Between stage shows and choreographic films, Shantala Pèpe deploys within the company MANA a visual universe at the crossroads of dance and physical theater. Interested in an inhabited physicality that she combines with movement in a dreamlike and immersive aesthetic, her projects are characterized by the intimate relationship woven between image, sound and light. The figures of ambivalence, the paradoxical notions of power and fragility, as well as those of loneliness and of the relationship to the imaginary and fantasized worlds cross the entire work of the choreographer.
After directing two award-winning films in international festivals, ÉMERGENCES (2011) and EMBRACE (2014), she has created four shows and a short film since the founding of the company Incógnita in 2015, which became MANA in 2022. In her solos DESPITE HER (2016), CARCAN (2018) and ALICE (2019), which she performed, as well as the film THE MAGMA CHAMBER (2018), awarded with the Jury Prize and the Audience Prize of the Dance in Film Festival 2018, she questions from different angles the place of women and their representations.
With the piece RAFALES created in December 2022, she is staging 5 dancers for her first group show.
Since 2022, the company has been in coworking administrative residency at the Théâtre Les Tanneurs, after having been artist in residence at the Company Mossoux-Bonté for 4 years.
A gold medalist in rhythmic gymnastics in her childhood, then trained at the Avignon Dance Conservatory, she joined as a dancer, performer, assistant, or teacher, artists with eclectic universes, among which the Company Mossoux-Bonté, long time accomplice, the companies Chaliwaté & Focus, Karine Ponties, Isabella Soupart, Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh, Erika Zueneli, Michèle Noiret, Wilkie Branson, Sofia Fitas, Fernando Martin, Sheron Wray. She also trained in acting with John Flanders, Beatriz Flores Silva, Marjorie Ballentine, Pico Berkowitch, and appeared on screen for several directors and choreographers.
The projects produced by MANA are supported, or have been supported, by
the Federation Wallonia-Brussels - dance commission, Les Brigittines - Playhouse for Movement, Le Phare-National Choreographic Center of Le Havre Normandie / direction Fouad Boussouf, in the frame of Accueil-Studio, Mossoux-Bonté Company, Theatre Les Tanneurs, Jacques Franck Cultural Center, Le LookIN'OUT, SACD Belgium, Wallonia-Brussels Theatre Dance, DAN.CIN.LAB, Le Marni, Le bureau d'accueil des tournages de la Loire, The city of Saint-Etienne, Athanor asbl, Quoi d'Autres asbl, Wallonia Brussels International, Wolubilis Cultural Center, LE BAMP, AD LIB, Iles asbl/Artist Project – Suitcase, WorkSpaceBrussels, Atelier Graphoui.