Born from the encounter of two Swiss artists, nur and Leïla Maillard, and founded in spring 2020, the Cie kraD is a multidisciplinary performance company, merging contemporary circus and noise in a dark aesthetic.

  • Performance

    Leïla

    Born in 1997 in Geneva, Leïla discovers circus at the local circus school Théâtre-Cirqule. She soon decides to become a professional circus artist and moves to France to follow a secondary school circus program at Ecole Nationale de Cirque de Châtellerault. Following this she got accepted to the Bachelor Programme in Circus at DOCH, School of Dance and Circus at Stockholm University of the Arts, from which she graduated in June 2018. Specialized in vertical rope (corde lisse), she directs her artistic approach towards the research of a dark and poetic aesthetic, expressing the darkness of human soul. At the border between contemporary circus and performance, she creates simple, raw, sincere and brutal pieces of work, coming from her guts... with a deep and piercing sensibility.

  • Sound / Performance

    nur

    nur constantly evolves on a never-ending path of auto-didactic education in arts and culture. Its approach is trans-border and receptive, freely mixing styles and types of any kind of (art)form which may cross its way, applying them technically or using them as an inspiration with an open-minded and gracious intention. Its latest obsessions consist of acoustical feedback and hair suspension.

  • Lights

    Kiod

    Passionate about Literature, Fine Arts and Theatre at a very young age, Kiod began by obtaining a high school diploma in literature, specializing in Fine Arts and Theatre in 2004, followed by a master’s degree in Literature & Arts specializing in Theatre and World Culture with distinction in 2010. At the same time, she trained light technology and circus tent installation as an autodidact and joined the Cirque Starlight (CH) team in 2012, working in technical and stage management. She also did the light creation of their show in 2020 and 2022. In her artistic work, Kiod tends to favour minimalism and suggestion. It starts from the principle that light is a medium that must reveal the unspeakable, what the body does not say. Using chiaroscuro, shadows but also raw light, she hopes to push the audience to their limits, and aims to change their way of seeing things, thus shaking up their emotions and thinking.