Choreographic manifesto on the complexity of the female role

The French choreographer Leïla Ka is today one of the most acclaimed voices in French contemporary dance. Her artistry has been praised for combining power, vulnerability and uncompromising presence.

In the performance Maldonne , Leïla Ka creates a physical and visual showdown with gendered expectations. With five dancers and forty dresses found from second hand, movements taken from the choreography of the home and everyday are transformed into a bodily protest against the impossible expectations placed on the female role.

With power and precision, the dancers portray a multifaceted female role, where the feminine is allowed to be both tender and merciless, playful and defiant. The performance offers a poetic and sometimes ironic look at our social norms, where every change of costume is a revolt and every step a rewriting of the invisible rules.

Maldonne is a mosaic-like flow of images and stories – a feminist exclamation mark that refuses to submit to a misguided game.

The title Maldonne comes from card games and refers to a wrong deal, which forces the game to start all over again. Ka believes that women’s position in society is also a wrong deal, and that despite progress, we have remaining inequalities that mean that the struggle must constantly start over – as with an already disadvantageous hand.

Leïla Ka

Choreographer

Leïla Ka is a French choreographer and dancer with roots in the urban dance scene. She started her career as a street dancer but took the step into contemporary dance at an early age, where she became an assistant to the pioneering choreographer Maguy Marin – an experience that has strongly influenced her artistic expression.

Since 2018, Ka has created her own works that move between the explosive and the poetic, often with a physical intensity and a strong stage expression. Her solo work Pode Ser has won several awards, and To Cut Loose earned her the French Critics’ Award for Choreographic Talent. With Bouffées, she won first prize at the Danse Élargie at the Théâtre de la Ville, and her latest work Maldonne, which premiered in 2023 at La Garance – Scène nationale de Cavaillon, has been consistently praised with a standing ovation.

In 2023, Leïla Ka was also awarded the prestigious The Bloom Prize by Sadler’s Wells in London – an international recognition that highlights choreographers with a particularly original voice in contemporary dance.