The story
Biennale de la Danse en Afrique in Toubab Dialaw and Dakar
The Biennale de la Danse en Afrique is an itinerant pan-African contemporary dance event, created in the late 1990s by the Institut francais, that rotates among African cities. Its 2026 edition was hosted in Senegal, centered at the Ecole des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, gathering 25 dance companies and 200 international programmers.
Created at the end of the 1990s under the initiative of the Institut francais, the Biennale de la Danse en Afrique was built from the start as a traveling event rather than a fixture of any single city, moving every two years to a different African host in order to spread its focus on contemporary choreography across the continent.