Mudra-Afrique (1980)

The Mudra Afrique was a contemporary dance school founded in Dakar, Senegal in 1977 by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Maurice Béjart, based on a Pan-African philosophy of uniting Africans through the commonalities in the different ways of artistic self-expression. The name of the school comes from the Sanskrit term "mudra" meaning "gesture" or "sign. Many non-Senegalese African dancers, who went on to found their own schools, attended Mudra Afrique, and so its multidisciplinary training greatly influenced dance across West Africa.