Germaine Acogny Brings Joséphine Baker to Life in Solo at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

PARIS — “She is dead, she is immortal.”

Those words spoken at the funeral of Joséphine Baker became the starting point for French-Senegalese dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny to bring the American-born French performer and activist back to life in “Josephine,” a ballet that premiered Wednesday as part of the opening of the season at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

“I said let’s start there and she will live again in the skin, in the flesh, in the bones of an African woman,” Acogny told WWD. “I began to roll this film backwards from her death. The dead aren’t dead , they are in the wind, in the water, in the flowers — they are everywhere, they surround us.”

Acogny’s solo therefore starts with flowers thrown at the brass curtain on the stage, as if knocking at the door between the living and legends, that began the piece conceived by Acogny and multidisciplinary artist and choreographer Alesandra Seutin.

Its premiere came almost a century after Baker made her Paris debut — on Oct. 2, 1925 — in the very same theater.

Through a series of tableaux are evoked Baker’s supple movements that shocked 1920s Paris during the “Revue Nègre,” her motherhood to 12 adopted children of different ethnicities and religions and her involvement in the French Resistance and the American Civil Rights Movement.

“Joséphine Baker is absolutely contemporary,” said the French-Senegalese dancer. “Everything she defended still is the same in modern times.”

Reinforcing each were the costumes, crafted by grand flou atelier Paloma, which is part of Chanel’s 19M hub of specialty ateliers. “I wanted a bodysuit in my skin tone that would give the impression of being nude,” recalled Acogny.

A dress in the Shanghai chapter of “Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto” became the starting point for the ballet’s first outfit, a black number with a fluid skirt with silk flowers running down the back that represents Baker’s funeral.

Costume changes were incorporated into the performance. That dress falls to the floor, revealing Acogny in a bodysuit, a beaded belt as the only adornment. “It’s the waist beads of French-Senegalese women that I am donning as an African woman,” Acogny explained. “Quite the departure from the banana belt, isn’t it?”

Glamorous domesticity takes the shape of a marabou-trimmed dressing gown — donned with a wig and glasses — while an asymmetric martial-inflected suit is for when the going gets tough. For the veteran dancer, working with the Paloma team was “so fluid, with good energy” and she felt “admiration for their mastery of their craft” that shone through in the ease in which she slipped from one outfit to another.

In the space of a 30-minute solo performance, it’s “a side of Baker that isn’t shown enough, who fought for equality for Black people, Mexicans, Native Americans in the U.S., who fought for freedom and was a Resistance fighter in France,” that Acogny telegraphed with limber, magnetic movements and poetic voiceovers.

Hers wasn’t the only moving rendition of the evening, as “Josephine” was part of a tandem program that put it in dialogue with Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring,” accompanied by the music of Igor Stravinsky, which premiered in 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

Interpreted by dancers hailing from 13 African countries as part of a coproduction between the Pina Bausch Foundation, the Écoles des Sables and London’s Sadler’s Wells dance organization, the ballet was a powerful display that was awarded a standing ovation from an audience that included Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, couture designer Imane Ayissi and Paris Opera Ballet star Guillaume Diop.

The program including “Josephine” and Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring,” supported by Chanel, runs until Sunday at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.