Éric Minh Cuong Castaing (born 1979 in Seine‑Saint‑Denis, France) is a choreographer, visual artist, and artistic director renowned for his transdisciplinary research combining dance, visual arts, and contemporary technologies. He graduated from Les Gobelins – L’École de l’Image in Paris, after which he worked for several years as a graphic designer in animated cinema before dedicating himself fully to dance and artistic creation.

In 2007, he founded the company Shōnen, which became the main framework for his artistic work: a choreographic and visual platform exploring the relationships between bodies, movement, and technologies—including robots, drones, and telepresence—through what he calls the “in socius” process, involving creative collaborations with institutions outside the art world (hospitals, research laboratories, NGOs, medico-educational institutions, etc.).

Éric Minh Cuong Castaing’s practice blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, nature and culture, organic and artificial, engaging diverse types of bodies—professional, amateur, or with disabilities—and questioning the representation of movement and perception.

Within his company, he has developed around fifteen creations—including performances, films, and installations—some in collaboration with dramaturge Marine Relinger, choreographer Aloun Marchal, or stage director Anne‑Sophie Turion.

He is an artist-in-residence or associate artist at several cultural institutions: he was an associate artist at the Ballet National de Marseille (2016–2019), at the Comédie de Valence (2020–2024), and is also associated with Montpellier Danse, the Centre National de la Création Adaptée (CNCA) in Morlaix, the Bourges European Capital of Culture 2028 project, and the Collection Lambert in Avignon.

His work has been presented in numerous national and international contexts, including festivals, performance spaces, and visual art institutions such as the Palais de Tokyo, the Centre Pompidou, and the Festival de Marseille, combining dance, imagery, and technology to explore the role of the body, movement, and social relations in the contemporary world.

Marine Relinger (concept and dramaturgy)

Marine Relinger, born in Marseille, is a dramaturge and filmmaker. Her work explores ways of looking at bodies and the roles of stage and cinematic writing that engage with them. In the field of cinema, she spent five years filming and directing A Body of One’s Own (2025 – produced by Les Films d’Ici), a feature-length film developed in dialogue with the movement and thought of dancer Elise Argaud.

As a dramaturge, she has co-created several dance pieces with the Shōnen company: Phoenix (2018), featuring dancers connected remotely from the Gaza Strip alongside choreographer Eric Minh Cuong Castaing; followed by a series of works bringing together performers with diverse, alternative, or normative abilities, in collaboration with Eric Minh Cuong Castaing and choreographer Aloun Marchal (The Golden Age – 2018, Form(s) of Life – 2021, Park – 2022, Vision – 2026…).

Through these projects, she examines notions of relationship, systems of violence and collaboration, and seeks to unfold—so as to better understand—the dynamics of our co-presence within artistic processes and their impact on representation. Formerly a journalist and critic, Marine Relinger graduated from CFJ/CFPJ and also studied art history and philosophy.

Aloun Marchal (concept and choreography)

An improvisational choreographer and performer, Aloun Marchal studied dance at the SNDO in Amsterdam. A recipient of the Danceweb scholarships (2008, 2012), SACD (2017), the Västra Götaland Region – Sweden (2022), and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee (2023), he has co-created award-winning works such as Gerro, Minos and Him, and Bibi Ha Bibi.

With SonoR (2020), he merges dance and live music, and in 2023, AVATARED blends contemporary dance with electronic club culture. In collaboration with Eric Minh Cuong Castaing and Marine Relinger, he continues his exploration of inclusive art, initiated within the Swedish inclusive dance company SPINN. Together, they created The Golden Age (2018), Form(s) of Life (2021), Park (2022), and Vision (2026).

Fascinated by the process of meaning-making, Aloun is committed to an approach in which thinking alone is no longer sufficient, favoring a direct and sensory experience of reality that momentarily suspends our irrepressible need to make sense.