Theo Touvet, artist-performer and scientist

Since childhood, Théo Touvet has been passionate about a multitude of artistic disciplines. This insatiable curiosity has never left her. From the cradle, it is with the poetic universe of the circus Plume that Theo Touvet discovers the circassian world. The artists of the troupe, friends of his parents, often come to the house, small shows are improvised, the young boy is conquered. At the age of four, he already knows that he wants to “perform.” “Working my magic tricks in front of the ice for hours has developed a perfectionist side for me,” the artist explains. It multiplies extra-curricular disciplines: classical music, dance, gymnastics, theatre, circus, horseback riding. At the time of choosing his path after the baccalaureate, despite his determination and passion for the arts, he headed for scientific studies that he found so fascinating and crossed brilliantly. A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in Physical Sciences, a Master in Mechanics from the École Polytechnique, and after a stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he completed this exceptional course at NASA, where he works on environmental issues. A career as a climatologist awaits him. But Theo Touvet never ceased to keep in mind his suspended artistic destiny and in 2011 he returned to his first passions. 

Head to the Ecole Nationale des Arts du Cirque de Rosny-sous-Bois where he will focus on the work of the Cyr wheel, a circular circus device inside which the acrobat inserts himself to create figures. On the stage side, Théo Touvet continued his training in 2012 at the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (CNAC) in Châlons-en-Champagne, then at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique in Paris and started in 2015 a theatrical collaboration with David Lescot in  The Growling Glaciers  He has worked on projects with many other directors. Alongside Olivier Letellier in  Night when the day rose  », with choreographer Christine Bastin in «  The infinitely in  », in 2019 with Irina Brook in a reinterpretation of the  Dream of a summer night  In an intimate show with choreographer Kaori Ito entitled “  Set me on fire  », the Cyr wheel is at the center of the game. 

Theo’s fascination with this wheel is such that it finds itself at the heart of the research work he has been conducting for the past ten years in parallel with his life as an artist. Baptized  AcroGyro / Gravity0  », this ambitious project was selected in 2019 by the Research mission of the Direction générale de la création artistique. Its objective is to defy the laws of gravity on stage to offer the viewer the illusion of a movement in weightlessness and the magic of a suspended time, thanks to the creation of a unique device that would have the surprising principles of a gyroscope. 

Among his research partners, Theo can count on his solid polytechnic and standards network, not to mention his many scientific contacts, researchers and engineers in the aerospace industry, including at CNRS and Airbus. Theo Touvet knows that the road to the prototype of the new equipment is still long, but he says, “I can’t wait to get on it and start training.”