Rebecca Journo
Artistic Director

Rebecca Journo studied at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, where she obtained a BA in contemporary dance in 2015. Alongside her work as a performer, she created her company La Pieuvre in collaboration with Véronique Lemonnier in 2018. Also accompanied by sound designer Mathieu Bonnafous, their artistic approach lies at the edge of different mediums between dance, performance, music and photography. As part of La Pieuvre, Rebecca Journo has successively created two solos that form a diptych, "L'Épouse" (2018) and "La Ménagère" (2019), based on clichéd female representations. At the same time, she is working on the creation of a trio, "Whales" (2020), fully inspired by the song of whales. Inspired by Véronique Lemonnier's photographic work on self-portraiture, she signs a quartet entitled "Portrait" (2022), which takes a very concrete look at the link between movement and photography. In 2024, she created "canicular", a performance based on the song of cicadas, in collaboration with sound artist Diane Barbé, commissioned by the Festival d'Avignon and SACD as part of "Vive le sujet Tentatives! "Les amours de la pieuvre" (2024) is the latest collective creation by compagnie la pieuvre, inspired by the erotic-horrific symbolism of the animal in Japan. The project gives pride of place to the gesture of sound, pushing even further the inextricable link between sound composition and choreography around which the collaboration between Rebecca Journo and Mathieu Bonnafous was built. 

Mathieu Bonnafous
Sound engineer and sound artist

Mathieu Bonnafous is a sound artist, musician and field recordist who listens to the world around him, natural and industrial, human and non-human, from which he draws his inspiration. Sound recording is the basis of his creative work. It sensitizes him to the notions of soundscape and sound ecology, which will come to occupy an important place in his artistic approach. He creates for club culture under his alias Catartsis, mixing bass music and techno influences from the early 2000s. Alongside Pablo Diserens, he co-directs the label and publishing platform forms of minutiae, dedicated to acoustic ecology and electroacoustics. For nearly 6 years, he has been collaborating with choreographer Rebecca Journo. Together, they have developed a singular language around sound-image, first explored in "La Ménagère" (2019) and then in "Portrait" (2022). This collaboration has led him to live performance, which he explores further in his latest creation, "Les amours de la pieuvre" (2024), in which the musical composition is closer to that of a concert. 

Véronique Lemonnier
Artistic Director

Véronique Lemonnier trained at the Académie Internationale de la Danse. In 2018 she founded La Pieuvre with Rebecca Journo, a company where work is interwoven in several mediums between dance, music, performance and photography. She performs in the pieces "Whales" (2020), "Portrait" (2022) and "Les amours de la pieuvre" (2024). For several years now, she has been working on black-and-white silver self-portraits. Here, the photo is conceived as documentation, filtered by the passage of time. Mapping her body in space through the medium of photography is for her a continuation of dance, where the naked body reveals its own language.

Jules Bourret
Lighting designer

Jules Bourret began his career as an electrician, then in 2015 he joined the Bachelor's degree in Performing Arts at the University of Aix en Provence in the lighting section. Since 2016, he has been involved in the creation of La Déviation, a living space and artistic research center north of Marseille. Between 2016 and 2020, he worked as sound designer, lighting designer and stage manager with the companies En devenir 2, Les Estivants, L'art de vivre and In pulverem revertis. In 2019, he joins the electroacoustic composition class at the Marseille Conservatory. His collaboration with La Pieuvre begins in 2021 as lighting director for the shows "L'Épouse" and "La Ménagère", and continues in 2022 with the creation of "Portrait", for which he is responsible for lighting and set design in collaboration with Rebecca Journo, as well as for "Les amours de la pieuvre" (2024). 

Vera Gorbacheva
Choreographic artist

Vera Gorbacheva was born in Moscow in 1994. She turned to dance at Nikolay Ogrizkov's school. In 2012, she joined the CNSMD in Lyon. Her professional career began in 2016 with Hervé Robbe's company ("A New Landscape", "Danse de 4", "Danse de 6", "Sollicitudes"). She also dances for Alexandre Roccoli ("Longing", "Weaver Quintet", "Long Play", "Lovotic", "Ars Moriendi") From 2017 to 2023, she will also be working with many other choreographers such as Edmond Russo and Shlomi Tuizer ("SubRosa"), Karine Ponties ("Lichens"), Harris Gkekas ("Yond.Side.Fore.Hind" and "Plateaux"), Catherine Diverrès ("Echo"), Jamil Attar ("Impromptus"), Alexis Jestin ("dog eat dog I love to hate you") and Rebecca Journo ("Portrait"). For the upcoming 2025-2026 season, Vera is working with Emmanuelle Huynh on "unedansecontinue", and will be a performer in "Lutte.s#2", a show combining jiu-jitsu and political combat, choreographed by Thierry Micouin.

Coline Ploquin
Costume designer

Coline Ploquin, after a baccalaureate in cinema, a preparatory course in Applied Arts, and a detour through anthropology college, graduated from the Paul Poiret costume school in 2014. Since then, she has worked as a costume designer, director and occasional dresser. She creates, sews and maintains costumes, whether in the studio (Moulin Rouge), for companies (Saudade-P.Calvario, le^3ème Cirque...), theaters (la Pépinière, le Montansier...), on tour as far afield as China, or from her studio in Normandy. She particularly appreciates projects that enable her to learn new skills and move towards a more responsible practice, as with the creation of the costumes for "Papoùtsi" (cie Les Rivages du Vent), all made from natural dyes. After a first creation with Rebecca Journo - La Pieuvre - for "Whales" (2020), she is now working on the costumes for "Portrait" (2022), "Les amours de la pieuvre" (2024) and "Canicular" (2024).