Gerard Fasoli

Gérard Fasoli is a French circus artist and pedagogue whose career bridges elite acrobatic sport, apparatus innovation and higher education leadership. His influence on contemporary circus runs through three distinct but connected layers: his early work as a performer, his development of aerial-fabric pedagogy at the Centre national des arts du cirque, and his directorship of major European circus schools.

Fasoli's documented career begins with acrobatic sport. From 1976 to 1982 he was a member of France's national trampoline team, training that supplied more than athletic credentials. Trampoline's attention to flight phases, axis, landing and repeatable technique became a foundation for his later work as a performer and coach in contemporary circus. In 1985 he participated in developing the École nationale des arts du cirque at Rosny-sous-Bois and its professional curriculum, then worked across the French circus-school system as an acrobatics and aerial teacher. His performance records include fixed and swinging trapeze, while his teaching connected apparatus training to the emerging artistic ambitions of the new circus rather than treating acrobatics only as sport or display.

Fasoli's most influential technical contribution came at CNAC in the 1990s. The BnF/CNAC circus-history portal credits him with adapting vertical-rope practices to long hanging fabric. His student Isabelle Vaudelle presented an early fabric act and won silver at the 1995 Festival mondial du cirque de demain; a related contortion, air and silk act later appeared in Cirque du Soleil's *Quidam* in 1996. This evidence points to a crucial pedagogical and design role in establishing aerial-fabric practice as a teachable discipline.

Between 1999 and 2008 Fasoli taught acrobatic and aerial disciplines at national or higher circus schools in Rosny-sous-Bois, Châlons-en-Champagne, Saint-Denis, Montreal, San Francisco, London and Brussels. He also worked as a scenographer, performer and circus adviser on productions by Christophe Huysman, including *Espèces* and *HUMAN (articulations)*. These credits show a practice moving between studio pedagogy, apparatus research and theatrical composition. From 2008 to 2012 he directed the École supérieure des arts du cirque in Brussels. He then became director general of CNAC, serving from 2012 until the end of 2021. During that period he advocated an international view of higher circus education and introduced questions of repertory into training, including a 2014 revival of Compagnie XY's *Le Grand C*. His leadership placed transmission, research and the preservation of contemporary circus works alongside the creation of new techniques. Fasoli retired from CNAC leadership as Peggy Donck took office on 1 January 2022.