Interview d'Awoulath Alougbin

On the occasion of the event « Dansons Maintenant ! » which it organized in 2011, 2012 and 2015, in Cotonou in Benin, the Fondation Zinsou conducted filmed interviews with guest artists and choreographers.

Invited for the second edition, 2012, for her performance Bribes urbaines,  the Beninese dancer and choreographer Awoulath Alougbin recounts in the first excerpt of interview her development as a choreographic artist in the 2000s, when contemporary dance was just emerging in Benin. In the second excerpt, she establishes a similarity between contemporary dance and ritual dance, through the ability of performers and officiants to « take them elsewhere ».

Interview conducted by Aurélie Lecomte, on August 14, 2012, Cotonou.

Filmed by Stéphane Agbessi-Loko.

The deposit of the video archives of “Dansons maintenant !”, belonging to Fondation Zinsou was made possible thanks to the Centre National de la Danse Research award in dance, granted in 2021 to Dr Anne Décoret-Ahiha for her research project “Consolidation of the African choreographic field: focus on Benin” and with the kind permission of the artists.