Christophe Carrasco, Aveyron, 1968
Joins the company in September 1998

Hanging straps, danced acrobatics
One of the " Kids "

He is a bundle of energy, jumping, dancing, mounting the hanging straps, with a comic, detached look that reminds you of the great god Pan.
Christophe has worked in Japan, in the United States and in Canada where he got his training in the arts of acrobatics, acting and the circus. He has practised the noble art and performed in the street.
Coming to the company as a replacement in"L'harmonie est-elle municipale as was the case with many performers before him with us, we decided unanimously (you can't do less with Plume) to continue the adventure for "Mélanges (opéra plume)".

Osmar pedro De Souza Rio de Janeiro,
Joined the company in February 2000

Bobbin, acrobatics, trampoline
One of the "kids"

Even when he is eating, Osmar makes his knife and fork dance a delicate minuet. He was born in the country of mixtures, in Brazil the land where the whole world lives. This meant that as a child he learned classical dance stage left, and the CapoeÈra stage right. From the Rio de Janeiro Circus School, he was invited to come and perfect his talents at the National Centre for Circus Arts of Chalons en Champagne. He has been dancing all his life, does acrobatics like a butterfly and when he laughs, Osmar, he sets your eyes a-dancing.

With a hard-working father, she received an early initiation into the arts of masonry, pruning trees and taking care of chickens. Preferring singing, she changed jobs becoming a street-singer and earning handfuls of sweets from the neighbours.
In short she is the Diva of the Cirque Plume. On site, you just have to ask, if you need to decorate your caravan or organize a birthday party for the little one.

Pierre Kudlak, Franche-Comté, 1956.
Founding member and co-director of the Cirque Plume
Two children : Anne and Elie

soubassophone
The boss

Musical education with the town band of Valentigney, where on the 11th of November 1967, at the tender age of 11, he executed (the word is well chosen), the last post. The rest of the band (having muffed the piece), listened on, paralysed, to the brave little bugler. Studied French and science of communication at university and is a keen movie-goer. His elegant latin moustache confers on him a natural, easy, authority inherent to his position as a manager.

Iris is a Basque. He practises juggling as if it were an ascetic discipline, joyful at times, and at others painful. He punctuates his feelings with big bursts of his voice, with big bursts of life. When you've heard him once you'll never forget him.
He is self-taught : they say he practised juggling for eight years, eight hours a day before he found himself worthy to perform in public. Legend or reality? Iris is a juggler and an actor to the very tips of his life. And you can see it!

Son of a grocer, a late-comer to rock'n'roll having been initiated by a parish priest, he practices conjuring and beating the daylights out of drum kits. As technical director, he has managed over a twelve year period to make sure that the Cirque Plume is on vacation at exactly the same time as his father-in-law, Clément, has the wine harvest. Thirteen years after the launching of our venture he is still flabbergasted by the direction his life has taken.

To catch the eye and be recognized on television he sports two mean sideburns shaved into arabesques on either cheek. You might well ask why, as he has no need of such artifices : with that whimsical Pierrot look that lights up his countenance when everything is going well, you just couldn't mistake him. Swinging on the stars, while renouncing none of the more earthly pleasures (he can speak volumes about the merits of a Chateau-Chalon 1964...), he sometimes has a bit of difficulty with affairs on the earthly plane. But, it is just this, he believes, that helps him to be creative... Even in the most elegant of settings, he will always have the caked mud of his local countryside stuck to the soles of his shoes.
An excellent juggler, he has directed all the shows put on by the company since it began.

With us he has been chief circus hand and then soloist in the orchestra. He is the ex-lead singer of "The Little Triggers", heros of the adolescent moped mob. Back home, opposite the Château de Joux, between his farmhouse and the dark fir-trees, you'll find a herd of about fifty cows, thirty of which bear brass cow-bells. When he entertains them on the accordeon you have an orchestra. He's been taking an interest in ornithology, but missed the Tengmalm owl this year. Even though there are quite a lot around up there on the plateau. But you have to admit, it's a lovely place. Just ask him !

Sophie performed a trapeze act ten years ago for a Belgian TV programme, accompanied as chance would have it, by the Cirque Plume's orchestra. She was ten years old!
We went our ways. Sophie perfecting her art, even obtaining a special prize from the jury at the Wuqiao festival of circus acrobatics in China. She could now look for a job. Then, bingo! Ten years later, Sophie is back!

When small he moved house every year. He taught himself the piano so he wouldn't have to play with the kids in the street which never really was his. Bigger now and a pianist, he can now compose music for the peoples of the earth which has become his. In the past a student of architecture, a manufacturer of spinnets in the Vosges style, a tuner of Bösendorfers, he likes to spread mustard on his glasses. His two visible signs of elegance are his big feet and meticulous handwriting.

He cultivates a primitive hairy look, with a big bushy beard. He was born with the art of the ... euh !... les tâuw tâuw de le bycyclets... but the beard came later. The clogs, which he wears all the time, were made by the last clog-maker of Alsace (to be seen every first Saturday of the month in the market at Veitbruch). He has been doing stunts and tumbles of all sorts ever since the day he tried to escape from his push-chair. The corridors of the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in Chalons-en-Champagne still ring with his gargantuan laughter.

After spending part of her childhood in a community in the seventies, she ventured off at the age of fifteen with a friend, a girl of the same age, to travel through Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Ireland. On her return from her fantastic journey she took up her studies again by correspondance. Later she started studying biology and the tight-rope. The tightrope won. And we have nothing to complain about. When not on tour, she lives with her family in the country with the birds, reptiles and butterflies and all the other beasties that brighten up our landscapes and our lives.

In Aubagne, in Fanny's vegetable garden live spiders which dance upon their webs among the dew-drops. In Fanny's life, there is a cord, and Fanny's hands and feet on this cord are as light as those of the spiders in her garden. Does that surprise you, having a vegetable garden when you live the caravan life on the circus road? Aha, spiders have at time secret connections.

Already as a small boy, he was steeped in music and the circus, of which his parents' apartment was overflowing with iconographical treasures: which led to him hanging around and playing with traditional circus families. All this circus stuff didn't stop him from getting a diploma in electronics.
Working on his music - playing gigs with his father - the growing boy enters the Cirque Plume via the stage-management door with "L'harmonie est-elle municipale?", and then with "Mélanges (opéra plume)" he comes in through the main door with the musicians at the direct request of the Maestro who badly needed his multiple talents.

Gazing upon the bend of a river in the Franche-Comté on a fresh April day, you might mistake her for the mythical Vouivre rare as they are the young women who bathe beneath waterfalls when winter has hardly turned its heels. But she does.
Alice was born on the right side of the looking-glass, in the land of song and dance. She hails from the world of Punch and Judy, she sings and saxophones: ses sons aussi sont de Lyon*.
Thanks Bobby (that's for Robert).

* pun (those were the very words used)