Twenty-five dance companies from across Africa descended on a small Senegalese fishing village over the weekend for the African Dance Biennial, the continent’s largest showcase of contemporary African dance.
Dozens of dancers in vivid oranges, greens and blues stomped, leaped and collapsed into the sand of the sun-baked village of Toubab Dialao, an hour from the capital Dakar.
Founded in 1997, the African Dance Biennial has spent nearly three decades rotating across African cities — most recently Maputo, Mozambique, in 2023 — with the aim of raising the visibility of choreographic work on the continent.
The three-day event, which closed late Sunday, was held at the École des Sables, or School of Sands, in Toubab Diallo.
The school has become the continent’s most prominent professional dance training institution in recent years. It was founded in 1998 by Germaine Acogny, who is widely regarded as the mother of African contemporary dance. Its open-air sand studio, a hallmark of Acogny’s nature-rooted teaching philosophy, has drawn dancers from dozens of countries for intensive courses blending her original contemporary technique with traditional West African and Black modern dance styles.
The École des Sables gained international attention in recent years as the home of the first African production of Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring,” which toured globally from 2021 to 2025.
The biennial comes as the school faces an uncertain future. A billion-dollar deep water port project overseen by Dubai Port World, under construction just south of the fishing village, threatens to expropriate surrounding land, including property the school acquired to protect its natural ecosystem. Arts institutions in the area have formed an association to resist the development.
