Director of the CCNN – Centre chorégraphique national de Nantes since January 2026, Salia Sanou trained in theatre in Ouagadougou, then in dance, before joining Mathilde Monnier’s company at the CCN in Montpellier in 1993. Born in 1969 in Léguéma, Burkina Faso, he attended courses at the Union nationale des ensembles dramatiques in Ouagadougou, followed by classes with Drissa Sanon, Irène Tassembedo and Germaine Acogny.
In 1995, Salia Sanou founded the Salia nï Seydou company with Seydou Boro. At the same time, from 2001 to 2006, Salia Sanou was artistic director of the Rencontres Chorégraphiques de l’Afrique et de l’Océan Indien.
In 2011, Salia Sanou founded the company Mouvements perpétuels in Montpellier. In Ouagadougou, he directs, alongside Seydou Boro, the Dialogues de Corps biennial and the Centre for Choreographic Development, La Termitière, which opened in December 2006. He choreographed *Au-delà des frontières* for the 2012 Montpellier Danse Festival, followed by *Doubaley-Kagami* in 2013, a duet with the Japanese musician Takumi Fukushima. He also created *Clameur des arènes* for the 2014 Montpellier Danse Festival, featuring five Senegalese wrestlers, three dancers from Burkina Faso and four singer-musicians.
In 2016, Salia Sanou created *Du désir d’horizons*, based on material he had gathered from refugee camps in Africa. In 2019, he presented *Multiple-s*, which brings together three duets created between 2018 and 2019, with the aim of focusing on the issues of representation, interpretation and the interplay between disciplines (dance, literature and music). In *De beaucoup de vous*, one of these ‘face-à-face’ works, the choreographer shares the stage with Germaine Acogny, founder of the École des Sables in Senegal.
In 2021, he created *D’un rêve*, a dance comedy, to close the Montpellier Danse Festival, and *Papa tambour*, a portable show for primary school classrooms based on a poem by Capitaine Alexandre. Then, in 2022, *A nos combats* brought together a female boxer and a dancer in the ring, with the participation of 60 amateur performers; this production was awarded the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiads label.
Salia Sanou also regularly collaborates as a choreographer or performer with Boris Charmatz, Benjamin Millepied, Dimitri Chamblas, Mathilde Monnier and the poet Abd el Malik.
He is the author of *Afrique, danse contemporaine*, a book illustrated with photographs by Antoine Tempé and co-published by the Cercle d’Art and the Centre National de la Danse – Pantin, which was published in November 2008.
Appointed an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Burkina Faso, and subsequently an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2008 by the French Ministry of Culture, he was promoted to the rank of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2025.
In Nantes, Salia Sanou envisages the CCNN as an open, vibrant and lively space, focused on fostering connections between generations, audiences, stories and local areas.