IDENTITY: PODE SER / MALDONNE

»Rebelling against roles that are imposed, she draws a centredness and a grittiness from her experience of life. In the process, she articulates what all people who in some way yearn for freedom feel deep down.« (tanz)

The evening begins with the multiple award winning solo PODE SER, a solo about the difficulty of being oneself. »Pode ser« is Portuguese for »It could be…«. Through a female dancer’s angry body we become aware of the question of being and non-being, of what we can be, want to be, have to be. A solo about the roles that we play, will play and have played. And about the ones we might have embodied, perhaps.

PODE SER won first prize for International Solo Dance Theater (Stuttgart), first prize at the Solo Dance Contest (Gdansk, Poland) and the Choreography Prize at the CortoInDanza festival (Cagliari, Italy), among other awards.

After more than 200 performances Leïla Ka has taught the choreography to a new dancer who will now perform PODE SER on stage.

MALDONNE is also concerned with the question of female identity. Five female dancers appear in forty different sets of clothes – evening gowns, wedding dresses, ball gowns, nightwear and leisure wear. Sequinned, full-length, billowing, close-fitting and oversized. Garments that fly, shimmer, burst, swirl, drag along the floor or drop. The piece explores fragility, rebelliousness and the diverse identities which coexist in the female makeup.

A phenomenon in contemporary dance, Leïla Ka is making her first appearance in Bonn, while still at the start of her exceptional career. Her way is rebellion: coming from urban dance and without ever having graduated from a school, she has steered a course that’s far off the beaten tracks of academicism. After performing in famous piece May B by Maguy Marin, she has gone on to create her own choreographies that draw on her urban and contemporary influences.

Today she is an associate artist at the Scène nationale de Cavaillon and the Scène nationale de Dieppe.

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