Dance workshop

Pina Bausch Centre under construction, Bundesallee 260, Wuppertal

Workshop 15 €, reduced 10 €
Presale tickets: 14 €, concessions 9 €

Registration for the workshop

Accompanying the performance Roots of Lives at the Pina Bausch Centre under construction on 29 and 30 January 2026, dancers and choreographers Shelly Ohene-Nyako (Switzerland/Ghana) and Babacar Mané (Senegal) are offering a workshop for students and professional dancers aged 16 and above. This workshop will provide participants with tools to help them find their own personality in space and in their movements, using aspects from the Roots of Lives repertoire.

Dancers from 14 African countries came together for the international dissemination of Pina Bausch's famous choreography to Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps. The production common ground[s] • The Rite of Spring, a joint production by the Pina Bausch Foundation, École des Sables and Sadler's Wells, has toured worldwide. Now two of the dancers and choreographers involved are coming to Wuppertal for a guest performance: Shelly Ohene-Nyako and Babacar Mané, who also danced with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch as a guest in the 2025 revival of The Rite of Spring.

Roots of Lives is inspired by the horoscopes of the two performers, Shelly Ohene-Nyako and Babacar Mané, which both complement and contradict each other. A game of mutual balance that revolves around the four elements of nature and questions the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, between the self and the other..

Watch the trailer

Shelly Ohene-Nyako
Shelly is Ghanaian and Swiss. After completing her bachelor's degree in performing arts, she worked as a freelance dancer. In 2018, she moved to Ghana, where she began teaching ballet and blending different styles. Her goal is to help the performing arts scene in Africa grow.
Shelly gives private lessons as a contemporary dance and yoga/stretching teacher when she is not performing on stage or choreographing. She founded Cie Shefroyan, her dance company. She was born in Switzerland, has dual citizenship of Ghana and lived there for four years, where she was active in the arts scene before moving to Dakar. She is a certified doula, using dance as a practice with the mothers she cares for. She currently commutes between Europe and Africa, where she pursues her own projects and others as a freelancer.

Babacar Mané
Dancer and choreographer, Babacar Mané begins his artistic journey with the Theatre by training with a small group of His neighbourhood, in the suburbs of Dakar. Then, it is thanks to the mediation of a friend that he discovered Hip-hop dance in 2010. Of Performance in Battle, he decides to professionalize by participating in internships and professional workshops. In 2015, after a training in urban dances, he creates I, YOU, THEY, a very noticed first solo on stage Senegalese national and finalist of the competition Simply the best organized by the choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly in Burkina Faso. The following year he joined the National School of Arts of the Senegal for a degree in art and choreography and expands his writing to contemporary dance, Modern, classic, and with traditional dances From East Africa. In 2020 he created his second play BETWEEN 2 GAMES which is the winner of the "Visa for Creation" program, led by the French Institute of Paris.
Besides his Choreographer's career, Babacar Mané is also an interpreter and soloist in the creation Of Sacre du Printemps (2021) by Pina Bausch alongside 37 other dancers of fourteen African countries. An international and historical project, co-produced by the Pina Bausch Foundation in Germany, Sadler's Wells in London and the School Of the Sables in Senegal. Variations in human relationships are at the centre of Babacar Mané's research and his dance, which he willingly describes as fluid and animal, draws some of his materials or energies in the observation of nature, reality, alliances and solidarity of the Alive. He currently carries three award-winning creative projects internationally.