Maël was born in February 1998 in Pau, a city in southwestern France, close to the mountains and the Atlantic Ocean.
His mother is a former student of the Centre national des arts du cirque and later became the director of an amateur circus school. His father, meanwhile, founded his own circus school on his own. He therefore grew up in a family deeply passionate about this art form, which he has practiced since childhood.
During his training, always curious and eager to discover and learn, he explored many different disciplines and was mainly drawn to the Chinese pole.
Alongside circus arts, throughout his childhood, he tried many other activities. He enjoys outdoor sports, especially board sports, and dislikes competition. He also experimented with drawing, from manga to graffiti on paper, canvas, and walls, as well as more realistic styles. He began learning guitar as a self-taught musician during high school and continues to play today.
After completing a scientific baccalaureate with a focus on mathematics, he had two very different options: entering an engineering school and becoming an airline pilot, or attending circus school to become an artist. Unable to imagine life without circus, he decided to apply to different schools and eventually joined the preparatory year at the École nationale des arts du cirque de Rosny-sous-Bois. He then followed the full ENACR/CNAC curriculum, specializing in Chinese pole. He also explored other disciplines he particularly enjoyed: trampoline, balancing, partner acrobatics, and acrobatics.
As a child, he loved attending circus classes, where he could enjoy the present moment and forget everything else, in a warm and welcoming environment.
The Chinese pole is now his place of emancipation. He appreciates the connection this apparatus creates between air and earth, the ability to rise and defy gravity. He has always been motivated to develop his technical skills and expand his movement vocabulary. He now works on his relationship to the ground, the interplay between ground and pole, horizontality and verticality. His Cartesian mindset also influences his movement style on the pole.
Working on a solo apparatus nevertheless allows him to value collective work, which brings richer encounters, exchanges, pleasures, and also challenges him with different habits and working methods. At the École nationale des arts du cirque de Rosny-sous-Bois, he meets Hector Diaz Mallea, another Chinese pole student in his cohort. Through working together, they get to know and appreciate each other.
Thus, in the final year of the program, a collective artistic project begins to take shape with Maël and Hector Diaz Mallea on Chinese pole, Marica Marinoni on Cyr wheel, and Pablo Peñailillo and Fernando Casado Arevalo on rope.
Their goal is to create a short piece that can tour in festivals.