In December 2021, in Cotonou, during the second edition of the Connexion festival, created and directed by Marcel Gbeffa, a meeting is organized between Vincent Harisdo and the young dancers who have come for training. This is an opportunity for the Franco-Beninese dancer, choreographer and pedagogue who lives between France and Benin to tell his story, which had many obstacles, and to talk openly  about his vision of contemporary dance in Africa. 

Throughout the interview, with a frank and straightforward language, he clarifies the notions of style and technique, questions the choreographic uses around traditional African dances, he also provides his advice but does not hesitate to bully cultural habits. Beninese dancers who stem their development.
Meeting of December 10, 2021, French Institute of Cotonou, Benin.

Dancer, teacher and choreographer, Vincent Harisdo was born in Benin. At the age of 11, he was sent to a boarding school in France. Dance appeared as an escape, the only pretext to escape from school. But he quickly took a liking to classical and jazz dance. After his baccalaureate, at the end of the 1970s, he abandoned his engineering studies and enrolled in the training center of Walter Nicks, a pioneer of Afro-American dance, in Poitiers. Rejected by his family who refused this choice, he survived odd jobs as a waiter, taxi-boy and contracts for television programs in the numbers of Serge Piers. His meeting with Alvin Mac Duffy shows him another approach to dance. He studied at the Paris Dance Academy, then, on his advice, left for the United States. He trained at Bafa Dance and Business Williams Wood College, in Fulton, Missouri, worked in the university setting with the Kevin Jones Performance Class in Los Angeles and then at the New York High School of Performing Art under the direction of Jack Ross and Kévin Glastone. . On his return to France in the mid-1980s, he danced with several companies: Fox Ballet of Geneva, Jazz Mania Company in Rotterdam, Ballets Noirs and in the Dance Création company of Alvin Mac Duffy. In 1986, he signed a show on the history of fashion for the Paris American Academy and took over the management, alongside his compatriot Dan Agbetou, of the Ballets Jazz.
In 1990, he moved to La Rochelle and headed the Groupe de Recherches chorégraphiques for which he created La Révolte de Korépha, Offrande, Sacrifice et Cosmogonie (with Isabelle Cheveau). His meeting with the Beninese Koffi Kôkô brings back all his physical and musical memory from Beninese culture. For ten years, he remained in his company as a dancer, musician and assistant during tours for the pieces Passage, D'une rive à l'autre  in the United States, Canada, England, Austria, Germany and Italy. . "I discover with Koffi the dance that has meaning compared to the dance that has form".

From 1994 to 2001, he taught regularly at the CNSMD in Angers. At the end of the 1990s, Vincent Harisdo initiated the creation of the International Federation of African Dance and Music and designed with Germaine Acogny, Georges Momboye, Flora Théfaine and, among others, Carole Sévenou a specific training program leading to a diploma which ultimately will not see the light of day. He then returns regularly to Benin to deepen his research on ritual and sacred dances. He collaborates on projects in Colombia (with the choreographer Alvaro Restrepo of the Ballet Collegio del Corpo, 2000), in Guyana, (company Julie Adami, 2003), in Mexico (with Porto Rodrigues), in Ecuador (with Susana Ryes) and signs in 2008 Symphonie pour le temps présent, for the National Ballet of Rwanda. In 2018, he choreographed and performed the piece Digital Voodoo, by digital artist Nicolas Ticot (text Kangni Alem). In 2021, he participated in the creation of East African Bolero by Rwandan choreographer Wesley Ruzibiza, performed in June 2022 at the Théâtre Paris-Villette.
Settled since 1995 in Bordeaux (Centre 6° Parallèle), he continues to transmit his vision of African dance during courses and internships in France, Spain, Italy and Benin where he created the Center for Artistic and Cultural Development. (CDAC) Elijah, a place of training and creative residency, in Djegbadji, in the commune of Ouidah (40 km from Cotonou).
Source: www.harisdo.com, interview by Anne Decoret-Ahiha, in Ouidah, January 10, 2020.

A dance anthropologist, Anne Décoret-Ahiha has published the book Les Danses Exotiques en France (CND, 2004) which has received the prize for best book on dance in 2005 as well as the Outstanding Publication 2006 Award from the Congress on Research on Dance.
In 2019, she created Jaï Production, which supports the production and distribution of choreographic and plastic artists from Benin and the sub-region and also aims, through the production of portraits, interviews and images, to document and make visible choreographic creation in Africa, in which hip hop and urban dances occupy an important place.

Jaï Production was born in 2019 from a yearning to promote and produce Benin dancers and choreographs who, despite nearly non means, strive to create and perform tenaciously, with inventiveness, a prodigious energy and an undeniable talent. 

Chaos Elégant, by Beninese choreographer Arouna Guindo is our first production (2020-2021). 

Jaï Production aims to continue its process of identifying dancers and choreographers from this area of Africa and to highlight the abundant and promising choreographic activity that is unfolding on the continent. 

It is also about contributing to documenting, through research, creation and promotion of dance archives, the strengthening of the contemporary African choreographic field which has beeing going on for about ten years and in which Hip hop and urban dances occupy an significant place.