His quarters, he has them. For a long time, and whatever the system of calculation. Alain Pacherie, who turns 74 on February 3, has been working since the age of 14. His pivotal age? "100 years," he smiles. Not that the boss of the Phoenix circus, the largest marquee in the world, which is hosting tomorrow's Circus Festival this week and has just won a very large contract in China, is insensitive to the pension problem.
Last Thursday, he hosted under his tent an evening of the CGT-Spectacles in support of the strikers, with a concert bringing together ten artists, from Cali to Imany. He said yes because he couldn't see why he would have refused. “I was asked, they only had eight days to find an available room in Paris, they struggled. "
His political ideas, the former communist teenager keeps them for himself. Nothing compelled him to attend this evening in person. But Alain Pacherie has never missed a performance in twenty years in his circus, whatever it is. At 7 p.m., when the doors open, the public is already there. An air of the Human Festival. The owner cannot repress a smile of comfort. A full room, he adores. It's carnal, an audience. He "the homebody", he says, will remain until the end, after midnight, when "the Song of the partisans" is sung throughout the room.
Communist and diplomat
However, the day had been long. Three other big files on his table. Prepare for the World Circus Festival of tomorrow, which welcomes numbers of young virtuosos from all over the planet from January 29. But the urgency is to be at 3 p.m. in Courbevoie for the rehearsal of the show of the Stars of Mongolia which, after having triumphed in Paris, begin their tour this weekend, in Lyon and in Tours.
Artists have to adapt to smaller rooms. Festival of falls and approximations. The head of an acrobat brushes the ground a few inches. "Wow! Exclaims the whole team. "The circus is dangerous, eh," breathes Alain Pacherie, who dictates his instructions, translated by the Mongolian manager of the troupe.
This one is called Orgilbold Batbold - Orguilo for lockers and friends - and has two great stories to tell us. Alain is linked to both. “My mother, contortionist, was the first Mongolian artist to win a gold medal at her World Circus Festival in 1983. She was pregnant with me when she won, and Alexis Gruss hired her soon after. It was suddenly a pregnancy of five months, but she made her number, "smiles the artist.
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And the second story? “I came to Paris five times to convince Mr. Pacherie that the Mongolian circus was different from the Chinese he often produces. At first, he didn't want to. I insisted. Phoenix is the dream, one of the biggest circuses in the world. He did the work of a government, to publicize Mongolia. And every morning for two months, he was warming up to encourage us. We had never seen that. Please write it down: I thank Mr. Pacherie. I hope we will go to the end of the world together. "
Not impossible. Alain Pacherie, who produced and staged troops from Asia, Africa, Cuba, feels like a dashing thoroughbred because he lives a "consecration". This is the third dossier: on April 26, he will launch a permanent show in China for five years, at the Shanghai Acrobatic Theater, a 2000-seat permanent enclosure, for which he won the two markets, the interior renovation of the place and creating the show.
Among its competitors during the call for tenders, two large Canadian circuses, Eloize and the 7 Doigts de la main, while Cirque du Soleil, for its part, pushed its pawns and its acrobats to another megalopolis, in Hangzhou, after a failed first experience in Macau.
Chinese trust
China, a circus land in full economic development, which the big international troops are tearing themselves away from. “Canadians are used to working internationally. Me no. It's new. China has very technically strong artists, but for the artistic, we can bring them something ”, decrypts the boss of Phoenix. To win this budget of 4 to 5 million euros, it was necessary to convince a jury where sat the Ministry of Culture of China, the city of Shanghai, local television…
The French entrepreneur has made a name for himself there by producing in Paris eight times the Étoiles de Pékin, a label that brings together many companies scattered across the Chinese territory. "With him, the trust is there," sums up Mi Lu, a former diplomat at the Chinese Embassy in Paris who met Pacherie twenty-five years ago, before opening his artistic agency in the country.
"From Alfortville to Shanghai, there has been a long way", cowardly, dreamy, the boss of Phoenix, this Thursday morning, in his offices near the Star. His mother worked in school canteens in the city of Val-de-Marne. The father of his first two children died as a soldier in 1939 in the not "funny war". Alain's, she puts it out because he drinks way too much. He died alone, adrift, buried in the mass grave. “I very rarely saw him as a child and then lost sight of him. It's a shame, because it was already working well for me when he died. If I had known, I could have helped him. "
Sad novel? "No," he said. I have always been loved and surrounded, "adds the man who, having made his fortune, bought his little pavilion with garden from her social housing from her mother, already an improvement after the two maid's rooms for four of her childhood. .
