"I didn't know that life outside my countryside would be such a necessary hell. I didn't know that the rhythm of the traffic - of those motorbikes, cars, trucks, buses, subways by the thousands, their roar, their multiple horns, of their speed, of these thousands of men and women slaves of the mobile phone, who, with broken sticks survey these paths, violating the laws without respect for the code of the road, nor for the human species - would depend the beats of my heart. It's breathtaking isn't it? 

This show proposes to make us travel through space to discover this extraordinary world in which we live. Get on board and hold your heart because it will beat to the infernal rhythms of these crazy traffic, but let yourself be carried away by the danced, rhythmic and offbeat movements of the young dancers, whose passion for dance has no limits. 

Performed on Friday, November 16, 2012, Théâtre de Verdure of the Institut Français du Benin, Cotonou.

Source : performance’s program 

  Born in Natitingou, northern Benin, Rachelle Agbossou took a liking to dancing under the aegis of her father, who took her to the “Bal poussière” and enrolled her in dance competitions. In 1999, as she was finishing her fourth year of English at the University of Abomey-Calavi, she joined the Ensemble Artistique et Culturel des Etudiants (EACE). In 2000, she entered the National Ballet of Benin with which she performed in Africa, Europe and China until 2004. At the same time, she was introduced to contemporary dance with the SACAM collective led by Clément Kakpo and Medard Sossa. She also trained with Irène Tassembedo (Burkina Faso), Rokiya Kone (Ivory Coast), Joan Vand Der Mast and Féri de Geus (Netherlands), Erick Kaiel (United States) and Francesca Pedulla (Italy) . In 2003, the Franco-Algerian choreographer Heddy Maalem selected her for Rite of Spring, which toured internationally until 2008. 

In 2005, she founded the company Walô, (“behaviour” in the Fon language) driven by the conviction that dance promotes a change in mentalities. With her company made up of a dozen dancers, she is involved in the training of young dancers, secondary school teachers and in education programs in schools around sexual and reproductive health, early pregnancy and unhappy childhood. From 2007, through the Embassy of the Netherlands in Benin, she began a close partnership with the Fondation Le Grand Cru for educational and artistic projects. She created Les Tresseurs de Cordes (a duet with Awoulath Alougbin), Léwé or the childhood of art (with 60 schoolchildren), Gendarme écrasé, Nontchiovi, A Corps et à Cri (with the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers -BFK du Mali), Ondulation (2010) and Foliphonie Mobile (co-production Zinsou Foundation, 2012).

In 2015, she played the lead role in the short dance film Le Son du Serpent directed by Tami Ravid (choreography Féri de Geus), awarded at the Communidanza Festival in Mexico City in 2017. In 2013, with the financial support of NUFFIC, a Dutch institution, she created Touch my Body, Don't Touch my Body, which denounced the sexual abuse suffered by young girls as well as the taboos surrounding sex education in Benin. Many performances are given in colleges and high schools until 2018. Associated in 2018 with the Multicorps Choreographic Center of Marcel Gbeffa, she opens in September 2020, thanks to the RePaSoC program of the European Union with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Benin, a choreographic training center, the Walô Dance Center, in Calavi, in the northern suburbs of Cotonou. Her solo Sika, created in 2015 at the end of a residency in Dakar which evokes the incarceration of a young Beninese, toured in Senegal (Festival Duo Solo, Saint Louis, 2015) in Burkina Faso (FIDO, Ouagadougou, 2016), in Mali (Danse Bamako Danse, 2016) and recently in France (Festival Bam Bam, TU Nantes, 2021). 

Source: Compagnie Walô, https://walo-benin.com

Interviews by Anne Decoret-Ahiha, Cotonou: August 11, 2015, January 7 and June 21, 2021.

Fondation Zinsou has recorded all the performances given during the festival "Dansons Maintenant !" "that was organized in 2011, 2012 and 2015 in Cotonou, Benin. Interviews of dancers and choreographers invited for the festival were also realized.

These recordings and interviews have been uploaded on Numeridanse as a courtesy with the aim of making them reachable by many people as possible, taking into account their scientific nature and their contribution to the dissemination and promotion of contemporary African art, more particularly  the field of contemporary African dance.

Directed by Marie-Cécile Zinsou, the Zinsou Foundation opened its doors in June 2005 in Cotonou, Benin. A pioneer in West Africa, it works to promote contemporary art in Africa. Platform and exhibition center for contemporary African artists particularly Benin artists, in the Ouidah Museum and in the Lab, at Cotonou, the Foundation also acts for the promotion of education and social development through cultural and educational activities aimed in particular at young audiences,  with the major challenge of free accessibility . In 2011, the Zinsou Foundation exhibited Antoine Tempé's dance photographs and invited choreographers to create a work in situ, in resonance with the images of exposed bodies. The  success of this event entitled “Dansons Maintenant !", (Let's Dance Now!) convinces the Foundation to organize a second edition, in 2012, dedicated solely to dance, around the theme of urbanity. In 2015, a third edition took place, in conjunction with the “African Records” exhibition devoted to African music and photography from the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, which provided the motive for new co-productions of performances. The three editions of "Dansons Maintenant ! " 2011, 2012 and 2015 have all been recorded on video  (shows, restitutions of workshops, interview) and make an archive collection of 120 videos. 

The extracts from the Archive collection of "Dansons Maintenant !" have been made available free of charge by the Zinsou Foundation.

  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.