From juggling to aerials: Zero Point Circus

From juggling to aerial acrobatics: Zero Point Circus

I met Juliette from the Zéro Point Cirque company, who runs the company with Nicolas. We've been crossing paths for about ten years, sometimes during juggling practices or at a juggling festival or convention. It's a pleasure to introduce you to their careers and their company here.

The Zéro Point Cirque Company is a real breath of fresh air in the world of live performance. Based in Vienna , it was founded in 2013 by these two circus enthusiasts who know how to share their love for this art form that is theirs!

Multi-talented artists

Nicolas and Juliette's circus specialties are very present in their shows, but Juliette tells me that they are above all "very, very multidisciplinary" in the shows they perform...
They can do hula hoops, bounce juggling, tightrope, trapeze, handstands, etc.

Juliette is an aerial acrobat , juggler , truck driver and " hanger of things in the air ". Nicolas is a juggler , circus director and Arduino programmer (he is also a collector of bolts of all types of threads).

Did this passion for the circus arts begin as a child? As a teenager?

"Oh no, not at all, it didn't come to me as a child... I started as an adult in juggling associations . I was an expatriate at the time, I was in Ireland and I arrived there without knowing anyone in the country... I met people through juggling and the circus. Professionalization came much later. We created the company in 2013 , but I was already touring a little before that in Ireland. For me it's been 12 years. Nico it's been 12 years too I think... Nico is "a Geekos"! It's the same, he was a pure and hard juggler, he started with the Nantes juggling associations ."

"I'm going to start learning to weld soon..." - Juliette

"What motivates me enormously and gives me energy... New learning ... It's motivating to learn new things... Already, a few years ago we passed the heavy goods vehicle license for the big top... I work in rigging for the aerials so I trained as a rope access technician and all that... Nico does management , he does electrics ... Now I'm going to train in welding soon. The kind of very practical thing but it's so much fun."

"You see, I've been saying for years that I'm going to make trapezes, I know how to sew, I know how to splice , I know how to do everything, but I don't know how to solder the heart lugs..."

A committed company

The Zéro Point Cirque company was created with the pride of having built itself with the public . It claims a quality circus that adapts to the public and knows how to surprise. The company tours its shows in the street, under their big top and in halls, for an audience of all ages. It is committed to offering a quality field circus, and insists on the importance of maintaining a proposal that is truly all audiences .

When you create a show, how does it happen?

"We created solos, but in the end we didn't tour them much... We mainly toured our duets...

Creating duos? How does it work? Well, it's a mess! Well, we're a couple, so I don't know if we're representative of the average creative... It's very linked to our history... We argue, but we also share really cool things . We go on residencies to have a somewhat neutral workspace because working at home is difficult, especially when you're a couple, I think...

We usually start with one or more ideas, which are just silly things, in the end. In one of our shows, for example, the puppet show: the juggling balls serve as big eyes for the puppets . It's the one we're currently filming the most. It started with Nico acting like a fool with his balls, saying: "blue, pah, well, little gnah, I'm a little character..." you see, he actually made his balls talk...

We hope that the writing of what we do can touch and make all generations laugh together.

What equipment?

For a long time, my favorite discipline was Hula Hoop. Then I discovered aerial exercises and they became the new craze... Tightrope, trapeze, handstands.
So yes, it's hard on the body, especially post-pregnancy... But it's also the circus performer's job to make sure it's sustainable in the long term...
Nico: Balls bounce like crazy. We've always been very multidisciplinary, but Nico remains a pure-bred juggler.

The big top!

"The big top period... so yes, we surrounded ourselves with a team for the mediation part. We had a team with fitters, a woman too who replaced me while I was pregnant... But we're going to sell the big top now... We decided to simplify our lives a little... We bought it during the lockdown. We did big projects with the national education system and the big top. In fact, we set up and implemented mediation projects where the kids were brought in to do workshops circus , to show their shows within the school. It was so cool, can you imagine having a big top set up in your yard... And then we also played with the company underneath...

We realized that it didn't support us enough. It requires a lot, a lot, a lot (3x) of production ! Especially finding partner structures , managing rectorate meetings, so that teachers know what's going on, etc. All that made us a bit crazy, it wasn't really what we wanted to do. What we love is the practical part, so ok we arrive, we have to park there with the heavy goods vehicle, hopla the marquee, we put it up, etc. But then the paperwork part, the network part, it bored us... And then running a marquee now is really ambitious. Honestly, I don't know if there are many people who manage to run marquees without doing that...

School teachers who get involved...

This paragraph doesn't really belong here, but in the middle of the interview we opened a parenthesis on the involvement of teachers in circus projects and we share it with you here! Because ultimately, just like Zéro Point Cirque, at NetJuggler we also work every day with school teachers.

