Self-taught, Valentin discovered theatre and dance as a child. Calm, deep focus, and creativity shaped his daily life. At 11, opening a drawer at his uncle’s house, he found juggling — and a power to move others.

He has since developed his own art form between cinema, circus, dance and performance, where objects and gestures speak in place of words, and 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 — a 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, living and working between two languages and two cultures, he taught contemporary circus at the Taiwanese Opera School of Taipei, and collaborated with Hoichi Okamoto (Dondoro), Gestus, Riverbed Theatre, Taipei Crossover Dance Company, Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters 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 Lin Zhen-Zong 林正宗, a pioneering author-driven circus collective in Taiwan. He served as a consultant specialized in contemporary circus for the Weiwuying National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, and as curator at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for Nuit Blanche Taipei.

Back in France since 2018 — and returning regularly to Taiwan — Valentin continues to create between stage and cinema. His performance work grows out of his energy practice: from breath arise images, symbols and ritual. He calls it “living cinema” — an idea born performing FACES UNDER SKY in the round, where the audience surrounds the performer, every eye becomes a camera catching each detail from every angle, and each performance relives the moment anew, giving the instant its depth.

From 2018 to 2025, he taught at Arc en Cirque (Chambéry). He continues to work with autistic children 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 Qigong.

Since 2010, he has been studying 昊元仙宗 HAO YUAN XIAN ZONG Qi Gong, an alchemical path of breath and transformation preserved in Taiwan. According to its tradition, this lineage reaches back some 4,000 years — older than Taoism itself, and long before Buddhism reached China — and, unlike the forms of qigong exported to the West, it is passed on only through direct transmission. Certified in Taiwan in 2018, Valentin now transmits this lineage in Europe, where it had never been taught before.

A filmmaker since 2011, he shoots, edits and colors his own creations, and has directed around twenty short films since 2022 for artists, companies and musicians (see Reals). He is currently developing several documentary projects.

▲ ▲