FEDEC, La Fédération européenne des écoles de cirque professionnelles, has published their Instruction Manual for Cyr Wheel [PDF], a 64-page pedagogical guide to the discipline and its training methodologies.
The new publication follows on from a ten-chapter Basic Circus Arts Instruction Manual FEDEC published episodically between 2005 and 2009, but it marks a big step forward in terms of production and design: the past manuals were fairly bare catalogues of basic vocabulary, but the Cyr Wheel edition frames the discipline with some information on the history of the discipline, plus ends the manual with a Research and Innovation section which has a couple magazine-type articles written by artists. With the usual disclaimer that the English is completely screwed, these are a really neat addition. There's a piece from Quantum circus about using UV lights to turn the wheel into a square, one from Rémy Bénard about welding six Cyr Wheels together into an unruly cube, and one about a collaboration between ESAC and Industrial Design students from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels de La Cambre (the designers bent the wheels all out of shape, in essence).
Between now and 2015 FEDEC will be revising its previous instruction manuals, so hopefully the Cyr edition represents the shape of things going forward. All instruction manuals are available in French and English from the FEDEC site; most of the older ones are also available in German.
The Cyr Wheel manual was written following a Cyr Wheel Module, organised by FEDEC and hosted by Dans och Cirkushögskolan, that took place September 2011 in Stockholm, bringing together recognised artists and teachers from the field.