PARIS — “She is dead, she is immortal.”

Those words spoken at the funeral of Joséphine Baker became the starting point for French-Senegalese dancer and choreographer Germaine Acogny to bring the American-born French performer and activist back to life in “Josephine,” a ballet that premiered Wednesday as part of the opening of the season at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

“I said let’s start there and she will live again in the skin, in the flesh, in the bones of an African woman,” Acogny told WWD. “I began to roll this film backwards from her death. The dead aren’t dead [in my culture], they are in the wind, in the water, in the flowers — they are everywhere, they surround us.”

Acogny’s solo therefore starts with flowers thrown at the brass curtain on the stage, as if knocking at th

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