Aguibou Bougobali Sanou
Dancer and choreographer from Burkina Faso, mixing African and Brazilian influences, with her In-Out Dance Festival Aguibou Bougobali Sanou offers a moment of encounter and interaction in the public sphere. 15 companies from all over the world took part in the 2020 edition.
Updated on 07/09/2020
2 min
Born in 1982 in Burkina Faso, Aguibou Bougobali Sanou was born into a family of artists, where the brothers and sisters were either musicians or dancers. Traditional Mandika dances formed part of his childhood, and he started contemporary dance in 2000.
Training between Paris, India and South Korea, Aguibou Bougobali Sanou danced for Carolyn Carlson, Thierry de Mey or Taesang Lee, all while trying choreography as well.
In 2006, he created the Tamadia company, with a view of promoting African contemporary and traditional dance, and also to promote and bring dance to the widest audience, in particular through organising the In-Out Dance Festival.
His first solo, Laada, was created in Burkina Faso in 2007.
Aguibou Bougobali Sanou is a dancer and choreographer who remains attentive to bringing dance to as many people as possible.
In launching the In-Out Dance Festival in 2014, he created a moment for culture to be experienced where all performing arts (dance, theatre, storytelling) are presented in the public space of the poor neighbourhoods of Bobo-Dioulasso. Foreign companies are invited (for example the American troop RuDDuR, the Ghanaian artist Sena Atsugah) but also young choreographers from Burkina Faso, with a view to developing a new generation of artists in the country.
Through his company, Tamadia, Aguibou Bougobali Sanou has also been working with prisoners in the Bobo-Dioulasso remand centre and juvenile detention centre since 2016, under the setting of his « Why Not » undertaking, a programme for reinsertion and deradicalisation through dance and the arts.
In training in African dance, contemporary dance but also Brazilian capoeira, Aguibou Bougobali Sanou fully embraced diversity and travel from his beginnings as a dancer. Between creations in South Korea (Color Coulor in 2009) or India (Kounfetaga staged in 2013), the artist from Burkina Faso has performed in 36 countries to date.
The In-Out Dance Festival continues this optic with a firm international dimension to its programme. The seventh edition of the festival, which took place in February 2020, brought together 15 companies from 14 countries, 6 of which in Africa.
Delpic Laurel Award in 2009, Bronze medal at the aux Jeux de la francophonie in Nice 2013, in 2016, he was semi-finalist in the “Africa’s Got Talent” show. He designed an African dance curriculum at the Naugatuck Valley Community College in Connecticut in 2018 as well as a specific programme for social integration for the civil prison in Bobo-Dioulasso.
In 2018 and 2019, he was awarded the highly prestigious and selective scholarship, the Fulbright Scholar Program by the US Department of State. In 2021, he was artist in residence at the New York Ballet Center.
In addition he studying an MFA (Master in Fine Arts) at Uarts University in Philadelphia 2020-2022) and alongside that he is leading an artists’ residency programme at an organic and environmentally-friendly farm at Bobo-Dioulasso Art-Green-Culture.
- 2006
2006
Aguibou Bougobali Sanou created the Tamadia company with the dancer Aminata Sanou and musicians Moussa Sanou and Domba Sanou.
- 2007
2007
Dancer but also choreographer, he created his first solo Laada, in Burkina Faso, based on the idea of a rite of passage.
- 2013
2013
Aguibou Bougobali Sanou won the Bronze medal in the 7th edition of the Jeux de la Francophonie in Nice with his creation, Errance.
- 2020
2020
Seventh edition of the In-Out Dance Festival he founded in Burkina Faso, on the theme « 2020, face your fear ».
Aguibou Bougobali Sanou, director of the In-Out Dance Festival benefits from the Support for cultural operators from Africa and the Caribbean of the Institut français.
This Support for cultural operators from Africa and the Caribbean part of the Africa and Caribbean cultural cooperation mission works with communities by providing support to cultural actors to structure their project, build their international collaboration strategy, strengthen their teams' capacities and consolidate their professional networks.
Learn more about the Support for cultural operators from Africa and the Caribbean