Meet our guests
Kossi Sebastien Aholou-Wokawui

Kossi Sebastien Aholou-Wokawui
Kossi Sebastien Aholou-Wokawui | © Lukas Narbut

Kossi came to Dhaka, to perform his piece „In the Skin of the Other“. Additionally he gave a two days masterclass „Dance and Biographies“.

My first impression of Bangladesh…
the warm air, just like the air in my country, Togo, but also the attitude of the soldiers at the airport.

Things in Dhaka that remind me of my home town Bremen…
not much, really, but many street scenes, e.g. vegetable vendors or garbage collection remind me of Lomé, my first home town.

Something that caught my attention in Bangladesh (and that is rather unusual in Germany)…
for a start, nothing is a problem, one tries to make everything possible.

A memory of Bangladesh that will stay…
is the place in Old Dhaka where people from different faiths can get married, and that I was allowed to share the stage with Tomas Bünger, my colleague in Dhaka.
 

Kossi Sebastien Aholou-Wokawui. Born in Togo, Kossi Sébastien Aholou-Wokawui learned traditional and contemporary African, modern and jazz dance from 2000 to 2005 in the ensembles Cie. Woenyo, Cie. Sojaf and Cie. Brin de Chocolat. He has pursued a career as dancer and choreographer and has been part of numerous collaborations. In 2006, he started creating dance pieces that have been presented in Togo, Benin and Denmark. Kossi has also held joint programmes with the vaudeville singer Vanessa Worou. His training has included projects with Stephanie Thiersch (D), Alexandre Castres (F) and at École des Sables, Senegal. He has also taught at the university and at the Französisches Gymnasium, has worked on traditional ballet in Lomé, Togo, and at the Théâtre National d’ Haïti in 2013. Since 2012, he has been collaborating with steptext. He danced in HUMAN CR-EDIT by Augusto Jaramillo Pineda, teaches in the steptext dance project ‘young artists’, has toured with the Helge Letonja/Opiyo Okatch dance project HOME 52° 30’ N 13° 23’ E ELEV 37 m, and was part of an intercontinental ensemble once more when he featured in Letonja’s BOXOM in 2014/15. In 2016, he played a part in the new version of Letonja’s The Desert. Kossi also participated in The March, a project at the Alliance Française in Accra, Ghana, that brought together four choreographers from West Africa. Since late 2015, he has been training children and young adults in Bremen as part of an initiative by Quartier.