Un Loup pour l'Homme

• 2005
• France

Based on real events and powered by an extraordinary physical prowess, the company’s first piece Appris par corps was a celebration of the circus arts, a paean to action in which acrobatic virtuosity is tempered with a profound sense of humanity.
These same values form the basis of the project Grand-mère, first launched by Alexandre Fray in 2006, which uses the trapeze to reflect upon the ageing process. Here Fray’s acrobatics expose a certain fragility, painting an intimate portrait of the meeting between an elderly lady and an acrobat.
Buoyed by their past successes and enriched by experience, in 2011 Un loup pour l’homme premiered Face Nord. In this new show, four men navigate a visual lexicon of unspoken rules and physical games, tracing the roots of acrobatics back to the innocent creativity of childhood play.
In 2017 the team expanded to create Rare Birds, a show in the round which explores the evolution of movement, based on perpetually-shifting patterns which spark off chain reactions. With over 500 performances under their belt, the company has achieved national and international renown. Their artistic sensibility, breaking with the exclusively physical image of circus performance, has helped steer the course of the (relatively young) history of the trapeze as a discipline, inspiring a whole new generation of artists.