You’re the one we love/and when we change the landscape…

“Her success is echoed by phenomenal tours that consistently sell out: she is currently the most prominently featured young choreographer, with over a hundred performances annually.” — Le Monde

Leïla Ka has asserted her fierce energy in just a few years. Her dance is powerfully theatrical and strikingly precise.

Following the international success of her first three award-winning pieces — Pode Ser, C’est toi qu’on adore, and Bouffées — Leïla Ka created Maldonne, her first group piece, which was nominated for the International Dance Prize at Sadler’s Wells in London.

Entering the dance world through urban styles, she did not follow a traditional academic path, instead forging her own unique trajectory. After performing for Maguy Marin, Leïla Ka began creating her own choreographies, infused with both urban and contemporary influences.

She also develops her talent as a choreographer and scenographer beyond conventional boundaries: she notably choreographed the 2025 César Awards Ceremony and music videos for Zaho de Sagazan.

Born in 1955 in Johannesburg, Robyn Orlin is a dancer, choreographer and founder of City Theatre & Dance Group (1988).  In 1981, on a solo guest performance she gave on the Breytenbach Theatre stage in Pretoria, Adrienne C Sichel described her as “a very angry young dancer.” She understood later with Robyn’s growing reputation that she actually attended the choreographer’s first theatrical attempt to deconstruct, confront and critique the colonial white classical ballet tradition.

This critique has been omnipresent in her work, which made her become world famous in 2003 when she won the Laurence Olivier Award for “Daddy, I have seen this piece six times before and I still don’t know why they are hurting each other” (1999): a richly satiric portrait of race relations, confrontations and the threat presented by democracy to Western “elitist” dance forms. Perhaps the pinnacle of Orlin’s socio-political expression and achievement is the commission by the Paris Opéra of “L’Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato” (2007) where she had Étoiles and ballet dancers pulling down the tutu’s supremacy.

Nicknamed in South Africa as “permanent irritation,” she reveals, through her work, the difficult and complex reality of her country. She incorporates various artistic expressions—text, video, and plastic arts, among others—in order to explore a certain theatricality that is reflected in her choreographic vocabulary.

In a co-production with INA and ARTE, she made her first movie : “Hidden beauties, dirty histories” in October 2004.

Robyn Orlin was named Knight of the National Order of Merit in 2009 and Knight Arts and Letters in 2015.