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T h e U n o f f i c i a l
C i r q u e d u S o l e i l N e w s l e t t e r
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http://www.CirqueFascination.com
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VOLUME 18, NUMBER 9 September 2018 ISSUE #176
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Welcome to the latest edition of Fascination, the Unofficial Cirque
du Soleil Newsletter.
Just when you think it's been a rather slow month for Cirque news and
happenings, up comes two events right at press-time that change all
that. First, a post by the founders of the Blue Man Group announcing
they are stepping away from the company they founded. Second, Seattle's
first-ever showing of Volta being canceled 30 minutes in due to a
hydraulic malfunction.
* * * BLUE MAN FOUNDERS STEPPING BACK * * *
On Friday, September 7th, the following announcement was posted to
Blue Man Group's Facebook page:
Dear Friends and Family of Blue Man Group,
With a mixture of excitement and, of course, immense freaking pride
in what we have accomplished over the last 27 years, were
announcing that we are taking a step back from Blue Man Group.
Were anxious to explore other creative paths that inspire us as
artists. And we feel the team in place made up of long time Blue
Man creative directors that we all know and trust are fully
prepared to take Blue Man Group towards its most luminescent,
tribal and visceral next step. Our bond to Blue Man Group remains
strong, not only as founders but as advisors who will continue to
provide input and guidance, ensuring that the mission to Live Life
in Full Color is always celebrated. This moment of change reminds
us that Blue Man Group was built on taking chances, experimentation
and challenging the norm. Way back when, we werent so inclined to
hand over the job of Blue Man to anyone
until we did, enabling us
to imagine the show in Boston. Guess you could say that worked out
well, and so will this. We thank you for your unending support and
celebration of our vision. Heres to the next chapter for Blue Man
Group!
Best,
Chris Wink & Phil Stanton
Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group purchased Blue Man Group on
July 6, 2017.
* * * VOLTA'S OPENING NIGHT IN SEATTLE CANCELED * * *
As published in the Seattle Times: The opening show for Cirque du
Soleils VOLTA show at Redmonds Marymoor Park was abruptly canceled
Friday night after liquid from below the stage sprayed the audience.
The Redmond Fire Department was at the scene, but could not
immediately be reached for comment. King County sheriffs spokeswoman
Sgt. Cynthia Sampson said two deputies went to the venue and found no
serious injuries. Relaying information deputies received from the fire
department, Sampson said, some sort of hydraulic line from a piece
of machinery burst and sprayed a few people. It was nothing
nefarious. It was just an industrial issue with a piece of machinery.
Jonathan Fay, who was sitting four rows from the front, said the 8pm
show was 30 to 45 minutes in when the liquid sprayed the audience.
There was suddenly a huge plume that looked like a steam effect, Fay
said. It went out into the audience and went pretty far back, dozens
of rows. The first one was almost like vapor and then there was a
spray that looked like water at first. Fay said that when the stage-
hands came out, their feet began slipping. They instantly lost their
balance and looked like they were ice skating, he said.
At first an automated announcement said the show was temporarily
suspended, then it was indefinitely suspended, until eventually a
live voice said the show was canceled and asked viewers to collect
a pamphlet at the concession stand with instructions on how to proceed.
Fay said the flyer said all who purchased tickets with a credit card
would be receive refunds. Up until that point it was absolutely
spectacular; I was looking forward to seeing the rest of the show and
will definitely come back, Fay said.
Our very own Keith Johnson was attending VOLTA that night and found
the experience to be "UH-MAZE-ING!" He'll have a review of that
experience for us next month.
* * * CURTAIN FALLS ON "JUSTE UNE P'TITE NUITE" * * *
Tired, a bit nostalgic, but full of pride, the show's 29 artists
thanked the crowd on Saturday, August 18th as the lights went out on
the very last performance. "It's always a very emotional moment," said
Steve Dubé, General Manager of the Corporation des événements de Trois-
Rivières. "They worked hard and the public's reception was exceptional.
After nine weeks and twenty performances, we can say that - once again
- Cirque's magic has worked!"
