Dancer and choreographer Annette Leday has developed a unique approach to intercultural contemporary creation, focusing on the dance and theatre traditions of India and France. After training as an actress in France, she went to India in 1978 to study Kathakali dance theatre. With scholarships from the ICCR Indian Government and the French Ministry of Culture, she practised Kathakali in Kerala at the Sadanam and Kalamandalam institutions, participating in performances of the two troupes in India as well as abroad. A graduate of 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.