another new creation, Afrique, Ce Corps Memorable, based on the poems of L. S. Senghore, followed in 1989.

A successful international tour meant the fame of Acogny grew.

"I still feel I have something to say with my body," she says.

In August Acogny will present a new work, Retour d'errance (Back from Wandering).

She sees her teaching of contemporary African dance as a form of healing, of bringing cultural consciousness to the groups of dancers she meets, especially where they have suffered the ravages of colonialism.

By standing strong in her own culture, Acogny can reflect back to students what their own culture ("their own big tree, deeply rooted in the earth and reaching for the sky") might be.

In the afternoon sessions of her workshop, the dancers worked with pieces of their own traditional dance forms, reworking them with a contemporary and African influence and sharing them with one another.

"It is like Helmut and me being married," Acogny says.

"Colour is nothing. But we respect each other's culture. It is the only way to live.

"Culture is everything."