Leila Haddad

Leila Haddad was born into an Arab-Berber cultural environment in Tunisia and developed an artistic career that would become highly influential in European Oriental dance. Her first major stage experience came through politically engaged theatre while studying literature in the United Kingdom. She later settled in Paris and by the mid-1980s was teaching Oriental dance while simultaneously developing her own choreographic productions. Haddad brought Raqs Sharqi and North African movement into formal theatrical spaces and toured widely across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America. Her artistic practice also includes extensive historical and cultural research into dances of North Africa, the Middle East and neighbouring regions. More than four decades of performance, choreography and research make her one of the major figures responsible for establishing Oriental dance as a serious theatrical discipline in Europe.