We sat down for an exclusive interview with Ekleido. Ekleido, who took the dance world by storm in 2024, return this year to Breakin’ Convention with Femina, a bold new work celebrating the power of the feminine through their signature fusion of contemporary, club, and street dance styles. Inspired by Janina Ramirez’s Femina, the piece brings together six dancers in a vibrant, electronic-driven world where women and LGBTQIA+ voices reclaim space and power.
Breakin’ Convention runs from 1-3rd May at Sadlers Wells – Tickets here
Femina takes its starting point from Janina Ramirez’s book Femina. What was it about that text that felt urgent enough to turn into a physical, danced response?
Femina was always a piece we were going to create. As two women leading the company and with our involvement in The Ballroom Scene, it felt essential to make a work that celebrated and explored femininity. Reading Janina Ramirez’s book Femina felt just like that—it brought light to all these strong, influential women and queer people in the medieval period. It made us want to research the theme further, both within texts, through research partners, as well as getting into the studio and exploring themes with our dancers. From our research in the studio, we felt it wasn’t necessary to focus quite so literally on medieval women, but instead on an abstract theme of femininity. The feminine is constantly pushing to be seen and heard, and often silenced by the idea of “traditional masculinity.” Janina Ramirez mentioned early on in her book that “femina” was something scribbled on the corners of texts written by women, so less worthy of preservation. Our work Femina unapologetically celebrates femininity, which feels urgent in the current political climate where women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights are still being challenged. We are really excited to be returning to Breakin’ Convention, this time bringing a bigger cast of six dancers to present Femina.
The piece blends contemporary dance with club and street styles like New Way Voguing, Waacking and House. How do you keep those forms authentic while shaping them into a theatrical work?
Authenticity is really important to us when incorporating street and club styles into our work, as these styles were born out of subcultures with rich social and cultural histories. When choreographing, we make very conscious choices on how to incorporate the styles in a way that feels appreciative rather than appropriative by maintaining open dialogue with our dance artists. We ensure authenticity firstly by choosing dancers fully immersed in their respective scenes.
We (Faye and Hannah) have both been involved in The Ballroom Scene for 10 years—walking New Way Voguing—with Faye a part of the House of Revlon and Hannah part of the House of Elle. Roshaan Asare is an active member of the London Waacking Scene and part of ‘London Waacking Movement’, and Rory Clarke is an internationally renowned House dancer and part of ‘IndaHouse’. As Breakin’ Convention celebrates Hip Hop Theatre, it felt important to showcase the street dance influences of our work in their pure form, but only by those who are part of that scene. For example, Faye and Hannah do a New Way Voguing section, Rory does a House solo, and Roshaan does a Waacking solo.
In terms of the ensemble choreography, we blend contemporary dance, New Way, and club dance influences to create a new language rather than presenting, for example, pure Voguing.
You describe Femina as creating “a space in which the feminine rules.” What does that look and feel like on stage, and how do you want audiences to experience that world?
We want the audience to see femininity represented in many ways and through different people. Within the 10-minute version of Femina, we’ve focused mainly on how the movement can represent power, precision, strength, elegance, and rawness through a relentless, almost non-stop number. We hope the audience experiences those feelings vicariously through the performers, alongside the music created by the incredible Stella Mozgawa, which supports that pulsing feeling of power and celebration. Being influenced by club culture, where one feels free to express themselves and get lost in the music, is exactly the world we want our audience to experience while watching Femina.
As leaders with roots in the Ballroom scene, how does that culture influence not just the movement vocabulary, but the values and energy of the piece?
The theme of the work is a celebration of femininity that is not bound to gender norms—this has been directly inspired by our backgrounds in the Ballroom Scene and Club Culture, which hold space for expressions of femininity and masculinity liberated from gender.
It was also important to infuse the essence of Ballroom Scene energy into the music. In our initial conversations with Stella Mozgawa, many examples we sent were classic ballroom tracks like “The Ha Dance” by Masters at Work, “Give It Up” by The Good Men, and Chocolate Puma. The final track Stella created for Femina perfectly captured that energy and created the club atmosphere we were striving for.
The cast bring very distinct styles and lived experiences. How collaborative has the creation process been, and does the choreography grow out of the dancers themselves?
We are very particular with casting, as it’s important that dancers have lived experiences relevant to the theme and that their personal expression in different movement styles is represented.
Our creative process involves sharing our movement language with dancers, combined with a collaborative approach, particularly when creating solos and contact material. With our stellar cast, their varied backgrounds have had a huge influence on our movement vocabulary for this work and beyond. It has been a joy and privilege to share ideas with these world-class artists and find moments where New Way meets Waacking, meets House, meets contemporary, meets gymnastics. Coming from both freestyle and studio-trained backgrounds, we value individuality and self-expression, as well as control and virtuosity, and love to showcase and celebrate the strengths of each artist we work with.
In the current political climate, themes around women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights feel particularly charged. Do you see Femina as protest, celebration, reclamation, or something else entirely?
Femina at first glance feels like a celebration of the feminine; however, much like Balls in The Ballroom Scene, club spaces, or Pride marches, these spaces began as acts of protest and subversion against discrimination, creating spaces to reclaim expressions society denies. With this as a backbone, we see celebration as a form of protest and reclamation.