Florence Pot
Acrobatic Performance Designer
A gymnast at the age of six, Florence Pot completed her university degree in physical education in France and went on to specialize in sports psychology. She decided to move to Montreal in 1991 primarily to continue her academic career.
She studied for her master's degree in sports psychology at the University of Montreal while working as a coach at the club Gymnix de Montréal. She returned to France two years later to choreograph performances for the French Gymnastics Federation.
Motivated by a lack of professional challenges in France and a strong desire to work at Cirque du Soleil, Florence came back to Canada in 1997 to renew her network of contacts at Cirque and work in a variety of capacities, including helping four Canadian gymnasts prepare for the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.
In 2001, she accepted a position scouting acrobatic talent for Cirque's casting department and in 2003 she became the company’s chief scout. In 2006 she accepted the invitation to become Acrobatic Performance Designer on ZED (Cirque's resident show in Tokyo) because she wanted to get closer to the creation process and be part of it from start to finish. She is reprising the same role on TOTEM.
"With TOTEM, the theme of evolution extended into the acrobatic acts in the show,” says Florence Pot, “, which we selected to reflect the evolution of human motor functions.”