Annette Leday to Hold Workshop on Kathakali in Tehran

TEHRAN. (Iranart) – French choreographer Annette Leday is scheduled to hold an 11-day workshop on Kathakali dance-theater in Tehran during January 2020.

The workshop named A practical Guide to Kathakali Theater in Acting Technics will be organized at the Hilaj Film School in Tehran from January 14 to 24, Hilaj announced on Monday.

Kathakali is a traditional Indian dance native to the southern state of Kerala. To perform it, artists deck out in elaborate costumes and colorful makeup to tell stories from Hindu epics. It takes students nearly 12 years of training to learn the choreography and gestures necessary for Kathakali.

The workshop will be organized in collaboration with ARTA, French director and author Jean-Francois Dusigne’s educational center in Paris, and French director Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil in Paris.

The workshop is part of the Creative Acting Workshop project initiated by the Hilaj Film School. The students of the workshops will perform a play in a co-production between Iran and France after completing four courses in the project.

Leday’s workshop is the second course of the project. The first course was held by Dusigne in September.  

After training as an actress in France, Leday went to India in 1978 to study Kathakali. With scholarships from the ICCR Indian Government and the French Ministry of Culture, she practiced Kathakali in Kerala. Since 1989, she has directed and choreographed performances for both Indian and Western dancers, actors and musicians.

Leday is the director of the Keli Company that she founded in 1983 to orient and evolve rare traditional performance techniques towards contemporary creation.

Source: Tehran Times