L’Envers de nos décors

L’Envers de nos décors brings together the circus and choreographic practice of Clément Dazin and the writing of Thomas Scotto. Together, they poetically address the power of the word that hurts, from adult to child. It’s the story of a meeting that doesn’t happen – between a child and his teacher – and of why a sentence can affect this child for so long and not others…

It’s all about going for what feels good, whatever the cost. Can we decide to be happy at an early age?

La Main de l’Homme company

Clément Dazin creates open-ended circus performances, drawing on his past experience of dance, circus, juggling and gymnastics. Inspired by contemporary themes, his shows break down the barriers between circus, dance and live performance.

La Main de l’Homme is a non-profit company governed by the 1908 Law, with strong ties to juggling and circus in general, but also to gesture and dance in particular. Based in Strasbourg, the company has been jointly involved in creation, distribution, artistic actions and transmission since its creation in 2016. Very active locally, she also presents her shows at major international festivals, from Rio de Janeiro to Taipei, via Paris, Potsdam and Turin. From the outset, the company has been strongly supported by La Brèche and Théâtre d’Elbeuf – Deux Pôles cirque en Normandie – PNAC.

Clément Dazin

From an early age, Clément Dazin was fascinated by movement and the body’s mastery of space. He started out in gymnastics before turning to the circus at the age of 16, joining the Point Bar company, where he discovered the pleasure of creation.

Before becoming a professional circus artist, Clément spent 2 years working on a telephone platform, before becoming an apprentice management controller at Eurocopter. He holds a Master’s degree in Management, and his dissertation focuses on the psycho-affective dimension of corporate relations. He then joined the Lyon circus school, followed by the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC), where he continued to explore the links between contemporary dance, movement theater, hip hop dance and juggling, developing his own universe.

Clément Dazin developed the company’s creative activity around choreographic juggling until 2017, and has since been interested in the place of text and speech in his shows:
– Bruit de couloir, 2013, choreographic juggling solo
– R2JE, 2014, duo dance/juggling
– Humanoptère, 2017, choreographic juggling piece for 7 performers
– Trajectoires, 2021, solo for classrooms
– Cosmos, 2021, theater/circus solo with Ashtar Muallem
– Inops, 2021, theater/circus piece for 6 performers
– L’Envers de nos décors, 2022, young audience theater/circus with Thomas Scotto
– A.N.G.S.T, 2023, juggling and wire duo with Lucas Bergandi

More information about the company and its creations

Thomas Scotto

After briefly studying literature in Tours, Thomas Scotto took advantage of the birth of his first daughter in 1995 to start writing. He continued this activity when his second daughter was born in 1998. His first texts were published the same year. After that, he never stopped writing: poetry, albums, short stories and novels. In 2006, Griffon magazine devoted an entire issue to him, in which artists and writers such as Anne Sylvestre, Philippe Besson, Philippe Barbeau, François Martin, etc. spoke about him.

Thomas Scotto is published by many well-known children’s publishers, including Editions du Rouergue, Editions Thierry Magnier, Actes sud junior and Sarbacane. His books are illustrated by a number of illustrators, including Benjamin Adam, Régis Lejonc, Éric Battut and Olivier Tallec, as well as Csil, with whom he wrote “Sans ailes”, the story of a little boy searching for his lost stars. He regularly organizes writing workshops, meetings in schools in France and abroad (Lebanon, Morocco), public readings and comic readings of his texts (with Alfred, Régis Lejonc, etc.), as well as dance readings.

In 2015, together with writers Gilles Abier and Cathy Ytak, he created L’Atelier du Trio, to promote reading aloud, through public readings and exhibitions. Also in 2015, published by Thierry Magnier, he published his first comic strip, drawn by Régis Lejonc, Kodhja. Thomas Scotto wrote the text over 10 years ago, and it was rejected by the publisher at the time. The album is the result of four years’ work with Régis Lejonc6. The book was awarded the Lucioles BD prize in 2016 and the “Bulles d’Océans” prize in 2017. It is also a 2016 “coup de coeur” of the Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse (BnF), for whom it is “a stroll that proves to be a magnificent farewell to childhood”, and selected by the children’s reference site Ricochet, a site of the Swiss Youth and Media Institute.

He was awarded an international prize in 2016, the Chen Bochui International Children’s Literature Awards, for his album Une guerre pour moi (illustrated by Barroux), presented in Shanghai (China). In 2018, he created, with Laetitia Botella and Pauline Denize, the musical reading of Paul Auster’s short story Le Noël d’Auggie Wren, for the festival Le goût des autres, in Le Havre.

More about his work