The International Centre for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances, commonly known as “École des Sables” and managed by the Jant-Bi Association, is a professional school with theoretical and practical teaching, a research laboratory and is a space for meetings and exchanges, conferences and artistic residencies for dancers from Africa and all continents. Recognized worldwide, it has become a global dance village, based on the richness of dances and cultures from all over Africa, a place where dancers from all over the world come together to create new dances with new energies. The founders, Germaine Acogny and Helmut Vogt, founded the Jant-Bi Association in 1994. In 1996, they laid the foundation stone of the École des Sables de Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, a small fishing village 50 km south of Dakar. After 6 years of construction, the Centre was inaugurated in June 2004. It is a real dance village with its two dance studios of 400 m2 and 280 m2, its conference room, 24 bungalows as accommodation, its own restaurant, kitchen and offices, spread over 4.5 hectares of land, whose architecture is adapted to the environment.
