When Dance Confronts Sexual Violence

Belinda Mathieu 

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, which gained international traction from 2017 onward, artists have been explicitly addressing the issue of sexual violence on stage. How can bodies and movement respond to sexual violence? For CN D Magazine, choreographers, stage directors and researchers share their creative processes, and discuss the responsibility that comes with confronting such a sensitive topic.

Over the past decade, sexual violence has become a recurring theme on contemporary stages, as more and more people have spoken out in the wake of the feminist movement sparked by the Harvey Weinstein case. In 2023, at the Avignon Festival, Brazilian theatremaker Carolina Bianchi re-staged her own drug-facilitated sexual assault in A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela the first chapter of the nine-jour-long trilogy Cadela Força. That same year, French-Austrian choreographer and director Gisèle Vienne confronted incest in Extra Life, a dance and theatre work starring Adèle Haenel, Theo Livesey and Katia Petrowick. 

Several more plays have tackled the issue in recent years, as the daily newspaper Le Monde has reported. Choreographers, too, have taken up this topic, in theater or dance productions, mobilizing bodies and movement to give physical form to the experience of sexual violence.

In 2022, when Maryam Kaba became an associate artist with the Ballet National de Marseille, she initially didn’t intend to evoke the abuse she had experienced as a child in her first show. But as she started writing down her first ideas, trauma resurfaced. “As I was retracing my personal and professional trajectory, I understood why I was so anxious,” Kaba says. “I had this frenzy in me that was setting me in motion.”

Flashbacks of the assault, as well as the persistent physical sensations left by the rape – Kaba describes “abrasions within me, between my legs, shaking, feeling frozen and trapped” – became choreographic material for her solo Entre mes jambes (Between My Legs). Punctuated by shaking hips and thighs that recall the undulations of Afrovibes, a dance style Kaba teaches, the piece weaves together memories and music from the choreographer’s childhood, seeking to convey how her body has retained the marks of violence while surviving nonetheless.

Dance scholar Sibylle Vidalainq also observed “shaking” and “shivers” as key movements in Les Chatouilles ou la danse de la colère, a 2012 work by French multidisciplinary artist Andréa Bescond. Vidalainq, a PhD candidate at Université Paris 8 in Saint-Denis, studies the topic of incest, a system of domination she sets apart from rape and sexual assault. Before her PhD, Vidalainq’s MA dissertation analysed the gestures in Les Chatouilles, a solo in which Bescond plays Odette – a dancer reliving childhood scenes of incest – as well as other characters, including her attacker. Beyond the danced moments in the play, Vidalainq also observed how the performer embodied the dynamics of domination characteristic of incest. “I was able to observe several physical strategies that convey coercion, predation and manipulation,” she says, “like the attacker’s fake kindness, as he is often represented kneeling, [with his] shoulders forward.”

In 2026, French theatremaker Emilie Le Roux, founder of theatre company Les Veilleurs, integrated dance sequences into her play Azaline se tait (2026), which also depicts the perspective of a young victim of incest. To achieve the physical subtlety she was looking for, Le Roux worked with a choreographer. “Adéli Motchan comes from buto,” says Le Roux, referring to the Japanese avant-garde theatre form. “Their work on the body was very interesting to me. Our idea was to focus on what the performers were feeling. For example: how does the secret of incest resonate in the body once it has been revealed? How can this impossible thing be conveyed physically?

Can dance translate unutterable horror? Vidalainq invites us to use caution when considering this possibility. “When I analyzed the critical reception of Les Chatouilles, I observed that the idea that dance can convey the unspeakable kept recurring. But I think that the question of silence and incest is far more complex.”

For Le Roux, working with dance was never a way to do without words. Opening a dialogue was paramount, so she organized post-show talks after each performance of Azaline se tait. “We needed to be ready to hear what people had to say, and to serve as intermediaries so that the people who needed help could be shown where to get it,” she says. The company enlisted the help of Charlotte Vinson, a midwife specializing in sexual violence, and social worker Gaia Riet Moszkowski to train its members, the theatre teams, and teachers who attended performances with their students. The training focused on how best to welcome potential survivors of sexual assault into the theatre, create space for their stories, and listen to them.

Kaba also realized that telling her story publicly came with great responsibility. “There will be former victims in the room,” she says. “Sexual violence is endemic.” For this same reason, Les Veilleurs decided to create their show for young audiences, despite the complexity of the themes it addresses. “Children are not protected from the violence of the world, and they are the first victims of incest,” says Le Roux. “It was important for us to give them access to symbolic representation, and to help them grasp this violence and think of the world in its complexity. They are perfectly able to do so.” 

Belinda Mathieu is a journalist and dance critic who works for several publications, including Télérama, Trois Couleurs and Sceneweb. She holds degrees in French literature (Université Paris-Sorbonne), journalism (ISCPA) and a MA in dance from Université Paris VIII. She is also the editor of CN D Magazine.

Afrovibes, danses workshops by Maryam Kaba
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Les Veilleurs, theater company 
en savoir +

Sortir de l’inceste ? Décrire « Les Chatouilles ou la danse de la colère » d’Andréa Bescond, by Sibylle Vidalainq, mémoire de master 2, sous la direction d’Isabelle Ginot, département danse, université Paris 8, 2024.

Ou peut-être une nuit
Podcast series by Charlotte Pudlowski & Louie Media
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Le berceau des dominations : anthropologie de l'inceste
Dorothée Dussy, Pocket Documents Et Essais, 2021.

Dire, entendre et juger l'inceste, Du Moyen Âge à nos jours
Collective work, Seuil, 2024.

Ce que Cécile sait, Journal de sortie d'inceste
Cécile Cée, Marabout, 2024.

Politiser l’enfance
Collective work, Burn août, 2023.