Team
For several years now, we’ve been gravitating in the same artistic circles, but always from a distance. In the end, it was the Biel region that brought us together in 2022, and we quickly got into the habit of sharing our artistic and ecomatic practices. First in a workshop we shared in the town of Biel/Bienne, then in the forest at Gregory’s invitation. It’s a place he knows well, since it was the site of his last research project. This meeting in the MALVAUX forest in April 2023 gave rise to the idea of building a center on the outskirts, a place of learning, exchange and long-term creation.
For the period 2024 to 2025 Malvaux is part of the research project Les 4 Jardins, hosted by the research department of La Manufacture – Haute école des arts de la scène HESSO, in partnership with Unibe.
Artist-choreographer, currently living in Biel/Bienne. Her artistic research revolves around ecosomatic practices, notably through the study of fascia. In 2019, she created her first stage piece
“Sweat!”, in 2021 “We prefer the diaphragm to the heart” and “What we owe to the night” in 2024. She is currently working as a performer for les trois points de suspension (FR/CH) and Laurent Pichaud (FR), and is continuing her long-term collaboration with Joanne Clavel (FR) for the research-creations SILLAGES and RIVAGES, and has joined the AVETA research project under the direction of Julie Sermon at the Manufacture in Lausanne. In addition, she continues to invent collective frameworks for exploring and questioning the notion of artistic production and creative methodologies (Les FAC, STAMM STUDIO, ESCH-MARS, MALVAUX).
Gregory Stauffer is a Swiss artist, choreographer, performer and teacher. Trained at the Scuola Teatro Dimitri (2006, prize for best diploma), he develops an interdisciplinary practice between dance, performance and video, nourished by attention to the perceptive body, listening and humor.
In 2009, he founded Le cabinet de curiosités in Geneva, a company with which he has created numerous works presented in Switzerland and internationally (Journées de danse contemporaine suisse 2013, 2015, 2017). From 2007 to 2018, he is a member of the video-performance collective Authentic Boys (NL, D, CH). Associate artist at the Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain (Lausanne) from 2018 to 2020, he launches the Tuesday is Danceday platform there.
Winner of the Liechti Foundation Prize for the Arts (2022), he leads several research-creation projects, including Processus créatifs durables en arts vivants (2021-2022) and Les 4 Jardins (2024-2026). In 2024, he co-founds Malvaux with Eve Chariatte, a center for eco-somatic exploration in the forest. At the same time, he is training at the Tamalpa Institute in Freiburg im Breisgau (DE).
Since 2025, he is in charge of the Master’s program at La Manufacture – Haute école des arts de la scène in Lausanne, where he also teaches in the Bachelor’s program in contemporary dance.
Joanne Clavel
Joanne Clavel is a research associate at CNRS (LADYSSCEFE) and associated with the Dance Department at Paris 8 University. She is developing ecological humanities based on knowledge of the body, questioning the somatic and political stakes involved in the disappearance of living beings and contemporary ecosystem transformations. Her research is rooted in a desire to decompartmentalize “theory” on the one hand, and “practice” on the other, by working in dialogue with actors in the field: artists, growers, nature lovers, residents… This practice-based commitment necessarily raises questions of epistemology and methodology. This is where the practice of art comes in, through the development of research-based creations, somatic ethnographies and Arts-Sciences encounters.
She has written numerous articles (scientific ecology; arts, ecologies and environmental aesthetics; ecological humanities) and, with various groups, coordinated the books Écosomatiques, Thinking ecology through gesture (Soma&Po, Second Era2019) and Lives with Beaches, Experiences, Relationships, Becoming (Living Beaches, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2024).
Noémie Swana Wyss
A singer, performer and vocal coach, Noémie Swana Wyss trained as a dancer at Bewegungs-Art Freiburg (D) before performing in various festivals and plays in Germany, France and Switzerland. She worked on Navigation (Hideto Heshiki), Entre Guillemets (Leo Tania lo Cicero) and appeared in the film Mr. Time by Laurent Wyss.
From 2010 to 2014, she co-founded and co-directed the company trop cher to share with Nina Willimann, mixing performance, dance and music, notably in collaboration with Chilean choreographer Joël Inzunza.
Under the name Nonomai, she performs as a singer and songwriter, accompanies Sabine Reber’s readings, and participates in several musical groups, including Nefertiti in the Kitchen, Nonomai Frigobox, Your Wish Is Our Command and The White Tent Ryders.
Trained in Roy Hart vocal work since 2012, she now works as a vocal coach, offering individual and collective accompaniment for artists, groups and children. Her background is also enriched by research into natural rituals, herbal medicine and shamanic practices.
Since 2025, she has been working in a public school in the field of speech therapy and language stimulation.
Her collaboration with Ève Chariatte, Gregory Stauffer and Joanne Clavel began with the first Summer School in 2024.
Beth Dillon (AU/CH) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice crosses performance, video, installation, set design, costume design and curation. Graduating with a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the University of New South Wales in Sydney (2019), she has been developing work over the past fifteen years that explores everyday life as a terrain for artistic and social experimentation.
Active on Sydney’s queer and artist-run scenes, she co-founded the 110% collective in 2013 with Kieran Bryant and Lachlan Herd, before working nomadically between Europe and Australia, undertaking numerous residencies and collaborations from 2013-2018. Settled in Switzerland since 2018, her practice is anchored in the domestic and family context, transforming the gestures of care, play and everyday life into artistic material.
From 2021 to 2023, she co-directed Espace libre in Biel with Vera Trachsel, where they produced over thirty exhibitions, festivals, residencies and publications.
Her projects have been presented in venues such as Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthaus Biel, Lokal-int, Krone Couronne and Sonnenstube, as well as at festivals in Europe and Australia. She is the winner of the Anderfuhren Prize (2021) and the Werk-Buch Stipendium of the Canton of Berne (2024).
Alongside her artistic practice, she regularly collaborates with institutions and independent artists in the field of cultural communication and project coordination, notably with Visarte Biel/Bienne, INCUBO, KarteNoire2502, MALVAUX and Cie ECCO.
Sèverine Jeanneret
I grew up at the foot of the Jura between adventures on horseback and barefoot …After a few wanders, on, in and under the Earth, I’m inspired, sucked in by the Wood Tribe, nourished by this deep connection to the Living. I like to take this step to the side, to explore, to let myself be carried away by the impulses of life, to share my love of the wild, gently. With the arrival of our 1st daughter on earth, another breath was born, the desire, the need to “soak” this child and all the others I would come across, in humus, rivers and wind. For over 10 years, I’ve been taking schoolchildren and families into the woods to let nature teach us about life. With love, the energy of fire, the voice of storytelling and the heart, passion and animality, I love to transmit, to weave between worlds.
Sidney, a wanderer at heart, has been exploring his native Swiss Pre-Alps since childhood. Inhabited by a vital need to reconnect with living things, he finds deep freedom in untamed spaces, where everything grows naturally and in abundance. To deepen this intimate relationship with the wild, he trained with Pâris&Cancan, acquiring solid experience of life in the forest, from improvised bivouacs to picking for a sure life. His path took him through the great forests of Europe, until the call of other biomes was heard. His love for the lush flora continued to grow, as did his desire to better understand this infinite plant world. This prompted him to join the Collège Pratique d’Ethnobotanique, under the guidance of François Couplan, to deepen his knowledge and refine his senses. He can’t wait to get back to his tribe, to share the fire, the knowledge, the silences, to walk the trails in search of deep-rooted stories, to taste the plants and the poetry of the world.
