Classically trained musician and mechanical whizz, Franz Clochard has nurtured an inquiring mind and pioneering spirit.
His passion for music and mechanics drew him to the circus where he discovered a world bound only by the limits of his considerable imagination. From piano-playing chickens to acrobatic stunts accompanied by his violin, Franz Clochard traipsed around France from village to village until he came across the ‘Cirque Bidon’ in the south, in 1985.
This meeting gave rise to the circus Archaos. From its humble beginnings where the headlining act was a bunch of chickens, mechanics and motorbikes soon took over and it was an overnight sensation.
Not content to sit back on his famous ascending motorbike and chainsaw, Franz invited jazz musicians and sporting champions into his sensational, metal, ultra-violet universe. The public loved it!
At a time when traditional circus was in the doldrums, Archaos arrived like a breath of foul air! ‘The Incredible Chainsaw Circus’, as the British press called it, played to great acclaim in London and Paris in 1988. Alternative circus was born.
Constantly looking to innovate and create, he founded Mécanique Vivante in 1989, applying his prodigious energy to creating show-stopping contraptions and performances. So welcome to Franz Clochard’s hybrid world where chickens play the piano, chainsaws fly, the cement mixers are orchestral and the Sirens symphonic…
