Germaine Acogny established Jant-Bi in her native Senegal in 1998, and that same year invited German choreographer Susanne Linke and her assistant, Israeli Avi Kaiser, to lead a three-month workshop for more than 30 African dancers from various backgrounds and cultures. The workshop fused both African dance and German Tanztheater, exploring man’s alienation from his own physicality and the sources of life – nature, earth, and water. The work seen here (in the company’s U.S. debut) derived from that original workshop, with movement phrases almost entirely developed through improvisation and task-setting, offering the dancers a chance to participate in the creative process and utilize vocabulary from their own traditions.
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