SPLA : Portal to cultural diversity

Flora Théfaine

Flora Théfaine
Choreographer, Dancer
Principal country concerned : Column : Dance

Flora is a native of Togo. She arrived in France on an April day of 1969, bringing with her music and dances from her native land.
From that day, she found the necessary distance, where pictures and memories start to fade away, giving the possibility for new music to emerge, the beginning of a creative adventure fed with the buried traditional gesture.

Over the years, her teaching experience, the creation of the Sarabande Company, her choreographic creations, the artistic performances presented all around the country and Europe eventually lead her to the creation of the professional dance company, Kossiwa, in Nantes in 1989.

Thanks to her numerous artistic experiences, she travelled in many different countries and met a lot of artists: her choreographic writing is in line with the history of contemporary dance, characterized by her various origins, where black is not totally black, and white not totally white.

In her choreographies, Flora Théfaine not only gathers different influences, but she manipulates them, merges them together? where colours have an invisible border.
And in her choreographic quest, she symbolises the universal gesture on stage, gesture that goes from the earth up to the sky.

Her choreographic creations presented in France and abroad: "Plissé Soleil" in 1990, "Signes des Temps" in 1994, "Les Porteurs de Légendes" in 1995, "Les Porteuses de vie" with the Bonogo company from Burkina Faso in 1996, "La Traversée du Jour" in 1997, "Je te donnerai, je te donnerai" in 2000?

She makes creations with amateur dancers. For instance, she stayed in residence with inhabitants from Nantes for one year and with them, she created "Plissé Dansé" in 2002.
From this choreography was created "Bal Plissé Dansé", a public dance held outdoors, which is one of the company?s shows.

She created for herself a dance solo in 2006 named "Tant la cendre que la poussière". She danced on the voice of the Basque singer Beñat Achiary.
In 2007, she created dances for the Sahel Opera, an African opera in collaboration with Germaine Acogny. This opera was presented in Bamako, Amsterdam and Paris.

She created "Mon premier bal" in 2008, a new conception of the public dance held outdoors where children create the dance and invite the audience to follow their movements.

In 2009, she celebrates the 20 years of her company, thinks up the next years in following her poetry quest, she is always ready to meet challenge?

Partners

  • Arterial network
  • Togo : Kadam Kadam

With the support of