Although it's still too early to know the exact number of tickets
sold, coordinator at Tourism Trois-Rivières, Daniel Rioux, speaks of an
exceptional year: "What we see for the moment is very positive. Since
the beginning, Cirque du Soleil has occupancy rates that range around
95% and this year it shouldn't be any different. The last three nights
were full!"
The presence of Cirque du Soleil for a fourth consecutive year confirms
that this product has become a major attraction for the city and the
region. "With this show, we wanted to expand the customer base and I
can say that we succeeded," says Dubé. We could see we were bringing in
the public from all over compared to the other three years. People from
outside the region came in large numbers. You can see it with hotels and
restaurants," Dubé added.
And there's more to come.
Cirque du Soleil initially signed a three-year contract with the city
of Trois-Rivières to produce three unique shows for the Amphithéâtre
Cogeco. After the first show's success, two more years were added to
the relationship. And back in October, after last year's successful
show, Cirque du Soleil and the corporation of Trois-Rivières events
extended their agreement for 5 additional years. So, the Hommage Series
will continue for a total of 10 years... through 2024! Stay tuned for
an announcement for next year's show. In the meantime, enjoy these
two new videos from the show:
Making of video:
https://www.facebook.com/45degreescirquedusoleil/videos/2071294869853277/
Thank You Video:
https://www.facebook.com/45degreescirquedusoleil/videos/309126453173924/
* * * IN THE ISSUE * * *
In "We're Off and Running", the 16-part series that we concluded last
month, Fascination! explored some of the first reviews, peeks, and
evaluations of Cirque du Soleil's touring shows (from Le Cirque
Réinventé through to Varekai) as they took their first steps across
North America. Sometimes the coverage was just a brief blurb about the
show and its theme, occasionally there was a short interview with a
performer, a stage hand, or creation director, and other times the
article was an assessment of the show itself, evaluating its technical
and acrobatic merits with what had come through before. Although we
narrowed our series to focus on touring shows that had hit the road
before Fascination began publication (with the exception of Varekai),
what of Cirque's signature resident shows? What interesting blurbs did
we uncover about Mystère, "O", La Nouba or even the company itself in
the course of our investigation? Enough, as it turns out, for "We're
Off and Running II", a four-part sequel series to begin with a double-
helping of articles about Cirque du Soleil: The Company. But what is
represented here is just a fraction of what's been published about
Cirque du Soleil over the years - many such articles within these very
pages. But like with the prequel series, looking back at articles
about the company from 10, 15, even 20 years ago brings back not only
nostalgic pangs, but it reacquaints us with how Cirque du Soleil saw
itself and its future... only to find change along the way.
Okay, so let's go!
/----------------------------------------------------\
| |
| Join us on the web at: |
| < www.cirquefascination.com > |
| |
| At CirqueCast: |
| < http://www.cirquecast.com/ > |
| |
| Realy Simple Syndication (RSS) Feed (News Only): |
| < http://www.cirquefascination.com/?feed=rss2 > |
| |
\----------------------------------------------------/
- Ricky "Richasi" Russo
===========
CONTENTS
===========
o) Cirque Buzz -- News, Rumours & Sightings
* La Presse -- General News & Highlights
* Q&A -- Quick Chats & Press Interviews
o) Itinéraire -- Tour/Show Information
* BigTop Shows -- Under the Grand Chapiteau
* Arena Shows -- In Stadium-like venues
* Resident Shows -- Performed en Le Théâtre
o) Outreach -- Updates from Cirque's Social Widgets
* Webseries -- Official Online Featurettes
* Videos -- Official Peeks & Noted Fan Finds
o) Fascination! Features
* "We're Off and Running II
Part 1 of 4: The Company"
By: Ricky Russo - Atlanta, Georgia (USA)
o) Copyright & Disclaimer
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CIRQUE BUZZ -- NEWS, RUMOURS & SIGHTINGS
=======================================================================
***************************************************************
LA PRESSE -- General News & Highlights
***************************************************************
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BAZZAR to debut with two Indian performers & Mallakhamb
{Aug.09.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
Two Indians, quite a bit of mallakhamb, aerial hoops and suspension
acts are among the thrills you can expect at the India debut of Cirque
Du Soleil. The Canadian troupe that started with 14 street dancers in
1984 is bringing its large-than-life production values to Mumbai on
November 14, from where it will travel to Delhi, most likely in mid-
December.
