Valerie Fratellini

Valérie Fratellini is a French circus performer and educator who carried the Fratellini family's clown and equestrian practices into contemporary circus training. Born in 1960 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, she grew up in a household where circus and film intersected—her mother was Annie Fratellini, the legendary clown, and her father was filmmaker Pierre Granier-Deferre. As an adolescent, Fratellini trained in acrobatics and trapeze before moving toward equestrian work. She was herself an early beneficiary and impetus for the École nationale du cirque, founded in 1974 by her mother Annie Fratellini and Pierre Étaix, a school created partly in response to her own need for training.

In 1980, Valérie entered the ring alongside Annie, beginning a seventeen-year clown partnership that inverted the historically male tradition of comic pairings. Valérie took the controlling whiteface role while Annie played the unruly Auguste—a dynamic that according to L'Express made them the first all-woman clown duo. The partnership was both familial and theatrical, with authority and comic chaos continually negotiated in performance.

Beyond clowning, Fratellini worked as a horsewoman and trapeze teacher. She is credited with creating the Charivari troupe with Gilles Audejean in 1990, establishing an equestrian academy at the Moulin de Pierre in 1991, and developing the company Ô Cirque in 1999. After Annie Fratellini's death in 1997, Valérie continued her work in performance and teaching. In 2008 she returned to the whiteface clown role in *Concertino pour un clown*, performing opposite Stéphane Drouard's Auguste and with pianist Raphaël Sanchez—a production that framed clowning as a living craft rather than nostalgic reconstruction.

Pedagogy and institutional leadership became central to her career. The Académie Fratellini currently lists her as deputy director and pedagogical director. Her approach prioritizes individualized accompaniment, structuring training around each artist's existing qualities rather than forcing every student through a single model. In 2026 she served on the admissions jury for the school's professional program. Fratellini has also stewarded the family archive: after inheriting photographs, letters and notebooks from the Fratellini lineage, she donated the collection to France's Archives nationales, linking private family memory to public circus history.