Kossivi Sénagbé Afiadegnigban
Born into an animist family, Kossivi Sénagbé Afiadegnigban was introduced to percussion and dance as a child during vodoun ceremonies and rituals. At a very young age, he joined the Gbenodou traditional dance company. After passing his baccalauréat in 2009, he joined the sociology faculty at the University of Lomé, where, as a member of the Unesco club, he rubbed shoulders with the Togolese artistic scene, including performers and visual artists, while continuing his training in contemporary dance with Kossi Aholou-Wokawui, Patrick Acogny, Bienvenue Bazié, Lila Greene, Nora Chipomire, Serge Aimé Coulibaly and Salia Sanou. In 2014, a serious knee injury brought his career to an abrupt halt. It took him over a year and a half of traditional treatments and massages to regain his joint mobility. From this painful experience, he created his first piece with director Hodin Senyon: En Sursis, a dance/slam duet about disability. He then founded his own company, Sol’Oeil d’Afrik (2015), with which he runs cultural initiatives and artistic projects, particularly in the public space, which he is particularly fond of. In 2016, he obtained a certificate in Traditional and Contemporary African Dance and in the Art of Teaching Dance at the Ecole des Sables – Germaine Acogny (Senegal). In 2017, he created the solo Entre Ciel et Terre, inspired by the vodoun rituals that he explores as landmarks needed to build the identity of Togolese youth. “Vodoun feeds my work in terms of gestures, costumes and energy,” he explains. “I draw the energy of my dance from Vodoun ceremonies. At the same time, it’s a meeting with my ancestors”. Presented at the Carthage Dance Festival in 2019, the piece was reworked the same year during a residency at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Roubaix (Ballet du Nord), France, with wich the choreographer became a regular companion.
In 2018, Kossivi Sénagbé Afiadegnigban took part in the creation of Bintou Dembele, guest choreographer at the Fari Foni Waati#2 laboratory and festival in Bamako, Mali. Aware of the difficulty African dancers have in gaining access to choreographic training, he created the same year the first edition of DTCA (Traditional Dance and Creator of Today), a training programme lasting several weeks led by renowned choreographers and open to all dancers. In 2021, he began a new creation, Vonvonli (L’Ombre de la peur) for five dancers (co-produced by the Institut Français, Togo Créatif (Institut Français du Togo, the Goethe Institut and the European Union), which was premiered in January 2022 at the Festival International de Danse de Ouagadougou (Fido) in Burkina Faso, before being revived in 2023 for an African tour (Togo, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire and Mozambique). In the same year, he embarked on a new choreographic project combining dance and video: Agbedo (“life’s work” in the Ewe language) explores the physical commitment of craftsmen in the exercise of their trade (premiering in July 2023 at the Institut Français du Togo).
Sources: Document Compagnie Sol’Oeil d’Afrik, Interview with Kossivi Sénagbé Afiadegnigban by Anne Décoret-Ahiha, Lomé, June 12th 2019.