Difficult but romantic beginnings
How many lives has he had? He owned his first circus at age 54. Before, he did everything, worker, delivery of flowers, then artistic agent from his 18 years. “I saw Johnny at 17 at the Olympia. There must have been 21… The atmosphere, the lights, the public reaction, the dancers on cubes… I decided that it would be my job. And I never doubted. It comes from my mother, who encouraged me. "He won a contract for friends who played in a rock group, was hired by an artistic agent. “The first year, I didn't earn anything. My mother left me 2.50 francs each morning for the metro and my sandwich. For her, it was a lot. "
From his difficult but romantic beginnings - he scraps iron in the office of Eddie Barclay to defend a young singer, dines with the writer Louis Aragon whose poems are put into songs - he keeps an absolute fidelity for those who accompany him. Mimi, its general manager, still comes to the office, at the age of 71, including forty-three of common professional life. "I must have heard him slam the door twice altogether and for everything ..." she said. Its ten permanent employees have fifteen, twenty or thirty years of residence. A family for him who has a companion but no children.
"I consider him my uncle," even lets go Lorie Pester, the singer and actress whom he started at 16 in a show for teens at the Zenith in Paris, before she sang hits like "I will be" or "Sur un air latino" in the early 2000s. "He was immediately benevolent, kind, reassuring," she recalls. He's the producer we'd all like to have. I know I can call him anytime, if in doubt, even now. Artistically, he always has good ideas. "
Alain Pacherie could have become a great producer of concerts, like his friend Gilbert Coullier, who is the same age and made Johnny Hallyday or Céline Dion tour, but he chose the circus: "It's a world more authentic than the song , where far too many people who are not already pretend to be stars. Nice but sometimes definitive. Never play it backwards.
"Each year I had to convince the Prime Minister's wife"
Its ascent remains underground for a long time. For thirty years, he organized Christmas trees for works councils, including that of Matignon. “Each year, I had to convince the Prime Minister's wife, who validates the show. I have known many of them, from Madame Barre to Madame de Villepin. My favorite was Madame Mauroy, a love, who confided in me about the violence of the political world. Only one prodigiously annoyed me, I will not say which ... ”
Alain Pacherie does not want to be enemies. He had him, whom the great circus families looked down upon. The atmosphere has changed, it is respected, success and loyalty oblige. “It's a myth, circus families, anyway. It's everyone for themselves, ”explains Valérie Fratellini, juror of the World Circus Festival of tomorrow, and who works with him within the Fratellini Academy. She knew him as a kid: “He produced my mother's show, Annie Fratellini. Like her, he had a very early desire for a modern circus, without animals. "
The one who was a clown herself supported him when he created his circus Phoenix in 1999, swept away by the storm of December 26 of that year, hence its name: "It was always his dream, to have a circus. The storm didn't have to be there! Instead of killing it, it has increased its strength tenfold. He looked twenty years younger. Alain, I see it as a racing car, a classy, sporty and very elegant car. "
A circus school in Iraq
Recently, the one who discovered late that his grandfather had been a trapeze artist went through another intimate storm, parotid cancer which led to a transplant. “It's not easy to remove part of the cheek, but Alain went through it as if he had the flu. I only saw him happy. He is a man who feeds on the happiness of others, "explains his friend Dominique Bayle, who heads the humanitarian association of the Little Princes, whom the circus boss has always supported.
Recently, he went to Iraq, to create a small circus school for child soldiers or refugees, victims of the war, with another NGO, EliseCare, founded by Élise Boghossian, who was also fascinated: hadn't thought. The Iraqi kids are more interested in football, and I had contacted former members of the French team. But Alain is going so fast. I felt he was very touched by this resilience program. He found me a tent that will be put up this year in the camp. He has a natural empathy. Some people look at these kids as if they have the plague. He taught them to roll in five minutes. "
Resilience. "I will never stop working, helping. I want to die in my circus. But in a very long time, ”he eludes. The boss of Phoenix shows us the little machine for printing tickets for the show, proud as a kid. “Everything is homemade. 300,000 tickets each season… If I had been told that one day. Next winter, he will present an all-female show. He kept a revolutionary heart.
LANDMARKS
1946: birth. He grew up in Alfortville (Val-de-Marne), where he lived until his 50th birthday.
1967: after odd jobs, he receives his first regular salary as an artistic agent.
1999: creation of the Phoenix circus.
2002: last show with animals. In France, Alain Pacherie, who had welcomed cubs, tigers, sea lions and even crocodiles in his menagerie, is the first, outside the new circus, to give it up.
2020: from January 26 to February 2, it will host the World Circus Festival of Tomorrow, Reuilly lawn (Paris XII). On April 26, the renovated Acrobatic Theater opens in Shanghai, with a show produced and created by him.
