Vincent Harisdo
Dancer, teacher and choreographer, Vincent Harisdo was born in Benin. At the age of 11, he was sent to a boarding school in France. Dance appeared as an escape, the only pretext to escape from school. But he quickly took a liking to classical and jazz dance. After his baccalaureate, at the end of the 1970s, he abandoned his engineering studies and enrolled in the training center of Walter Nicks, a pioneer of Afro-American dance, in Poitiers. Rejected by his family who refused this choice, he survived odd jobs as a waiter, taxi-boy and contracts for television programs in the numbers of Serge Piers. His meeting with Alvin Mac Duffy shows him another approach to dance. He studied at the Paris Dance Academy, then, on his advice, left for the United States. He trained at Bafa Dance and Business Williams Wood College, in Fulton, Missouri, worked in the university setting with the Kevin Jones Performance Class in Los Angeles and then at the New York High School of Performing Art under the direction of Jack Ross and Kévin Glastone. . On his return to France in the mid-1980s, he danced with several companies: Fox Ballet of Geneva, Jazz Mania Company in Rotterdam, Ballets Noirs and in the Dance Création company of Alvin Mac Duffy. In 1986, he signed a show on the history of fashion for the Paris American Academy and took over the management, alongside his compatriot Dan Agbetou, of the Ballets Jazz.
In 1990, he moved to La Rochelle and headed the Groupe de Recherches chorégraphiques for which he created La Révolte de Korépha, Offrande, Sacrifice et Cosmogonie (with Isabelle Cheveau). His meeting with the Beninese Koffi Kôkô brings back all his physical and musical memory from Beninese culture. For ten years, he remained in his company as a dancer, musician and assistant during tours for the pieces Passage, D’une rive à l’autre in the United States, Canada, England, Austria, Germany and Italy. . “I discover with Koffi the dance that has meaning compared to the dance that has form”.
From 1994 to 2001, he taught regularly at the CNSMD in Angers. At the end of the 1990s, Vincent Harisdo initiated the creation of the International Federation of African Dance and Music and designed with Germaine Acogny, Georges Momboye, Flora Théfaine and, among others, Carole Sévenou a specific training program leading to a diploma which ultimately will not see the light of day. He then returns regularly to Benin to deepen his research on ritual and sacred dances. He collaborates on projects in Colombia (with the choreographer Alvaro Restrepo of the Ballet Collegio del Corpo, 2000), in Guyana, (company Julie Adami, 2003), in Mexico (with Porto Rodrigues), in Ecuador (with Susana Ryes) and signs in 2008 Symphonie pour le temps présent, for the National Ballet of Rwanda. In 2018, he choreographed and performed the piece Digital Voodoo, by digital artist Nicolas Ticot (text Kangni Alem). In 2021, he participated in the creation of East African Bolero by Rwandan choreographer Wesley Ruzibiza, performed in June 2022 at the Théâtre Paris-Villette.
Settled since 1995 in Bordeaux (Centre 6° Parallèle), he continues to transmit his vision of African dance during courses and internships in France, Spain, Italy and Benin where he created the Center for Artistic and Cultural Development. (CDAC) Elijah, a place of training and creative residency, in Djegbadji, in the commune of Ouidah (40 km from Cotonou).
Source: www.harisdo.com, interview by Anne Decoret-Ahiha, in Ouidah, January 10, 2020.
