Biography

Clotilde is a multidisciplinary creator who employs a range of artforms to generate new poetic languages. She combines music, song, dance, and the visual arts to make singular performance pieces, concerts, and films. Her kaleidoscopic visions liberate imaginations, depictions, and emotions. Clotilde orchestrates these interlinked structures by throwing off conventions, giving way to emergences that she calls “random synchronicities”.

Her creative pathway is a metabolic thing which draws on the vibrant substance of life: a pulse; an encounter; a way of exploring the world and of feeling alive inside; of grasping the pluralistic nature of artistic languages—chromatic archipelagos proffered for inspiration. She tirelessly collects connections, encounters, and surprises, inviting artists to step into her pieces and trace out their own journeys. “I enjoy plunging myself into that which is different to me, into that zone of discomfort which forces us to greater awareness.” 

From Dada and the surrealists, she cherishes the unexpectedness of revelations, their accidental synchronisms. Clotilde’s performance pieces alternately enchant, move, and destabilize: they speak to the unconscious, that fragile, indeterminate zone that sometimes overturns under certain impulses. 

Having entered the conservatoire at the age of five to learn the flute, Clotilde began to explore the performing arts through music, theater, and dance. She very soon set herself the task of augmenting her own music, of staking out her own borders beyond genres, of marking out new territories in which to bring her visions to fruition, taking the road of the subconscious and of dreams to directly “strike at the audience’s emotional structure.” Aged twenty, she staged her first two multidisciplinary shows combining music, storytelling, and dance: Sur la route des Tziganes and Monsieur Jazz.

Clotilde explores the infinitely flexible possibilities of the voice through advanced vocal techniques such as bone vibration. An insatiable wanderer, she has spent time in Ireland, Lebanon, the Balkans, the United States, and Burkina-Faso. Each of her peregrinations provides for fertile exchanges, culminating in the poetry of things revealed.

“I aspire to take people out of themselves: to grab someone’s hand and make off. Some moments will of course be pleasanter than others, but in the end, both of us will be more alive.”

An international multidisciplinary creator, artistic director, vocalist, flutist, producer and vocal coach, Clotilde is above all an explorer: of her own dreams, of synaesthesic languages, of bodies, of music, and of writings, which she employs in the pursuance of her essential themes.

Random synchronicities

n. f. pl. neologism. A non-illustrative dialogue between different artistic disciplines, expressed independently yet simultaneously. The art of the poetry of things revealed.

Clotilde revisits the accidental synchronisms that are so well known in the film world—which Cocteau already transposed to the stage through the intercession of Roland Petit, the choreographer of the mimodrama: Le Jeune Homme et la Mort. She works at cultivating “the planned accident” through being present in the moment as a creative impulse. 

In her polyphonic works, each artistic discipline plays its own score. Infused with the same thematic thrust, yet independent in their creative paths, each discipline elevates the other to a vibration that they would not have been able to attain separately, so avoiding the pitfalls of illustration. When these scores meet, there arise accidental synchronisms susceptible to fresh perceptions, laying the foundations of a possible symbolic revolution.

Clotilde’s travels

2022: Eastern Spring, the second album of Madeleine & Salomon, pays homage to the militant Middle Eastern pop music of the 60s and 70s. It has been ranked among the Best Of 2022 by Télérama, Jazz News and Jazz Magazine. Produced with the support from the DRAC Île de France, CNM, ADAMI, SPPF and CNC.

2021: XXY, polyphonic poetry for five musicians, five dancers, and one film; an extension of Clotilde’s reflections on the Feminine. In it she invokes a shifting of the gaze with a view to deconstructing the system of gender-related oppressions in favor of a human ideal existing fully in the fluidity of its polarities: the feminine and the masculine. Produced with the support from the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, the Ile de France region, the Ile de France Cultural Office, the Val de Marne Department, the Paris Cultural Office, the Royaumont Foundation, the Théâtre de Vanves, Le Comptoir in Fontenay, and the National Choreography Center in Créteil.

2022 – 2019: Pieces of a Song, duo with the New York pianist Chris McCarthy; a repertoire of original compositions woven from the rage and ecstasy of the texts of the Beat Generation poet, Diane di Prima. Produced with the support from the Jazz & New Music program of the French American Cultural Exchange.

2018: XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ], experimental filmed work that tackles the question of femininities in an open, poetic way, combining dance, music, song, and the visual arts. Shown in over thirty festivals worldwide, XXY [ɛks/ɛks/wʌɪ] has received five awards and nominations. Produced with the support from the Secretariat of Women’s Rights, the SACEM, and the SPEDIDAM.

2016: A Woman’s Journey, first album of the duo Madeleine & Salomon with the pianist Alexandre Saada; a vibrant homage to the American women “protest singers.” The album received sixteen awards, six of which were for the best album (in France and the USA). On stage, the collection of songs is enriched by the projection of dreamlike film sequences. Produced with the support from the FCM.

2011: In Extremis, first album as composer, a quartet without bass with Olivier Hutman on the piano, Dano Haider on the seven-string guitar, and Antoine Paganotti on drums. An eclectic overlaying of textures and materials, evocative of surrealist collages, yet rooted in Clotilde’s influences: jazz, classical, world pop, and improvisation. Ranked among the top five albums of 2011 by The Sunday Times (UK) and 2013 by the NPR Annual Jazz Critics Poll (USA)—debut album category. Produced with the support from the ADAMI and the SPPF.

2007: Live aux 7 Lézards, live album of covers of pop and jazz songs in a duo with the guitarist, Hugo Lippi. Jazz Magazine called the album a “little marvel […] riskily youthful, spontaneous, free…”. Produced with the support of Paris city hall.

2002: Sur la route des Tziganes and Monsieur Jazz, multidisciplinary family shows for seven performers, in which Clotilde sang, narrated, and danced.