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The French Embassy in India, French Institute in India & Alliance Francaise Network
Alliance Française de Delhi
present
S. Thala
An Indian Suite
(Based on the work of Marguerite Duras)
A choreographic study by the Annette Leday/Keli company Creation 2022
Day & Date: Sat, 22nd January 2022 | 6:30 pm
Venue: M.L. Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance Française 72 Lodi Estate, New Delhi – 110003
Conception: Annette Leday, Hélène Courvoisier Direction and choreography: Annette Leday With
Hélène Courvoisier Kalamandalam Unnikrishnan Nair Sadanam Manikandan
Annette Leday
Production: Association Keli Paris
Coproduction: Institut Français Inde, Mairie de Paris, Arta Cartoucherie, Alliance Française Network
Event description:
S.Thala is a dance performance inspired by Marguerite Duras’ Indian cycle. The creative process of S.Thala started in Kerala in December 2019 under the direction of Annette Leday, a French choreographer and dancer immersed in Indian and French theatrical and dance forms.
By revisiting Duras’ fantasized India in this cycle and the very real one at the heart of her company’s productions, Annette Leday proposes a poetic visual approach of Duras prose through a choreographed interpretation of her organic writing.
For Annette Leday, “creating a contemporary dance performance is a bit like writing a poem”. S.Thala focuses more on exploring the relationships and emotions of the “characters” and the emblematic atmospheres of Duras’ universe than on trying to reproduce or illustrate the complex narrative schemes of her texts.
About Annette Leday & Keli company:
Dancer and choreographer Annette Leday has developed a unique approach to intercultural contemporary creation, focusing on the dance and theater traditions of India and France
After training as an actress in France she went to India in 1978 to study Kathakali dance-theater. With scholarships from the ICCR Indian Government and the French Ministry of Culture she practiced Kathakali in Kerala at the Sadanam and Kalamandalam institutions, participating in performances of the two troupes in India as well as abroad. A graduate from the Institut des Langues Orientales in Paris, she speaks fluent Malayalam. Since 1989, she has directed and choreographed performances for both Indian and Western dancers, actors and musicians.
The artistic project of the Annette Leday/Keli Company is to orient and evolve rare traditional performance techniques towards contemporary creation. Building on Annette Leday’s pioneering choreography, the company has established a constant dialogue between artists from India and from France and has developed an original process of exchanges ever since its creation in the nineteen-eighties. A new vocabulary has emerged from this contact where the different techniques enrich each other.
The main productions of the company involving Indian and French performers are:
Kathakali-King Lear, La Sensitive, Trans-Malabar, Cinderella Otherwise, The Tempest, The Stuff of Dreams, Big-bang.org, Mithuna.
http://annette.leday.cie.free.fr/Keli/Bienvenue.html
Partners description: S.Thala is co-produced by institutions in India and France: Association Keli Paris, Alliance Française de Trivandrum, Institut Français India, Paris City Hall, and Arta Cartoucherie.
In the various cities in India where the show will be performed, local partnerships are also being established: