Germaine Acogny's route, choreographer, French-Senegalese dancer and professor of dance, through its teaching and creations, in parallel with the pivotal period of its 70 years, age from which she finally dedicated herself completely to her personal career from 2014 till 2015. Internships at the School of Sands of Toubab Dialaw, at Senegal, whom she established, in master-class which she gives in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, to her choreographies, often autobiographical, and to the testimonies of her collaborators, this movie lifts the veil on the personality, the motivations and the route of this outstanding artist, who for more than half a century is always for the avant-garde.



Laure Malécot, in Iya Tunde, made the essential choice to be interested in this monument of the dance whom is Germaine Acogny. Her intimate approach from "daughter to mother" pushes aside the uses, because assumed proof of love, and modesty, inviting us to take part of empathy for this tremendous character.

Moctar Ndiouga Bâ



WHY THIS MOVIE ?


Iya tunde, which is translated of yoruba language by "the mother came back", is the history of a filiation found, weaved by roots found, by reinvented, uninhibited culture, freed of the colonialist rags, exceeding the mental and physical borders.

Dance, according to Germaine Acogny, deserving spiritual heiress of Maurice Béjart, who called her his "Black daughter", and of Léopold Sédar Senghor, inspired by his grandmother Aloopho, voodoo priestess (yoruba Iya), and the African patrimonial dances which she contributed to emphasize, questions the report of the individual to its environment, and its identity, in a world where colonization caused a severe loss of marks.

The desire to film Germaine Acogny came to me of the almost filial relation which, by instinct, quickly, was born between us, from mother to girl of heart. To fill the space which my mother, missing person since my adolescence, left, she also allowed me to reconstitute my missing cultural roots.

Iya tunde, it is the history of the woman who achieved her dreams, and continues even to overtake them. Germaine Acogny, by his route, its strength and its questionings, reminds me my mother, pianist to whom we got away wings, in a feminine version spread artist, who would have triumphed over everything. Ah, the broken dream of my mother! Iya tunde is a tribute in these utopias, these dreams, which drive us, without which the life would have no taste, no sense.

She, who, at 70 years old, seems to have reached at the top of the career, never stops confronting with new challenges, as when, for My Black Elected, fifty years after Maurice Béjart wished to make her the Elected, puts herself in danger, for the choreography elaborated by Olivier Dubois, to realize this long-time dream.

So much by her inspirations, the themes which she approaches, that the multiple origins of the dancers whom she teaches, and of her collaborators, her approach, while valuing the African cultures, is universal.