(LA)HORDE: THE REBELLIOUS DANCE COLLECTIVE BRINGS THEIR FIERY ENERGY FROM MARSEILLE TO LONDON
- Mathilde Candotto-Carniel
- Mar 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 12
Two years ago, when I started La Fomo and was working out the types of events we wanted to give visibility to on our platform, I remember pinning a picture of a (LA)HORDE performance to my mood board. So when I heard that the French contemporary dance collective was bringing their latest show, AGE OF CONTENT, to London, it went straight onto our must-see list.
(LA)HORDE is at the direction of the Ballet National de Marseille, and as I split my time between Marseille and London, it's clear to me how their raw, rebellious energy mirrors the city’s spirit—its diversity, resilience, and sense of community. As much as their work has taken them across the world—from collaborations with Madonna to Sam Smith—I can’t help but feel a sense of pride.
Their roots are in Marseille, and I believe there’s something uniquely tied to that city.
I first discovered (LA)HORDE during my time at Burberry when they collaborated with the fashion house to push the boundaries of short film production to the extreme. The campaign was ambitiously choreographed, featuring three dancers suspended in mid-air, defying gravity and dancing through the British countryside. What’s even cooler? It was all real—the dancers being thrown into the air, pulling off their choreographed moves while being held up by wires, then removed in post-production. The behind-the-scenes footage is just as thrilling as the final campaign. If freedom had to be captured in a single video, that would be the one for me.
Coming from a fashion background, I was naturally drawn to their aesthetics—their immaculate fashion styling, their rebellious attitude so effortlessly cool. They could belong just as much in a glossy magazine as on stage. But there’s so much more to them than just their aesthetics.
As I prepare for my interview with the collective, watching their performances and diving deeper into their work, I find myself captivated by the ethos behind everything they do.
Their vision reaches far beyond the surface.
(LA)HORDE was founded in 2013 by Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel. The trio met in the Paris nightlife scene, and their collaboration naturally grew out of their shared desire to create together. As they explain, “We started creating works, and it naturally revolved around dance because we wanted to talk about others, about their bodies, their relationship with their bodies. Dance, before being a medium, was a subject. Then it evolved transversally—we create films, performances, installations, sculptures, and live shows. Gradually, dance became not just our subject but our primary medium.”
With (LA)HORDE, dance becomes a political space where questions of gender, racism, sexuality, and power are confronted.
Violence is expressed through movement, and themes of youth rebellion are frequently explored. Their work also highlights dance in its unconventional and untraditional forms, as seen in TO DA BONE (2017), which focused on jumpstyle—a high-energy dance that originated online and was first practiced alone in bedrooms before building a global community.
In 2019, (LA)HORDE took over the direction of the Ballet National de Marseille, using the institution as a platform to reimagine ballet through non-traditional movement. Their goal was to rethink the institution from the inside and make it accessible to as many people as possible. Accessibility is at the core of their work, but not in a way that dilutes their art. As they put it, “It might seem contradictory, but we make our work accessible by not underestimating the audience. Nobody needs to see things that are pre-digested or that don't push them to reflect further.”
Collaboration is at the heart of (LA)HORDE's creative process—not only do they write with their dancers, but their work is the result of collaborations spanning styling, music, design, and lighting. Even their name reflects this ethos: in French, horde suggests a collective, a large and powerful crowd, but for (LA)HORDE, it also represents a house—one that welcomes and nurtures other artists. As they describe it, “(LA)HORDE is the three of us, but it’s also our entire network of collaborators. Depending on the project, we can be four people or 200. The idea of working together, writing together, and thinking together is at the core of what we do—it’s the driving energy in which the collective was born.”
There’s something undeniably powerful about this group of dancers coming together, a raw, collective energy that feels almost club-like, pulsing and electric.
When they took over the Ballet National de Marseille, they brought electronic music into contemporary ballet. Their 2020 show, ROOM WITH A VIEW, was created in collaboration with electronic musician Rone—an unexpected pairing for ballet, but one that made perfect sense in their hands.
Their latest show, AGE OF CONTENT, coming to the newly opened Sadler’s Wells East, explores our physical and emotional responses to the overwhelming flood of online content and the multiple realities that now exist in the digital space. I wanted to know how the idea for the show came about. “The digitalisation of bodies, the idea of romances happening with digital boyfriends or girlfriends, the rise of OnlyFans accounts run by men who create fake images of women who don’t exist to profit from virtual female bodies. [Online], we have a juxtaposition of images with no context—images of genocide, nutrition coaches, relationship gurus, TikTok dances, pets. When you receive that constant flux of information all at once, on the same level, without context, how do you even begin to categorise it?”.
For (LA)HORDE, the internet is both a space for radical freedom and a tool that carries risks. As they reflect “We saw the internet being born when we were teenagers. We inherited that utopian vision of the early days—spaces of radical freedom, limitless expression, where art that didn’t fit into institutions found a home. But like all digital innovations, there’s always a darker side.”
They are aware of the risks that come with technological advancement. “All utopian movements eventually get co-opted for consumerist ends. Every technological advance carries risks, but in the end, it’s about how we use these tools. How we reclaim them and shape them into something that lasts before they’re taken from us.”
When I asked what they hoped the London audience would take away from the performance, they said: “The aim is to create spaces of grey and ambiguity. To free people from binary answers, to remain in these zones of grey, of dilemmas, of paradoxes. That’s where true reflection happens.”
Whether you’ll like the show or not, (LA)HORDE wants you to feel something. As they quote Pina Bausch: “I’m not interested in how people move, but what moves them.”
For them, it’s about what disrupts, shakes, or stirs the audience, opening up new spaces for reflection.
Ultimately, what matters most is when those reflections extend beyond the performance—when conversations continue outside the theatre. "That’s when we know we’ve achieved something.” It’s in those moments of shared dialogue, when the performance lingers in the minds of the audience, that the true power of their work really hits home.
(LA)HORDE / Ballet national de Marseille will be presenting AGE OF CONTENT as part of the Dance Reflections Festival by Van Cleef & Arpels at Sadler's Wells East for three nights from 15 until 17 March (SOLD OUT)
Words by Mathilde Candotto
