Monkey Style

• France

After touring street performances throughout Europe, in 2004 he upped sticks to Poland to join the Klan Grus FireCircus, adapting to life in the big top and putting on shows and workshops primarily focusing on Polish villages with little access to culture. After a brief return to the Canaries, where he perfected his balloon sculpting technique, he headed to Valencia in 2006 to study first clowning and then movement and voice, following the Lecoq method.

Gabriel moved again in 2008, still driven by his desire to create a solo show using balloons. He soon joined up with the FAAAC project, based in a Polish village and hosting training programmes, work-in-progress performances and laboratories for artistic research.

He spent the summer of 2009 in France, performing at various festivals with his solo fire show Futo. He then decided to take up the offer of an artistic residency at the Ecole de Cirque Turbul in Nîmes. Now based in the South of France, he threw himself into learning French while also engaging in occasional collaborations with local street performance companies. He performed at numerous events, street art festivals and circus festivals, all the while continuing to develop his own skills as both director and balloon artist. In November 2010 he joined the Rhizophage project, a collective of 20 artists developing and performing new projects under the watchful eye of Alexandre Del Perugia. Finally, the time had come to present his solo show to the world: Babylloon was born in 2012, and has been touring France and Europe ever since.