I am Matéo MOTES, born in Toulouse on a simple January morning. I grew up surrounded by cliffs, carried by my parents’ climbing trips in the Pyrenees. Between rocks and forests, I developed a taste for heights and vertigo. At the age of six, I discovered circus arts at Le Lido, where I explored stage expression, the joy of creation, and built the foundations of a circus vision deeply rooted in collectivity.
At the end of adolescence, a back injury forced me to pause my practice. Beyond pushing me to reconsider my relationship to my body, this break opened me to writing—awkward lyrical flights—as well as object manipulation and playful, “useless” constructions. I then trained as an acrobat at the École de Cirque de Lyon (2020–2022) and later at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) from 2022 onwards. These years were marked by doubt and by a constant questioning of my acrobatic practice. I learned to embrace uncertainty as part of my identity, offering only temporary answers to the problems I encounter: imagination is the source, something to constantly feed, while everything else is merely a set of tools to compose performances—circus or otherwise.
Today, childhood imagination allows me to invent stories in which I explore the relationship between my body and my voice. I combine text and acrobatics to create links or ruptures within the narrative I build, using the presence of the audience and the accumulation or détourning of objects as playful supports. Marked by clowning, my work turns toward play itself—it is the engine of my stage presence. I write through absurdity to place the “idiot” at the center.