Lena Sayaphoum

This stylish, full-color bande dessinée is a beautiful coming-of-age story focusing on themes of family, friendship, self-confidence and personal growth through the lens of music and dance.

Emma and Capucine are sisters, best friends, and dancers -- working hard toward their dreams! Their summer family trip offers a chance to unwind by the beach, but it’s hard to relax when they have to share the house with two loud-mouthed boys. The start of the school year brings new challenges: separated from her friends, Emma grows closer with a standoffish new classmate, who also happens to be in her hip-hop dance classes. Meanwhile, at the Paris Opera Ballet School, Capucine finds she’s mysteriously lost her form for dance. Will she regain her skills before her strict teacher kicks her out?

Together and apart, the two sisters navigate the ups and downs of growing up while striving to excel in dance.

Following his studies at an American university and at business school, French author Jérôme Hamon began his professional life in New York as a financial analyst. Convinced that the life he wanted was elsewhere, he left the field two years later to travel around the world. Back in France, Hamon strung together a number of jobs in the movies, video games, and television. In parallel, he began to write his first comic book and graphic novel scripts.

In 2008, Hamon went to Angouleme to present his first completed scripts, and it was there that he met artist Marc Van Straceele. The two would go on to collaborate on ＂Yokozuna,＂ a graphic novel on sumo wrestling in Japan (Kana, 2013).

Following that, Hamon worked with artist Antoine Carrion on ＂Nils,＂ a saga halfway between Nordic mythology and the works of Miyazaki (Soleil, 2016). He then followed with ＂Emma & Capucine,＂ a series for younger readers centered on the worlds of classical dance and hip-hop (Dargaud 2017, Europe Comics in English 2018), and ＂Mitsuo,＂ alongside Cédric Babouche (Le Lombard, 2018).

Léna Sayaphoum was born in Montpellier in 1989. Ever since the beginning, drawing has been at the heart of her life. Finding inspiration in the works of such artists as James Jean, Peter Chan, Craig Mullins, and Dice Tsutsumi, she gradually developed her own style, teaching herself the trade along the way.

After studying 2D and 3D computer graphics, she went to work for a number of different studios, as a concept artist, modeler, texture artist, and posing and shadowing artist. With Grid VFX, she had the chance to work on such projects as ＂Astérix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods.＂

Her real passion was elsewhere, though. In parallel with her day jobs, she continued to develop her own creative worlds, sometimes fantasy, sometimes realistic, but always intensely personal.

In 2017, together with Jérôme Hamon, she went to work on her first comics project, ＂Emma & Capucine,＂ linking her passion for drawing and illustration with her love for dance.