How did you get your stage-name?

My stage name reflects my Yin and Yang personality. Lava is a reference to my explosive energy. Stratosphere highlights my lyrical side, particularly my graceful hands and arms which I perfected through Indian dance.

How did you get into dance?

I wonder if my passion for dance didn’t grow with me in-utero: my mother was a modern jazz teacher in Nice and continued to dance until the very end of her pregnancy! My father was a martial arts teacher. I spent my childhood running between competitions and training for these two disciplines. I also danced ballet, African dance and hip hop. From a very young age, I was uncompromising with myself. I have always wanted to give my best. As a teenager, I felt I had to stop competing in order to discover who I was without comparison to others. My parents wanted me to succeed in general studies, so when I was fourteen, they enrolled me in an elite private high school where I passed my baccalaureate, science option. Following in my classmates’ footsteps, I almost started a degree in medicine until a small inner voice reminded me, at this crucial turning point, that I had always wanted to be a dancer. So I joined the EPSEDANSE school for performers in Montpellier. There, I experienced a stunning evolution: I fully explored other styles and methods, I worked on the subtle art of interpretation… These were the most beautiful years of my life. I danced from morning to night, and enjoyed an entirely new freedom. This is also where I truly fell in love with contemporary dance and grasped the full extent of its beauty and narrative potential. For me, it’s the ultimate form of physical expression. After this period of study, I fell in love with the Batsheva Dance Company, an Israeli contemporary dance company. I passed all of their auditions and danced with them in Israel many times. However, our paths ultimately diverged and they left me with this piece of advice: “You have to find your craziness”. In retrospect, I think it’s hilarious since I’m now a Crazy Girl!

Back in Nice, several people advised me to try my luck at getting into the Crazy Horse. I thought the Crazy Horse was phenomenal, but out of reach for me, even untouchable. Around this time, I met my partner. He also pushed me, so I went to the audition without any expectations. I was accepted straight away.

Is contemporary dance useful to you as a Crazy Horse dancer?

Yes, every day. In other dance forms, everything is very codified. Contemporary dance is a liberation of the body. We use technique, but we are totally free in how we use it to create a narrative and find our own expression. Thanks to contemporary dance, I found a meaning in my dancing. I realised that there is a language in movement, that by being fully present, it’s possible to radiate energy from the body and take over the stage. This approach is incredibly useful to me at the Crazy Horse. We are here to break with tradition and go beyond technique to liberate the essence of dance and of woman.

How do you see your body?

When I was younger, my body was an interpretative and performance tool. In contemporary dance, I felt my body was assexual. When the possibility of the Crazy Horse came up, I had no idea that my body could have an impact in terms of sensuality or seduction on stage. Today, I am also a yoga teacher and at a completely different stage of bodily perception. I see it as the vessel that transcends the soul. It makes sense in terms of the artistic aspect… Sometimes on stage, we feel that something goes completely beyond us. There seems to be a sudden rush of precision, of magic, as if the soul is transmitting something through the body. It is simultaneously ethereal and beautiful… and that is thanks to our body.

What have you learned about yourself since becoming a Crazy Horse dancer?

When I became a dancer at the Crazy Horse, I learned to discover the full spectrum of my femininity. Each act is different. Some are deep and sensual, others languid, and others wild with a visceral erotic power. We have to use the full range of emotions that we feel as women in order master each act.

What does the Upside Down act by famous choreographer Philippe Découflé mean to you?

Upside Down is like an extraordinary fairytale where the dancers float in space. He plays on perception in an extremely poetic way. The floor doesn’t exist, or perhaps it’s a liquid or mirror surface… The dancers are like chimeras, they appear and disappear, are duplicated and transformed. They are ungraspable. This is the show where my imagination goes most wild.

Discover Lava Stratosphère in video : 

Photos : Ricardo Tinelli, Thomas Helard, Mark Davies
Video : Paul-Henri Pesquet