Self-taught, Valentin discovered juggling at the age of 11 by opening a drawer at his uncle’s house — a revelation.

A poet of movement, he has since developed a singular art form between circus, dance and performance, where East and West resonate with one another.

Trained at Arc en Cirque and at the LIDO de Toulouse, he accompanied for several years Jérôme Thomas, a major figure of contemporary juggling, notably on the creation Cirque Lili (2001). At the same time, he trained in contemporary dance at the CDC (Toulouse, 2003), attended five years of dance-theatre workshops with M. Verdou, and worked on movement with Hervé Diasnas. Encouraged in his path by Karl-Heinz Ziethen, he opened his practice to theatre, dance and performance.

In 2005, he founded THE UNITED ARTISTS and then left for Asia — an initiatory journey by land and sea through Russia, Mongolia, China, South Korea and Japan — before settling in Taiwan, where he would remain for more than twelve years.

From 2006 to 2018, he built a bridge between cultures, taught contemporary circus at the Chinese Opera of Taipei, and collaborated with Hoichi Okamoto (Dondoro), Riverbed Theatre, Taipei Cross Over Dance Company, Shakespeare Wild Sister Group, and many others.

He conceived the performance FACES UNDER SKY, performed over 1,500 times at Huashan 1914, and co-founded THUNAR CIRCUS with 林正宗, the first author-driven circus collective in Taiwan. He also acted as curator for the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the WeiWuYing Festival.

Returning to France in 2018, Valentin continues his research into living cinema, the transmutation of gesture, and ritual presence.

He teaches at Arc en Cirque (Chambéry), works with autistic children, collaborates as a multi-disciplinary artist, and creates new projects: FACES TWINS, SHADOWS, TOMBÉES DU CAMION, ONE BREATH, DREAM…

His company THE UNITED ARTISTS, based in Savoie, is today a laboratory of experimentation between circus, dance, cinema and the alchemy of the living.

Since 2010, he has been studying HAO YUAN XIAN ZONG Qi Gong, an alchemical path of breath and transformation, stemming from a tradition older than Taoism. Certified in Taiwan in 2018, he now transmits its principles in France.

A filmmaker since 2011, he shoots and edits his own creations, and collaborates with artists, companies and musicians on around twenty short films since 2022, while currently developing several documentary projects.

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