First and foremost a devotee of funk-inspired standing dances, Linda Hayford discovered popping, locking, hype, new style, and house through team battles. Her dance evolves at the intersection of genres and postures—a stylistic curiosity that leads her to question not what each practice is, but what it does to the body it passes through.

Within Paradox-Sal, founded by Ousmane Sy, and with the company INsideOut, which she founded herself, the Rennes-based dancer and choreographer finds in transformation the material for a reflection on identity in constant evolution. Through the crossing of aesthetics, she draws connections between multiple emotional and physical states and develops a research practice around metamorphosis.

Her debut solo, Shapeshifting (2016), gives form to this ability to shift from one state to another, in an intimate piece where successive bodily states unfold. The “switch”—the moment when forms and energies tip over—becomes a guiding principle, driven by a desire to approach the animality of the body. In AlShe/Me (2019, pronounced “alchemy”), she shares the stage with her older brother Mike Hayford, the dancer who first introduced her to popping. The duo foregrounds the fluidity of gender, shaped by ruptures and shifts.

From this exploration of shifting states emerges Shifting Pop: an introspective and anatomical stylistic protocol focused on the sensitive awareness of movement and the pursuit of precise bodily qualities. This gestural language has informed all her creations since 2015 and is intended to be transmitted widely, permeating the bodies of an ever-growing number of performers.

Recovering (2022) invites three performers to explore the body’s transformations after trauma and its capacity to mobilise itself in processes of healing. Abîmes, her next creation due in 2026, expands the core group of performers by transposing Shifting Pop into an ensemble work, bringing a singular language into a collective space.

Member of the FAIR-E collective · Co-director of CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne · Associate artist at CND, Centre national de la danse, Pantin.