Johanna Robyn is a multidisciplinary artist, dancer, choreographer and sex worker from Valais. She entered the world of dance through freestyle hip-hop at the age of 14, and discovered the krump movement at 18. To this day, Johanna practices this dance under the name MAINEVENT X. Johanna is also an active member of the ballroom scene, and a member of the Elite kiki house of Bodega. She mainly participates in the FQ Performance and Sex Siren categories. Johanna also works as a freelance painter and writer. She is also familiar with other performing arts such as theater and performance.
In 2018, after several years of underground dance consecrations, Johanna began a Bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance at the Manufacture de Lausanne. This culminated in 2021 in the creation of a solo Ghosts are extended flesh, which she presented at Quarts d’heure de Sévelin, Belluard Bollwerk and PREMIO in 2022. Since graduating in 2021, Johanna has been creating her own performances and choreographic projects, and interpreting or assisting various artists with their work. She has collaborated with many artists on the Swiss and international scene, including Juliette Uzor, Sati Veyrunes, Julie Folly, Gianmaria Borzillo, Emma Saba, Valerie Reding and Terence Carron.
Johanna’s singular dance is a blend of black cultures and influences, contemporary thinking and pop culture influences. Johanna’s aesthetic is queer, transgressive and unexpected. In her work, she questions the relationship to the body, its place, its limits, its politics, its disobedience. Resistance, the search for freedom and resilience in the face of oppression and control constantly run through Johanna’s artistic thinking. She also explores the notion of memory. How do they structure us? What disappears and what remains? How do they lie to us? How do they shape our bodies?
