Interview – Cie Inéluctable
Cie Inéluctable’s SEUIL: materialising the connection between the inert and the living
Around About Circus · By Valentina Barone
Marius Fouilland and Aimé Rauzier are two acrobats who blend dance, circus, and marionette. In their first co-authorial circus creation, a duo becomes a quartet with two inanimated bodies that seem to double their presence. Trained since childhood in dance (Marius) and circus (Aimé), they met at Académie Fratellini in different promotion years. At school, opportunities to share movement practices increased, until grieving the loss of close circus artist friends touched both and catalysed their attention to it as a shared theme. Marius founded his own company and then invited Aimé to join an acrobatic journey around a puppet with proportions equal to their own, embarking on research into an inert body that plays with their movements in between. With the title Ceux qui restent, the company Inéluctable project became a laureate of circusnext 2025. On stage, the absence of a living body takes the shape of a puppet to be carried, moved, and manipulated. The acrobat’s floor technique is at the service of maintaining an illusion, while the marionette is so similar to a real body that the illusion seems real. The spectator gazes fondly, realising only sporadically who is alive and who is not, feeling the melancholic weight of absent presences that interweave in slow sweetness, or explosive jumps and falls on a reflective surface that amplify the visual game of fiction. For this circusnext interview series, I’ve reached out to the two authors in residency in France to chat about this metaphorical work. Their creation, now entitled SEUIL, will debut in October 2026.
You’ve known each other since your time at the Académie Fratellini, even though you were in different years. How did your collaboration begin?
Marius Fouilland: At school, it happened that we took a few dance classes together. In 2021, my final year, we also presented a carte blanche together – a free-form presentation in which you can create whatever you like. Even back then, I wanted to set up my own company, and the following year, the company Inéluctable was born.
Aimé Razier: I’m a year older than Marius, even though he finished school a year before me. I finished school in 2022 and immediately started working as a performer in a variety of very different theatre and circus projects – I would say they are rather hard to pin down into any specific artistic category.
What do circus and dance as disciplines mean to you, and what interests you as creators?
Marius Fouilland: I started training in dance and circus around eight years old, and I have always alternated between the two, often wondering which one I should choose. Now I like to use the term acrodance to describe my practice as a dancer and acrobat. Dance allows me to codify a range of emotions and information that the exceptional nature of acrobatics alone would not be able to express. And yet, if I did not combine dance with acrobatics, I would feel that something was missing. What I love about acrobatics is its explosive energy, combined with the chance to explore gentler movements at a slower tempo. That’s why I’m interested in working on falls and puppet movements. Our project explores a very wide range of movement qualities.
Aimé Rauzier: Before joining the Académie Fratellini, since I was a child, I practised various circus disciplines, so I describe myself as a circus artist. What circus has given me is a physical engagement that I really value, a need for individual expression combined with a spirit of collective adventure. A love of sport, of taking risks, and of expressing emotions through the body. As the sense of discovery, and what my attempt to express myself brings out in another person. All of this is why I got into circus.
Marius Fouillard: I like being responsible for a project, but I also enjoy writing it together with others and discussing different ideas. SEUIL is Inéluctable company’s third artistic creation, the first designed for the theatre, and Aimé and I are its co-authors. As a performer, I am more at the service of others’ ideas; as an author, however, I am interested in talking about something that concerns me, that I have experienced first-hand, and that touches me deeply. In this case, it is about the relationship with death and with those who are no longer with us.
Where did the idea of working with a puppet that looks just like you come from?
Aimé Rauzier: The idea came from Marius and his curiosity about the subject: exploring the loss of a dear friend. The loss of two friends who were circus performers brought us closer together because it was an experience that affected us both. We asked ourselves how we could reflect, both spiritually and practically, on the dimension of the other who no longer exists, on the relationship with those who are no longer alive but are perceived as present. Working on death is unique: it is a dimension that is both distant and close, involving personal, sociological and physical relationships.
In a book that inspired us, Our Grateful Dead: Stories of Those Left Behind, the author Vinciane Despret writes that the dead want to be remembered. The basic idea was there, but one element was still missing: how do we bring to the stage the body of someone perceived as present but no longer alive?
So we started contacting companies that were already working with puppets and, in an initial workshop in March 2024, we tested our research. At that point, we were still uncertain, entering uncharted territory. We showed the material to Aurélien Bory, who pushed us to continue the research, recognising its potential, its symbolic power and the possibility of developing a previously unexplored form of acrodance.
Marius Fouilland: Our first marionette was around twenty kilos. Obviously, the idea is to move it as if it were alive, but because of its weight, every movement felt heavy during our early improvisations. That’s why Aurélien helped us find experts to build the kind of marionette we needed: a circus marionette, capable of performing acrobatics and moving with that kind of fluidity.
