Amala Dianor

After starting out as a hip hop dancer, Amala Dianor entered the prestigious CNDC school in Angers (in the class of 2002). From 2002 and for 10 years, he performed as a dancer with a number of choreographers in very different worlds, including hip hop, neo-classical, contemporary and afro contemporary (as Emanuel Gat, Hafiz Dhaou et Aicha M’Barek, Régis Obadia, Farid Berki, Abou Lagraa, Georges Momboye, Françoise et Dominique Dupuy…). In 2011, he won two prizes at the Reconnaissance award for his first choreography, named Crossroad and founded his own company, in 2012.

His dance style and vocabulary were immediately identifiable: sliding from one technique to another with ease and virtuosity, he strips away the showy, spectacular stuff from his choreographic techniques, keeping instead only the raw, essential movement. With this deconstructive process he allows his dancers to experiment with new approaches and ideas. Drawn to dialogue and the meeting of minds and bodies, he creates a dance fusion, a hybrid of shapes, a poetics of otherness. Since 2014, he has worked in close collaboration with the electro-soul composer Awir Léon, who has written the original music for his pieces. He occasionally works with other choreographers (among them, Mickael Le Mer, Pierre Bolo, Annabelle Loiseau, Johanna Faye, BBoy Junior or Mathias Rassin), musicians (Awir Léon, Koki Nakano, Héloïse Gaillard, Steve Eton, Eric Aldéa, Yvan Chiossone), a writer (Denis Lachaud), a calligrapher (Julien Breton), plasticians (Grégoire Korganow, Olivier Gilquin, Constance Joliff, Clément Débras).

Amala Dianor’s works were – and still are - invited at National Center for Dance, Pantin and at Festival Suresnes Cités Danse before he became associated artist to Théâtre Louis Aragon à Tremblay-en-France (2014-2016), to CDCN Pôle-Sud in Strasbourg (2016-2019) and then to Centquatre à Paris (2016-2018) and la Maison de la Danse de Lyon (2019-2021). Since 2018, his works have also been commissioned by Théâtre de la Ville, Paris. Today, he is associated with Touka Danses, a CDCN in Guyana (2021-2024), with the Théâtre de Macon, scène nationale (2022-2024) and les Quinconces-l’Espal, scène nationale le Mans (2021 2024). Since 2020, Kaplan I Cie Amala Dinaor is sustained by Fondation BNP Paribas and has 18 creations in his repertory, ranging from large form works to solos, and has performed more than 80 times a year in France and abroad. Its touring is supported by the French Institute and ONDA.

Among his repertory, Amala Dianor performs the solo Man Rec (‘Me only’ in wolof), the duet Extension with the Break dance star BBoy Junior or the trio Quelque-part au milieu de l’infini(‘Somewhere in the middle of the infinite’). ). In 2019, he created his first major work for nine dancers to whom he taught his special blend of styles and techniques; the work was called The Falling Stardust and is currently touring. In 2021, he creates the trio Point Zéro, which he performs with his friends Johanna Faye (co-director of F.A.I.R.E, CCNR), et Mathias Rassin (multiple top rock world champion) and a solo Wo-Man for a dancer with whom he rewrites a feminine version of his solo Man Rec. In 2021, intending to expand his audiences in new directions, he began working with the plastician Grégoire Korganow; they created a series of short films called CinéDanse, its first episode, Nioun Rec, in collaboration with FranceTV, was selected as one of the dance films in the catalogue of the prestigious Villa Albertine in the USA. In 2021, Amala Dianor is one of the four European choreographers to be selected and supported by the program Big Pulse Dance Network (Creative Europe). In 2022, Amala Dianor was commissioned to create a work for eight South African dancers by Via Katlehong,

which will premiere at the 2022 Avignon Festival. He has also committed to training pre-professional dancers in France - as he did for instance in 2020 with the dance/theater collaboration entitled Urgence which was created at Biennale de la danse de Lyon 2021 - and then in Western Africa with his project Siguifin (‘magical monster’ in bambara), a collective creation with the choreographers Ladji Koné, Alioune Diagne and Naomi Fall, for nine dancers from Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal, and the work Premiered in 2022 at Suresnes Cités Danse.

Amala Dianor has received the Médaille de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2019.