Johana Malédon

‘I like to think about dance wherever I am. Curious and a traveller at heart, I develop a dance that is grounded, fluid and committed. In creation, I place the body at the centre of my thinking and like to articulate it as raw material around its contradictions and limits.

A journey, an encounter, a memory, a sensation – all these points are sources of inspiration and allow me to explore our relationship with others from different angles.

 In my perpetual quest for the present moment, as a choreographer I am committed to systematically offering the dancers a space for play, the unknown and experimentation, which can take a variety of forms. For me, this search for spaces of freedom is a way of highlighting the individual and the group.

Born in French Guyana, Johana Malédon trained at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris, the Alvin Ailey School in New York, the Pôle Supérieur Paris Boulogne Billancourt in Paris and the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Israel, before obtaining a DNSPD jazz, a DE jazz and a Licence en Art du Spectacle at the Université Paris VIII.

At the same time, and since 2019, she has been working as a performer for Léo Lérus, Kristina Alleyne, Abou Lagraa & Nawal Aït Benalla, Fouad Boussouf and Sylvain Groud, among others.

She founded the MÂLE company in 2019 following the Sobanova Choreographic Competition, which she won with her first piece entitled ‘À Bientôt’, which was presented in France and internationally. In 2022, she became associate artist at the Centre Chorégraphique National du Havre under the direction of Fouad Boussouf, then associate artist at the Beffroi de Montrouge in 2024. She has also created a number of pieces in response to commissions, including ‘Chevalier virtuose: strate(s)’ for the Nuit Blanche 2024 at the Carreau du Temple, ‘À Bientôt’ for the Jeune Ballet Calabash and the Ensemble Chorégraphique de Guyane, ‘Ha Chi Ko’ for Danse en Seine, and ‘La Foule’ for Sobanova, to name but a few.