Cirque Du Soleil (French for Circus of the Sun) is known for its
traveling big-top tents, its hit shows in Las Vegas, and its wild,
over-the-top acrobatics. Theyre expected to bring 25 containers full
of props and costumes, a cast and crew of 62 and a tent 19 metres high
and 41 metres in diameter to their debut at the MMRDA grounds in BKC.
The production, called Bazzar, follows a troupe (like Cirque) who have
come together from different backgrounds to develop a show and build
the sets, led by their Maestro. Theres a dramatic interlude between a
floating woman and the Maestro. Theres a hairceau act, featuring
acrobatics by a woman suspended by a metal loop embedded in her
topknot. And a sampling of the aerial-hoop, acrobats-flying-at-each-
other kinds of stunts that they are best known for.
For the first time ever, were introducing two Indian performers who
will display strength and technique through mallakhamb, says Marie
Helene Delage, director of creation for Bazzar. Weve created Bazzar
as a way to introduce Cirque to India, since wed been looking to tour
here for a while, adds Finn Taylor, senior vice president of Touring
Shows.
The show will accommodate about 1,500 in Mumbai. India is a
completely new market for us. Thats why we are working with local
partners to help us better understand the Indian ways and culture,
says Delage.
One of the two mallakhamb artists theyve roped in is 34-year-old
Santacruz resident Rajesh Mudki, who says he had been waiting for such
an opportunity for the longest time. He was given the freedom to
create his own character and will be introducing the audience to Mr
No, in a four-and-a-half-minute spiritual act that imparts positive
energy to other characters.
As international audiences have seen with Mystère (acrobats with a
pinch of Chaplin comedy), Michael Jackson ONE (a joyful homage to the
pop singer), and even Love (that plays homage to The Beatles), every
production could include anything from people being shot out of
cannons to Ferris wheels that spit fireworks.
{ SOURCE: Hindustan Times }
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Michael Jackson Diamond Celebration in Las Vegas!
{Aug.09.2018}
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Hosted by The Estate of Michael Jackson and Sony Music in honor of the
King of Pops very special birthday, guests are invited to DAYLIGHT
Beach Club following a performance of the critically acclaimed Michael
Jackson ONE show at Mandalay Bay. The venue will be filled with
experiential activations inspired by Michael Jacksons iconic short
films. Sway Calloway of Sway in the Morning will emcee the night
which will feature a surprise superstar performance, a guest DJ set by
Mark Ronson, house DJs and more.
WHERE:
Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89119
WHEN:
Wednesday, Aug. 29, Michael Jacksons Birthday
Michael Jackson Diamond Birthday Celebration, Red Carpet and superstar
performances at DAYLIGHT Beach Club at Mandalay Bay (Red carpet closes
at 10pm; party continues until 1am)
WHO:
o) PARIS JACKSON, Ambassador, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation
o) PRINCE JACKSON
o) JACKIE JACKSON
o) MARLON JACKSON
o) TITO JACKSON
o) SWAY CALLOWAY, Sway in the Morning
o) DAVID ARQUETTE, Ambassador, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation
o) MARK RONSON
o) GABRIELLE UNION
o) and MORE
With a hit Vegas show, a Broadway play in the works, a huge Drake
track on which Michael is the featured vocalist, a limited edition
sneaker from one of the worlds top luxury designers, a critically
acclaimed Michael Jackson-inspired exhibit at the National video
views, Michael Jackson is as hot as ever. We honor his excellence,
achievement and compassion with this birthday celebration.
Michael used his extraordinary popularity, influence, time, energy
money and heart to make the world a better place. For this years very
special Diamond Birthday Celebration, the Estate has decided to honor
Michaels well-known desire to help disadvantaged people around the
world by joining forces with The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to
bring accessible and free health care to those living in southern
rural Malawi.
Paris Jackson and Prince Jackson will accept the 2018 Elizabeth Taylor
Legacy Award for Humanitarian Service awarded to their father Michael
Jackson posthumously. Elizabeth Taylor used to say, What is a genius?
