DANCE MOODS | MOVES

Antoine Tempé often says that it was dance that led him to photography, to the African continent and to portraiture. In New York, multicultural city among all, dancer himself, he started photographing his first dance companies in the 1990s. He later traveled for a year in the West of the Continent. Then, for more than ten years, he has followed the greatest contemporary African dancers, getting ever closer to their bodies and faces, taking in their vital force and their unique energy.

Caught in mid-motion, Tempé’s dancers show us the imperceptible; moments of grace invisible to the naked eye that are revealed only when stopped by the photographer’s skill as the subjects expose their souls in the intimacy of the studio; divulging the glimpse of a gesture, a pouting of the mouth, a little of themselves in their moves. It is today’s Africa that is revealed in this series of danced portraits. Like an alphabet of souls and bodies, in a universe free from stereotypes, but without forgetting its roots, the Africa shows itself in a resolutely modern and contemporary way. Dance is the mirror of the soul.