Senegalese and French, Germaine Acogny participated from 1962 till 1965 at the formation at the Simon Siegel’s school (the director was Ms Marguerite Lamotte) in Paris and received a diploma of physical education and harmonious gymnastics. Then, she founded her first dance studio in Dakar, 1968. Thanks to the influence of the dances she had inherited from her grandmother, a Yoruba priest, and to her studies of traditional African dances and Occidental dances (classic, modern) in Paris and New York, Germaine Acogny created her own technique of Modern African Dance and is considered as the “mother of Contemporary African dance”.

Between 1977 and 1982 she was artistic director of MUDRA AFRIQUE (Dakar), created by Maurice Béjart and the Senegalese president and poet Leopold Sedar Senghor. In 1980, she writes her first book untitled “African Dance”, translated in three languages. Once Mudra Afrique had closed, she moved to Brussels to work with Maurice Béjart’s company, she organised international African dance workshops, which showed a great success among the European students. This same experience was repeated in Africa, in Fanghoumé, a small village in Casamance, in the south of Senegal.

Alesandra Seutin is an award-winning multidisciplinary performance artist and creator, whose focus is exploring movement as a foundation for theatre, media and site-specific works. An inspirational leader with a multifaceted career spanning two decades, she has reached global audiences through her work as an artistic director, choreographer, performer, mentor, teacher, movement director, dramaturg and writer for performance and music. In 2023, she won the Golden Afro Artistic Award for Dance & Choreography.

Alesandra Seutin is the Co-Artistic Director of École des Sables alongside Wesley Ruzibiza since 2020. Having further trained at the school herself under Germaine Acogny, Seutin is a worldwide ambassador and teacher of the Acogny technique. In collaboration, Ruzibiza and Seutin both direct the development of the internationally renowned training programme and performance companies, Jant-Bi Germaine Acogny and Jant-Bi II.

Seutin earned her graduate and postgraduate training at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance and Middlesex University in London. The world is her muse and through her creations she comments on social, political, and economic reality with dance, song, and music. The notion of "getting or taking a place" is central to Seutin’s work, as is finding your place in major cultural institutions: the spaces that are not obviously 'yours'.

She founded her company Alesandra Seutin (formerly Vocab Dance) in 2007 and has steadily built its reputation for creating high-quality, artistic performance. Vocab Dance’s repertoire is diverse with over eleven productions within its catalogue.

Alesandra Seutin’s work has toured across the UK, Europe and internationally and she has received over 20 choreographic commissions including Sadler’s Wells, KVS, Merce Cunningham Company, Wellcome Collection, Channel 4, Phoenix Dance Theatre and was also guest director for the UK’s National Youth Dance Company from 2019-2021.

Seutin is a face of KVS theater in Brussels theater since 2021 and an associate artist with Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London since March 2024.

Wesley Ruzibiza is a dancer, actor, choreographer, and director. Raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he moved to Rwanda, his country of origin, in 1999. He was studying financial management at the National University of Rwanda when he encountered the world of contemporary arts. While observing a dance workshop, the choreographer surprisingly invited him to join the group. He took off his shoes and since that day never left. Ruzibiza holds an African Contemporary Dance and Germaine Acogny diploma. From 2002-2010 he took over the direction of the Dance Department at the University Center of Arts and Drama. Today, he is the Artistic Director of the Amizero Kompagnie that he co-founded in 2005 with the National University of Rwanda UCAD, with which he won multiple international awards.

He is the co-artistic Director of l’Ecole des Sables, an Associate Professor at the Dance and Research Center (CPARC) in Bordeaux, France, and at the Muda Africa Dance School in Tanzania, among others.