What is a megastar? Michael Jackson, thats all!
{ SOURCE: Broadway World }
-------------------------------------------------------
LFW finale to give first glimpse of BAZZAR
{Aug.10.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
Lakme Fashion Week Winter/Festive 2018s finale will be bigger this
time with Cirque du Soleil performing their never seen before act
Bazzar at the fashion extravaganza.
The theme of the finale this year is Shades of Diva and ace fashion
designer Monisha Jaisingh will be presenting her collection inspired
by the same.
Cirque du Soleil of course needs no introduction and its really
exciting to have them perform at the Lakme Absolute Grand Finale. Im
looking forward to the vibrant and stunning act from Bazzar which
will be performed at the finale, Monisha said in a statement.
Bazzar costume designer James Lovie said their act resonates well
with LFWs finale theme and they are looking forward to perform at the
gala.
As the history of Cirque du Soleil is rooted in street performance,
my inspiration for Cirque du Soleil Bazzar costume was coming from
the works of contemporary 20th century artistes, conceptual
architectural clothing, and street style. I am thrilled to share
Cirque du Soleil unicity with the Lakme Fashion Week audience, Lavoie
said.
Talking about the show, Ashwath Swaminathan, Head of Innovations,
Lakme said their aim has always been to give their audiences a new
experience and they are looking forward to Cirque du Soleils debut
act in India.
We have always aimed at making the Finale very special for it to
leave a mark in the minds of the audience. This season we are happy to
take this a notch up with Cirque du Soleil performing their beautiful
act which promises to enthrall the audience with their artistry whilst
resonating well with the seasons theme, he said.
Lakme Fashion Week Winter/Festive 2018 is scheduled to happen from
August 22 to 26.
{ SOURCE: The Week India }
-------------------------------------------------------
Britains oldest clown, 86, Says He Will Keep
Working Until He Dies
{Aug.21.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
Hes had audiences in hysterics for decades and Britains oldest
working clown Brian Dewhurst intends to have the last laugh, even if
it means dying while on stage.
Still performing eight shows a week, even at 86 the idea of retirement
sounds ridiculous to him.
Brian believes hell carry on clowning until his final curtain.
He says: I joke to colleagues, If I dont come out of the box on
stage just take it away and bury me.
I feel alive on stage, so to take a final bow would not be such a bad
way to go. I cant stop working. Its in my blood.
Brought up in Manchester with his grandma while his circus-performer
parents Manz and Chico toured the world, Brian believes he was born to
entertain.
At 13 he did skits at a local zoo and loved it so much he left school
a year early for a circus career.
Something about the circus just drew me in, he says. When I was
with my parents in the school holidays it would be natural to try
juggling, rope throwing and things like discipline and work ethic.
Working as a clowns assistant, hearing the audience react with
laughter and applause was my reward and felt it was my natural home. I
just felt like I belonged.
In a career spreading joy across the world, Brian won fans among
Hollywoods greatest stars, coached acrobatics to Great Britain
athletes and, most proudly, performed with his children Nicky and
Sally.
For the past 20 years he has starred as the mischievous Brian Le Petit
in Cirque Du Soleils show Mystere in Las Vegas.
Recently he was honoured with a Las Vegas award for lifetime
achievement, alongside Nicky.
Brian says: To be celebrated like this is astonishing as I never set
out in my career to win awards, just entertain people. Working with
the public keeps you fresh and on your feet. You never know what the
audience will do it makes it exciting and fun to go to work.
I dont think about my age really, it is just numbers. A lot of the
Mystere troupe are around a third of my age. I find I feed off the
energy of these whippersnappers. And I dont think about stopping,
What else am I going to do?
Brian has mastered far more than slapstick stunts and became known as
one of the best tightrope walkers on the circus circuit. He says: I
was always athletic and sporty, so the wire was a starting point to
expand on tricks.
For practice it was a couple of feet above ground, but I took one
step out and then continued walking.
I didnt even think of coming off. It was just as normal as walking
down the street.
Then I built into the act skipping, dancing and juggling while up
there. I loved to get the laughs.
