Paris (AFP)

Renowned circus artist Yoann Bourgeois on Saturday dismissed suspicions of plagiarism after an anonymous video showed similarities between more than a dozen small extracts from his shows and those of other artists.

The video, broadcast a week ago on the Vimeo platform, under the title "the use of works", is a montage showing, superimposed, excerpts of more or less one minute of key shows by Mr. Bourgeois such as "He which falls "or" The Art of the fugue ", with extracts from other artists.

Each time the videos show important similarities in the figures or staging devices.

"I categorically refute the suspicions of plagiarism, these are not quotes or even tributes, I am engaged in the creation of original works", told AFP the circus artist known for his acrobatic performance and also co-director of the National Choreographic Center of Grenoble.

The video is according to him a "compilation of short fragments which give the feeling of manipulation and which is very violent; I am deeply hurt by this method".

According to him, "it is not a question of a similarity between works but between devices or pieces of devices whose staging is different, that never reveals the singular quality of a writing".

"There are close or distant filiations between Circassian artists," he said.

On Facebook, one of the artists concerned, Chloé Moglia, claims to have been "seized" when she saw in 2014 a sequence of the show "Midnight" by Yoann Bourgeois which strongly resembled a sequence from his own show, "In suspense", while no 'not accusing the artist of plagiarism.

Yoann Bourgeois also affirmed that "anonymous defamatory emails" had been "sent to each member of my team with this video" and that "anonymous emails asked for calls for contributions to companies".

"At the same time, I saw the transformation of my Wikipedia page, the reuse of the domain of my old website from my company which bears my name," he said.

© 2021 AFP