portraits
Portrait
Street Arts / Circus / Puppetry

Nicolas Fraiseau

I am interested in welcoming the unexpected.

One of the most promising circus artists of his generation, Nicolas Fraiseau presents Instable (Unstable), his first show, which is somewhere between poetry and absurdity.

Published on 18/02/2020

2 min

Born in Rennes in 1995, Nicolas Fraiseau began his apprenticeship at the Lido, the Toulouse Circus Arts Centre, in 2008. In 2013, he joined the Rosny-sous-Bois National School for Circus Arts and signed up at the Châlons-en-Champagne National Centre for Circus Arts the following year.

In 2015 Nicolas Fraiseau joined the Kiai company as a performer for Cri (Scream), a choreographic and poetic circus piece directed by Cyrille Musy and Sylvain Décure.

In 2016, his talent caught the attention of Christophe Huysman, an author and director who came to attend the end-of-year personal projects of students at the National Centre for Circus Arts. Seduced by the ease of the circus, Christophe Huysman welcomed him to his company, Les Hommes penchés. In 2018 they created their first show together: Instable.

Nicolas Fraiseau’s creations are as burlesque as they are poetic. The art of falling becomes the driving force behind a wacky, almost clownish game.

Nicolas Fraiseau’s favourite apparatus is the Chinese pole. A pole that hangs constantly as the artist wobbles, falls and struggles to climb onto this perilous structure.

Between mastery and improvisation, from one show to the next, Nicolas Fraiseau experiments with the fragility of balance, with palpable dramatic tension. For example, in the 2018 production Kafka dans les villes (Kafka in the Cities) by the Les Lucioles collective and based on the German writer.

Nicolas Fraiseau places his talent at the service of shows whose grace transcends cultural boundaries. The creations he lends himself to, often combining practices and artists from the worlds of music, circus and theatre, are attracting international attention, whether in 2018 for the Cirko Vertigo festival in Italy, as part of the Seoul Street Arts Festival 2019 or, in the same year, for the Guro G-Festival in South Korea.

Nicolas Fraiseau’s practice is also rooted in the overseas territories. This is demonstrated in his 2019 collaboration with the Métis’Gwa company in La Main de la mer (The Hand of the Sea), designed as a “journey through the memory of the West Indies”, bringing together French, Brazilian and Haitian artists.

  • 2014

    2014

    Nicolas Fraiseau joins the 28th graduating class of the National Centre for Circus Arts.

  • 2017

    2017

    Nicolas Fraiseau is the winner of the Beaumarchais-SACD Association's (circus) writing grant.

  • 2018

    2018

    Instable, Nicolas Fraiseau’s first show, is hosted by the Académie Fratellini in La Plaine Saint-Denis.

  • 2019

    2019

    Instable is presented at the Seoul Street Arts Festival in South Korea.

L'Institut français et le projet

Instable, by Nicolas Fraiseau, aroused the enthusiasm of foreign programmers invited by the French Institute in March 2019 as part of its Focus Cirque.

 

A large-scale international tour (United States, Canada, South America, Balkans, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ethiopia) is in preparation.

L'institut français, LAB