Brian also fell in love with singer Julie Dey and they married in 1959
and toured the world with their cabaret act. He says: It was a great
life. Ill never forget the year in Africa, playing 200 shows,
travelling by train. On the back car you could sit on the balcony,
watching lions, giraffes and elephants in their habitat.
Wherever we went we made friends and learned so much. Every day was
an adventure and I had Julie to share the ride.
In 1965 Brian was flown to New York to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show
four weeks before The Beatles performed. He says: It was a big show
and an honour, but I saw it as well-paid gig. People today would see
that as an opportunity to break into TV and movies, but I was settled
in my career.
Afterwards an agent offered me a season at Radio City Music Hall but
I wanted to get back to London to be with my wife as wed just had our
daughter Sally.
It never entered my mind to grow a career and try for Hollywood. If I
stayed who knows if movies would have called?
But I dont regret anything. Family had always been important to me
and I was not going to leave to build a career thousands of miles
away. Brian bought an 18-bedroom property in New Cross, South East
London, to use as both a family home and rental spot.
He and his wifes parents moved in to help care for Sally and younger
son Nicky while he performed his tightrope act.
Brian was a coach for several Great Britain members in the late 1970s
but the circus drew him back in and he joined Londons Circus UK as
assistant director.
At the same time what was then a small French-Canadian company, Cirque
du Soleil, which was doing similar shows, came calling.
He says: The bosses saw what we did and asked us to go to Montreal
for workshops. I didnt realise that was their audition.
They loved my comic ringmaster so much that they hired me for that
and to work the tightrope with Sally and Nicky. It reinvigorated me
with a love for the circus as I was now well into my 50s.
Cirque created artistic coordinator roles for Brian at new shows in
Las Vegas and Europe. But on the opening night of O in Vegas in 1998
Julie died of pancreatic cancer.
Brian says: She had been ill but encouraged the family to continue
work. We made a point to spend as much time as we could together,
which made our final days really special. Our love was never stronger
than at the end.
When Brian was widowed, head of wardrobe Helene showed particular
kindness to him. They began dating and married in 2007.
But theres no doubt the other great love in Brians life is the
circus.
He says: I cannot wait to get on stage for each show. Even if I am
stuck in that bloody awful traffic on the Strip, the minute I get to
the theatre all my worries melt away.
I hope the high point of my career is yet to come.
{ SOURCE: The Mirror UK }
-------------------------------------------------------
Customers Refunded After Oil Soaks Crowd
{Sep.09.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
It was a much anticipated private preview show for Cirque Du Soleils
Volta Show, but only 30 minutes into it audience members were caught
off guard when oil started soaking them.
The mishap caused the show to get canceled mid-performance at Marymoor
Park in Redmond.
Sitting in the front row, Chase Costello and his wife expected to see
a spectacle at the Cirque Du Soleil show, not be a part of it.
It was a much anticipated private preview show for Cirque Du Soleils
Volta Show, but only 30 minutes into it audience members were caught
off guard when oil started soaking them.
Thirty minutes into the Volta private preview show, liquid was seen
spraying the crowd and soaking a lot of people.
Cirque Du Soleil said a problem with the hydraulic system caused a
hose to break loose and it sprayed a vegetable-based oil onto the
stage and the audience.
"It was everywhere, I mean it was all over us, in our hair on our
clothes, on our shoes, it was nasty, Costello said. We were watching
it and all-of-a-sudden, this big spray comes over us and the guy who
was sitting next to us, he was a mechanic or something and he said
this is oil."
Cirque du Soleil said in a statement, No one was injured by the
incident and the oil posed no risk for the health of the guests or the
employees. We apologize for this incident and will automatically
reimburse all guests who had purchased tickets for the cancelled
show.
All my clothes are ruined, Costello said. Stuff happens and you
know it is, what it is. I would like them to at least reimburse me for
the damages.
Still, Costello said judging from the first 30 minutes he only got to
watch, he'll give it another shot.
I would definitely go back and maybe not sit so close so it doesnt
happen again, said Costello.
Cirque Du Soleil said people who went to the 8 p.m. show on Friday
will be refunded automatically within 48 hours. They will also be
offered a 30 percent discount when rebooking their tickets to come see
the show again in Seattle before November 4.
