Justine Berthillot
Circus artist, choreographer, director
Justine Berthillot is a circus artist, choreographer and director
She creates pieces infused with multiple artistic fields and encounters, and enjoys blending artistic languages.
From Noos onward, she has explored how to write physicality—composing choreographic scores rooted in her acrobatic abilities. She enjoys deconstructing practices, stripping them down to their essence. In her cross-disciplinary approach to the performing arts, circus remains a constant—with its inherent risk-taking, extreme physical states, fragile balances, and above all, the intense physical commitment it demands.
Her choreographic explorations are conceived as potential forms of storytelling—whether through energy-driven scores or subject-based writing.
She is particularly interested in how the body can intersect and even clash with other languages—literary or visual—in order to generate hybrid narratives. Her work seeks to weave together multiple modes of writing and dramaturgical structures.
Justine Berthillot thrives on shifting boundaries, experimenting with form, and continuously nourishing and challenging her artistic identity through other creative territories. Her universe unfolds through the movement arts—circus and dance—occasionally veering into theater and narrative, and often with a strong sense of performance as a performative act in itself.
She intends to continue her personal and transdisciplinary research alongside Morgane, structured around two key axes: choreographic writing and literary/theatrical writing. These two artistic dimensions are being developed with her main collaborators.
Justine Berthillot has been an associate artist at the Scène nationale de l’Espace des Arts in Chalon-sur-Saône since 2020 (until 2024), and is currently an artist-in-creation at the CND in Lyon for the 2023–2024 season.
Compagnie Morgane
Morgane is led by Justine Berthillot in Lyon and was co-founded with writer Pauline Peyrade in 2016.
Morgane has produced four works:
POINGS
A transdisciplinary piece based on the eponymous text by Pauline Peyrade (published by Les Solitaires Intempestifs), created in 2017 at the CDN of Vire during the Spring Circus Festival in partnership with La Brèche – Pôle Cirque in Cherbourg.
CARROSSE
A touring piece conceived as a dark fairytale, commissioned by Les Scènes du Jura and the CDN La Comédie de Saint-Étienne, premiered in Dole in 2019 (text also published by Les Solitaires Intempestifs).
NOTRE FORÊT
An immersive in-situ choreographic solo created by Justine Berthillot in 2021 at the Centre Pompidou-Metz during the Festival Passages.
DESORDEN
An in-situ roller-and-drum performance, created at Espace des Arts in Chalon-sur-Saône for the Transdanses dance festival.
Company Background
The company was born out of the encounter between circus artist Justine Berthillot and writer Pauline Peyrade. Invited by choreographer Daniel Larrieu to present a Sujet à Vif at the Avignon Festival, they created EST in 2015. They then chose to continue working together, exploring the intersection between circus and text.
From this collaboration, Morgane initially developed around the dialogue between physical and choreographic movement and literary writing. This research gave rise to two pieces at the crossroads of text and circus: POINGS and CARROSSE. Together, they freely adapt and stage Pauline Peyrade’s texts, crafting creations that revolve around women in struggle and the violence of the everyday.
Today
Since 2020, the artistic universe of the company has expanded around the more personal work of Justine Berthillot, who is particularly focused on developing choreographic writing. Her work reveals a keen interest in the plasticity of bodies, the forces of embodiment, and the narratives they generate. A singular universe she explores in her two recent in-situ pieces: NOTRE FORÊT and DESORDEN.
The artistic direction that Justine Berthillot brings to Compagnie Morgane continues the company’s founding vision—based on the interweaving of different forms of writing—while expanding the space given to choreographic development.
In parallel, she continues her collaboration with Pauline Peyrade, with whom she is furthering the research on the articulation between literary writing and movement, particularly in their upcoming creation L’âge de détruire, produced by Morgane for January 2024.
Together with circus artist Mosi Espinoza, she has also conceived a transdisciplinary piece entitled On ne fait pas de pacte avec les bêtes, co-produced by Espace des Arts and Morgane for November 2023.
The company Morgane is supported by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) of Auvergne–Rhône-Alpes for the years 2024 and 2025.
