The Théâtre du Corps celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2024, and has given over 900 performances to more than 900,000 spectators in 16 countries: France, Algeria, Belgium, China, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Serbia, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Tunisia and Turkey.

Le Théâtre du Corps is the name of the artistic work of choreographers Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Julien Derouault and their dance company, founded in 2004 and now based in Alfortville (94) near Paris. In 2004, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, an emblematic figure of French dance, one of the most famous prima ballerinas of the Paris Opera (1990-1998) and former director of the Ballet National de Marseille (1998-2004), joined forces with Julien Derouault, solo dancer with the Ballet National de Marseille (1997-2004), to create, distribute and produce their own work.

These two artists have invented a common, complex language in which improvisation and choreographic writing are constantly intertwined. The idea is to create a dance in which the performer can express all his or her humanity, a dance in which the artist's imagination takes precedence over more academic or formal considerations. Becoming a "man who dances" or a "woman who dances" is the culmination of Théâtre du Corps, the meticulous work that requires dancers and actors to go beyond learned conventions.

Marie-Claude Pietragalla and Julien Derouault develop a universe on stage in which dance is part of their imagination, the expression of their artistic desires. But dance is never alone: music of course, theater of course, literature, digital or plastic art, collective memory, everyday life too... Everything makes sense and inspires the two choreographers, who use movement as a poetic source.

Each show is conceived as an inner odyssey, a journey where the narrative is a call to the imagination, to another level of consciousness that only the poetry of choreography and the art of the stage can reach.