Associated Artists Noé Girard [AA 25–26] and Ciel Sourdeau [AA 24–25] took part in an international residency in Cluj, Romania, in June 2026.
Noé Girard is a dancer and visual artist. At the age of six, he discovered dance as a way of channelling his energy. Very quickly, this practice grew into a passion that led him to travel and compete. The lockdown transformed his relationship to space: he began filming himself, experimenting with video editing, and exploring collage through old magazines. These practices opened new creative terrains.
In 2021, he joined the Ballet Junior de Genève, where he deepened his artistic research for two years. Since 2023, he has been collaborating with Emanuel Gat’s company. Today, at 20 years old, Noé seeks to weave a closer dialogue between his bodily and visual practices. Dance allows him to live his emotions through movement; collage renders them tangible in matter. Two mediums resonate within him in the same pursuit: to make the intimate both visible and perceptible.
Filmmaker, drag king, and music composer, Ciel Sourdeau explores trans narratives through his work. He has directed several short films, including Sad Cowboy Platonic Love (2021), which was screened at Int. Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Solothurner Filmtage, and Sicilia Queer Film Festival, as well as Sky Rogers: Manager de Stars (2024), presented in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. He creates soundtracks for his films, composed of electronic keyboards, sound effects, and dubbed voices, conjuring fantastical and absurd worlds. Since 2021, he also experiments with drag king performance under the persona Cristal Couilles. Ciel expanded his artistic practice to dramaturgy, notably with Un Pied Dans la Merde, l'Autre dans les Étoiles (2024), co-written with Marlène Charpentié. His encounter with the performance and theater scene inspired him to imagine a project for a monstrous musical.
Over the course of these four weeks, they lived and worked together in Cluj, Romania, developing their respective projects while immersing themselves in the local area and its social and cultural context. Upon arriving in Cluj, Ciel and Noé discovered TIFF (Transylvania International Film Festival), took part in a butoh workshop with Batarita, and met with curators and artists from Cluj’s alternative cultural scene. Out in the city, Ciel and Noé walked, observed and took analogue photographs, allowing them to absorb the city’s energy. The residency concluded on 4 July with an Open Studios event at OM Studios.
The partnership between OM Choreographic Centre and L’Abri – Geneva enabled the two artists to explore the city of Cluj whilst developing their art. This cultural exchange is part of an ongoing collaboration between L’Abri – Geneva and OM Choreographic Centre, the first independent centre dedicated to contemporary dance and choreographic research, based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
