sophiatou kossoko

  • choreographer/performer

CHRYSALIDES MENTORS

Sophiatou Kossoko Choreographer – Dancer/Pedagogue Sophiatou studied dance at the Cruchfield Doug school in Copenhagen. She then complemented her training following courses, labs & research sessions with choreographers, singers, scientists and educators of all cultures and forms of expression. Sophiatou works and collaborates with choreographers, writers, musicians, artists, singers and directors in various forms. These valuable experiences have allowed her to meet international artists to share their thoughts and questions on dance, movement and art... She has been making her own choreographic propositions since 1995 in the collective Dansonautes and since 2002 in IGI.

In dialogue between the traditions of her homeland Nigeria and Western dance, Sophiatou Kossoko, who has lived in Paris since 1984, has developed an extremely individual and abstract language in her solos. Radical questions on the homeless self are characteristic of her work.

"I eat up space", says the dancer Sophiatou Kossoko. She complements her powerful, expansive dance style with sculptural phases - stylized, fervent, and almost silent - only to explosively reclaim the space she needs.

The focus of her work in dance and choreography is the search for identity in the zone of tension between her homeland Benin in Nigeria, which she was forced to leave with her parents as political refugees, and her adopted home Paris, where she has lived since 1984. She locates the danced exploration of her own geographically and culturally split personality in the border zones of the visual arts, improvisation and body work: "Today I speak French, I speak English with others; neither is my native language. Who am I then?"

Sophiatou Kossoko´s teachers have included Germaine Acogny, Alvin Ailey, Doug Cruchfield and Koffi Kôkô. She recently completed a new solo, "Tchouai", with Germaine Acogny. With the Algerian choreographer Heddy Maalem she created another solo, "Une petite logique des Forces", and the group piece "Black Spring". At the House of World Cultures Sophiatou Kossoko presented the performance "Ibi l´ohun" - "Here and There" - at once a dance in an empty space and a game with the many facets of her own personality, which materialize only to dissolve again.