Ten volunteers, director Lou Wenzel, and our co-founder Séverine Vasselin gathered for a 10-day residency at the Académie du Climat in Paris to prepare a unique performance : Les Noces d'eau, a theatrical ceremony developed as part of “Paris en Seine” and presented on July 26th, 2025. The program included a festive ritual, a wedding march, and a symbolic communion with the river.

The “Noces d'eau” event - initiated by the Watertrek in partnership with the Water-Seine & Climate Department of the Paris City Hall - is not just a show: it is a symbolic act, a celebration of the reconciliation between Parisians and their river, inaccessible for 102 years, now reintroduced into everyday urban life. For one evening, the city embraces its waterway. White attire is suggested, and a festive spirit is recommended. And you? You are the guests at this wedding unlike any other.

Conceived as a ritual ceremony, “Noces d'eau” invites everyone to actively participate in a form of sensory theater. Everyone is invited to join in the game, to let themselves be carried away by the story, to reconnect with the waters that inhabit us - metaphorically and physically. Beyond the artistic gesture, there is a message : that of a connection to be reinvented with oneself, with others, with all of our interdependencies. The Seine is no longer a border : it becomes an emotional bridge, a source of inspiration, a collective mirror. Exterior and interior align themselves.

The celebration begins at the Académie du Climat, a committed and symbolic venue for Parisian ecological renewal, but also the former City Hall, a particularly appropriate site for this type of ceremony. Guests descend the Degrés staircase to share a toast, punctuated by speeches, testimonials, rants, and musical interludes.

Finally, a wedding march leads the participants to the Seine, as a physical and poetic extension of the ritual that has begun. It is a way of becoming one with the city, together, through a gesture as simple as it is powerful: walking towards the water.

Between theater, ecology, and poetry, “Noces d'eau” is an invitation to rethink our relationship with life, with the community, and with this river that flows through Paris as much as it flows through us internally. A rare event, at the crossroads of art and meaning, to be experienced with your feet (almost) in the water, a test format for the association, which is keen to continue its work in the field of cultural and sensory ecology.

Press: Mairie de Paris & Water-Guette