After opening the Romaeuropa Festival 2021 with the adrenaline-fueled and poetic Möbius, Collectif XY continues to push further its vertiginous and collective vision, embodied in the construction of true human architectures. A single living organism, composed of acrobats capable of raising together ephemeral cathedrals made of bodies, momentum, and falls. Different in age and physicality, the performers turn trust and interdependence into a poetic and human act before it is even a scenic one.
With Le Pas du Monde, Collectif XY transforms bodies into ever-changing landscapes: mountains being eroded, forests crossed by wind, waves breaking and recomposing in a continuous movement that makes the breath of the living visible. The result is a collective ritual on fragility as strength, on community as resistance, on bodies that, together, imagine the concrete possibility of sustaining the “rhythm of the world” and, in line with the linguistic play hidden in the title, building its “peace.”
For nearly twenty years, Collectif XY has been exploring acrobatic disciplines, placing them at the heart of an artistic practice fully rooted in the performing arts of movement. Starting from the foundations of circus technique, the artists play with its conventions, rhythms, and forms, giving life to an expressive language that unfolds in a 360-degree perspective.
Since its creation, XY has chosen to work with large ensembles in order to multiply possibilities and expand its fields of research. This choice also reflects an artistic approach that investigates the concepts of mass and crowd, as well as their interactions within the same space and time. In the same way, this method considers the relationship between the individual and the group, or more broadly with a given social context.
Within this framework, the founding artists created a collective based on the sharing of skills and ideas, adopting a collaborative and non-hierarchical structure. Work organisation and the creative process thus become an essential component of the artistic forms produced.
On this basis, the Collectif has also turned its attention to audiences, creating large-scale works designed for theatres, public spaces, and all environments capable of accommodating both frontal stage devices and circular performance formats.
collective work Collectif XY
a co-creation with the participation of Airelle Caen, Alejo Bianchi, Alice Noël, Amaia Valle, Antonio Terrones y Hernandez, Cyril Héritier, Camille de Truchis, Clémence Gilbert, Consuelo Burgos Bustos, Denis Dulon, Diego Ruiz Moreno, Etienne Revenu, Florian Sontowski, Guillaume Sendron, Hamza Benlabied, Julie Calbete, Kritonas Anastasopoulos, Mikis Matsakis, Oded Avinathan, Pedro Guerra, Raimon Mato Rabassedas, Raphaela Olivo, Virginie Benoist
musical and vocal creation Virginie Benoist
sound design Jack McWeeny
lighting design Éric Soyer
costumes Céline Perrigon, assisted by Ophélie Parmentier
artistic collaborations Julie Calbete, Fanny Soriano, Maja Zimmerlin
dramaturgy support Olivia Burton
production direction Antoine Billaud, Johanna Autran, assisted by Alicia Gicquel
technical manager Sébastien Hérouart
sound engineer Jack McWeeny or Aude Petiard (alternating)
lighting technician Aliénor Lebert or Clara Boulis-Valence (alternating)
production Collectif XY
residencies Le Phénix Scène nationale Valenciennes – Pôle européen de création / Tandem, Scène nationale (Hippodrome de Douai) / Le Bateau Feu, Scène nationale Dunkerque / Théâtre du Beauvaisis, Scène nationale, Beauvais / Le Volcan, Scène nationale du Havre / La Brèche – Cherbourg, Pôle national cirque en Normandie / Circa, Pôle national cirque, Auch
co-productions Le Phénix Scène nationale Valenciennes – Pôle européen de création / Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, Parigi / Maison de la Danse, Lione / Le Volcan, Scène nationale du Havre / EPPGHV, Parc de La Villette, Parigi / Tandem, Scène nationale (Hippodrome de Douai) / Théâtres de Compiègne / Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, Scène nationale / La Comédie de Clermont, Scène nationale, Clermont-Ferrand / Château Rouge, Scène conventionnée, Annemasse / Scène nationale Carré-Colonnes, Saint-Médard-en-Jalles / Théâtre du Beauvaisis – Scène nationale, Beauvais / Le Bateau Feu, Scène nationale Dunkerque / Scène nationale Albi – Tarn / Espace 1789 de Saint-Ouen, scena convenzionata per la danza / Festival Romaeuropa (Italia)
acknowledgements collective work Collectif XY
a co-creation with the participation of Airelle Caen, Alejo Bianchi, Alice Noël, Amaia Valle, Antonio Terrones y Hernandez, Cyril Héritier, Camille de Truchis, Clémence Gilbert, Consuelo Burgos Bustos, Denis Dulon, Diego Ruiz Moreno, Etienne Revenu, Florian Sontowski, Guillaume Sendron, Hamza Benlabied, Julie Calbete, Kritonas Anastasopoulos, Mikis Matsakis, Oded Avinathan, Pedro Guerra, Raimon Mato Rabassedas, Raphaela Olivo, Virginie Benoist
musical and vocal creation Virginie Benoist
sound design Jack McWeeny
lighting design Éric Soyer
costumes Céline Perrigon, assisted by Ophélie Parmentier
artistic collaborations Julie Calbete, Fanny Soriano, Maja Zimmerlin
dramaturgy support Olivia Burton
production direction Antoine Billaud, Johanna Autran, assisted by Alicia Gicquel
technical manager Sébastien Hérouart
sound engineer Jack McWeeny or Aude Petiard (alternating)
lighting technician Aliénor Lebert or Clara Boulis-Valence (alternating) Città di Puget-Théniers / La Carrière, scuola di arti circensi Saint-Barthélemy d’Anjou
support Le Pas du Monde receives support from the French Ministry of Culture as part of the national programme for circus arts, and from the Hauts-de-France Region for cultural and artistic dissemination. With the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Collectif XY receives support from the French Ministry of Culture / DRAC Hauts-de-France under a multi-year agreement. Since 2017, the company has been associated, for all its projects, with Le Phénix – Scène nationale Valenciennes, an international hub for creation and dissemination. Since 2021, XY has been associated with Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse in Paris, and since 2025 with MCA – Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, an international hub for creation and dissemination. The company XY has been supported since 2016 by the Fondation BNP Paribas.