We began meeting various companies and puppeteers and got involved in a process that initially seemed risky, expensive and entirely artisanal. Our marionette had to have specific characteristics; it had to be able to be manipulated like a real body and used for falling onto without causing injury. In the end, by bringing together a range of skills, including the expertise of Élise Vigneron from Théâtre de l’Entrouvert and the builder Arnaud Louski-Pane, we managed to build the marionettes we use today.
What are the technical specifications of the puppets you use on stage?
Aimé Rauzier: For the circusnext performance, we used three puppets: two lighter ones made of aluminium, weighing about four kilos, and one heavier one. All have movable joints that allow for articulated movements. The head is made of wood. It fits into the torso and is connected to the neck by two elastic bands, allowing it to bend forwards, backwards and sideways, naturally simulating human movements.
Marius Fouilland: The first scene we presented uses the heavier puppet. The body that falls and is perceived as heavy is subsequently replaced by the lighter puppet, and this creates a sense of disorientation in the audience because they are still expecting a reaction from the previous puppet. Our research into marionettes is still ongoing, and we are experimenting with different weights and movement possibilities. In the future, we do not rule out building other, special marionettes to reproduce specific movements and effects.
How did your participation in circusnext influence the creative process?
Marius Fouilland: Usually, finalists are asked to present an excerpt from existing material, whereas in our case, the process led us to create the 20 minutes we hadn’t yet developed.
Aimé Rauzier: The development of SEUIL is taking two years. In total, we calculated that the show’s development involved 18 residencies. circusnext accelerated the artistic research process, transforming it into a genuine creative journey.
As for the laboratory, we were at the very beginning of the creative process and attended it as individual participants. Working at the Espace Périphérique in Paris with Delphine Lanson was stimulating for me, as was engaging with people from other countries, where the development of circus has a different political significance. It was also useful for raising awareness of the message our show aims to transmit.
Marius Fouilland: My laboratory experience in Serbia, at Cirko Balkana in Zagreb with Zed Zanzu, was also very positive. The puppets did not exist yet, and meeting other authors, creative processes, and realising that everyone has different needs was useful. The project’s international visibility brought us to work with countries beyond France, such as Portugal, Lithuania and the Balkans. Among the artist residencies, Perplx in Belgium represented a very important milestone for us. The team provided us with feedback, invited us to present the project as part of their annual showcase and proposed that we return with the finished piece in 2027.
There are two of you onstage, but who are your collaborators behind the scenes?
Aimé Rauzier: Marius got in touch with Aurélien Bory at the start of the creative process. With his company III, he was looking to work with young circus projects, so it was the perfect opportunity to support us as a young company and with the overall dramaturgy. Aurelien helped us by believing in the project’s development from the beginning, introducing us to the right people, and offering residency support and future booking opportunities at the Théâtre de la Digue in Toulouse, which he directs. He is a key figure in the development of our ideas; meeting with him regularly has allowed us to review the dramaturgy, showcase progress and discuss possibilities.
Marius Fouilland: Behind the scenes, we are supported by a large team. Alma Roccella, Ninon Larroque and Manon Clavreul worked on the creation of the marionettes. Zoé Petrignet collaborated with us on choosing the style of clothing and creating the costumes. We wanted to create new magic effects in a very natural way, using lights and the puppet movements, and for this aspect, we consulted Rachel Cazenave, who did the New Magic training course at CNAC.
The overall external eye is of the dancer and puppeteer Matthieu Siefridt, while Sylvère Lamotte helped us with the movement choreography. The sound design is by a young artist, Victor Comby, being his first sound creation for a circus show, while the lighting design is by Greg Desforges.
The two puppets are identical to you in every way. The image suggests the need to engage in a broader sense of otherness. What do these two entities represent to you?
Aimé Rauzier: At first, we were drawn to the confusion created by these two silhouettes. With its masculine features, the puppet is sketched and does not project a clearly defined identity onto the audience. In this way, the confusion between the puppet and the acrobat creates a choreographic interplay that lends itself to open interpretation.
Marius Fouilland: The characters’ development is still in progress. We could say that the fundamental relationship stems from the individual bond between each of us and our own puppet. We bring to the stage two relationships with death that unfold in different ways. At first, the puppet is perceived by the audience as alive because we try to bring it to life. Later on, the way we move with it changes, and it is perceived as a manipulated object.
Aimé Rauzier: The acrobatic dance created with the puppet is explosive and dynamic; its performative dimension expands, and working on the technique is stimulating for this reason, too. We have learnt different ways to carry and move it like a body, especially during falls.
Another interesting aspect is the impact of the choreographic material in relation to what we want to convey, understanding how the puppet manages to manipulate us through the technique of acrodance, and how we can surprise the audience through this shift in register.
Marius Fouilland: We still have many important choices to make regarding this aspect: altering small movements affects the puppet’s behaviour, so it is during this period that we make the most crucial decisions!
When is the project’s premiere scheduled?
Marius Fouilland: SEUIL will debut in October 2026 in France, at Agora, the National Circus Centre in Boulazac.