"Actually, working with town halls isn't always easy, but the day you meet teachers who want to do things and bring the circus to the kids, you get the impression that they're people who would push through any wall. It's impressive, you'd better not get in their way."

And we also see it at NetJuggler, the teachers who come to us to buy their supplies are those who make the effort to research because ultimately it would be easier for them to take equipment from the catalogs of community suppliers that are lying around in the staff room! Because they want to equip themselves properly, they call us, sometimes talk to us for hours in their free time to be sure that their students will have access to what they need to learn... It takes passion. And our experiences show that there are many school teachers who do incredible work for their students. Anyway, back to the point!

Unforgettable shows

The Zéro Point Cirque company offers a variety of shows, each more creative than the last. The Cirque en Bar...re show, part circus, part theater, is a blend of juggling, acrobatics, and object manipulation, inspired by the cartoons of our childhood. Les Impromptus Circassiens, meanwhile, is an ode to freedom, self-expression, and the refusal to conform. Eglantine, a circus lecture on the art of seduction by a celibacy expert, is a show for the whole family.

Circus acts for all your events

The Zéro Point Cirque company also offers cabaret acts for all types of events, performing independently or within a cabaret, indoors or outdoors. With years of experience in show logistics, the company adapts to all requests.

How to handle drops? Falls in the middle of a show...

"I can't handle them in the air because I'm not allowed to drop... Otherwise I'd fall from the top of the big top.

I've done drops while juggling, but honestly, even after years of performing, I think I'm still intrinsically afraid of them because for me there's this pressure of professionalism . I had a juggling teacher a long time ago who said that to be a juggler you have to succeed at something on stage 11 times out of 10. I feel like I've evolved with this idea that you don't have the right to drop. Crazy pressure! Afterwards, I did a lot of clowning, so I think it's quite beneficial because you learn to take it as a gift: a gift on stage , and luckily, otherwise you experience it as purgatory on stage."

How do you deal with the weather when you play outdoors?

"It's not easy, but overall there are times when we don't play because it's dangerous in terms of aerials and as it's part of the writing of our shows we can't play without it. We have the simple trick of warning the organizers that we need a fallback solution , and if they don't have one, we have to postpone the show until later .

Actually, we don't have many options. We've played in some light rain showers, but not too bad ...

We are trying to get the organizers to accept clauses in our contracts to be reimbursed. even if we can't play. Because if we have to go and play far from our base, we've made the trip, we've settled in, we may have refused other dates to be there. We can't afford that in fact. For the moment we've been lucky there haven't been too many cases where we've had to cancel... It's quite rare that that happens in the end. We've managed to escape the rain for the moment ."

But what a figure of speech Juliette! It will allow me to reconcile a little with my friend Florence who corrects me and gives me feedback on the writing of my articles here! And bam! Thanks Juliette :-). I do what I can Florence, I improvise as a journalist, I remind you that it is not my job at the base!

Advice for young people starting out in the circus profession

"Well: listen to advice without listening to it... Everyone will have their own idea of how you should do it! But I really think there is no magic formula... When you started out in the cultural sector, it was extremely vast and that scared us a little at first..."

Oh yes yes yes, I have a mega piece of advice: go play! It doesn't matter if it's paid or not, associations, schools... Get your stuff out... because in fact there's only a confrontation with the public that allows you to know what you're doing. And if it doesn't work, above all you have to go play somewhere else because you can't let yourself get demoralized. The first times on stage you can let yourself die a little: when you've dropped a lot for example... I repeat: you really have to go play: tip number one!
Open stages, there are plenty of associations that organize them, even the local nursing home: "Hi, I have something to present to the residents, don't you have a cultural facilitator?" They'll be happy. You'll give them free entertainment, plus you'll be helping out some old people. So it could be the local recreation center, or anything, really, but you have to go there. You can talk for hours about creating a show, about having a deadline, but if you don't perform it... Afterwards, you still have to be careful to go to caring environments so as not to get discouraged either."

A show that you no longer tour?

"Braize, our fire show... We don't perform it anymore. And yet we had a good laugh! That one only had text, contrary to what I told you earlier that our shows had little text...

He asked us for logistics that we can no longer organize for a few dates a year. For example, there were big fireworks at the end, and that meant we had to order them and test them each time because the fireworks change all the time from one order to the next...

But we had a good laugh, right? We pretended to blow up a child! I swear it worked really well. We gave a stick of dynamite to a kid in the audience and what's more, we usually took a really cute one and put noise-canceling headphones on him...

There was a tiny kid with a huge dynamic baton in his hands, he often didn't understand what was going on. The audience laughed..."

Many thanks, Juliette, for your time for this interview. Thanks also to the photographers and videographers who allowed us to illustrate this article. Readers and visitors, to learn more, please feel free to check out the links we've included at the bottom of the article.