The official opening premiere night of VOLTA will take place on
Tuesday night, September 11.
{ SOURCE: KOMO News }
***************************************************************
Q&A -- Quick Chats & Press Interviews
***************************************************************
-------------------------------------------------------
David Resnick: 'I like to feel a little fear'
{Aug.02.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
The Cirque du Soleil circus troupe - which will return to Charlotte
next week, for the first time in five years - has long been known for
its gravity-defying acrobatics and daredevil stunts.
And as you're watching, you may wonder (especially knowing that Cirque
acrobat Yann Arnaud died following a fall during a March performance
of "Volta" in Tampa): Do the performers have any fear?
"In some shows where you do the same act and it becomes very routine,
you can get complacent," says competitive gymnast-turned-Cirque
performer David Resnick. "I like to feel a little fear before I go out
because it keeps you focused. I haven't had a show in 'Corteo' where I
haven't had a fear before I go out. We all know to trust our gut and
if we need more training, but there's something about doing it live.
It's the fear I've had my whole life as a gymnast."
The Canadian theatrical group's latest arena production - "Corteo,"
which is derived from the Italian word "cortege" and described as "a
festive parade imagined by a clown" - will be performed seven times at
uptown's Spectrum Center between Wednesday and the following Sunday.
Originally conceived as a big-top show, it was altered to fit arenas
in 2017, adding a suspended pole and hula hoop to its baroque bouncing
beds, teeter boards, floating chandeliers and tournik (which marries
horizontal bars and circus arts). Directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca,
"Corteo" premiered in Montreal in April 2005 and became a tour that
has been visited 64 cities in 19 countries.
Resnick - who joined Cirque du Soleil in 2012 after performing on
cruise ships and in shows in Nevada - is just one of the 51 acrobats,
musicians, singers and actors in its international cast.
After spending years performing while wearing ornate costume and
makeup with Cirque's "Totem" show, Resnick now plays someone closer to
himself on stage.
"I was shy (early on), he says. "When I was a monkey, frog or Crystal
Man, it was a character to play. When it's just you and your self-
confidence, I felt like I was weak. The opportunity to do something
new and progress is why I made the change."
"You need to keep progressing and pushing."
His challenge of late has been maintaining his professional focus
despite personal tragedy: He recently took some time off from
performing while coping with the loss of a close personal friend.
But coming back, Resnick says, has been cathartic, and he adds that
"Corteo's" story - which sees a clown named Mauro picturing his own
funeral taking place in a carnival atmosphere, watched over by quietly
caring angels - is even more relatable than ever.
"It's a procession of his life in the old-school, gypsy circus, with
his brothers and lovers and the different people he'd been out (on the
road) with," Resnick says. "When Mauro rides away at the end of the
show, he's riding off into heaven. I'd never cried on stage before,
but in that moment, I was crying in front of the crowd trying not to
let the mascara run down my face."
That human quality in "Corteo," he says, is what sets it apart from
other shows.
"It touches your heart. It's the only show where we get to be
ourselves on stage," Resnick says. "We have guidelines - I'm a young
boy and a gentleman - but you're allowed to express how you're feeling
on stage."
{ SOURCE: Charlotte Observer }
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Show Reel of the Week: Alanna Baker
{Aug.04.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
Q. Give us your elevator pitch of who you are, what you do and what
your skill set is?
My name is Alanna Baker, I'm an energetic, fun and lively woman, who's
focused, determined, motivated and goal driven. I'm an acrobat and
gymnast who used to compete for Great Britain and I'm now currently
working for Cirque du Soleil's touring show OVO as an acrobatic
character, with a back up aerial act. Since being with Cirque du
Soleil I've had the chance to grow and develop my range of skills as
an artist, which include: Acrobatic gymnastics, Cerceau/Aerial
hoop/Lyra, Cordelisse/Rope, Character work, and Climbing wall.
Q. What is your ideal role?
I'd love to be a character with a solo act. I love to be on stage and
I love the adrenaline I get from performing my solo act. Put them both
together and I'll be pushing boundaries every day!
Q. Name your top 5 credits?
Acrobatic gymnastics, WP Senior European champion 2011
Acrobatic gymnastics, WP Senior Bronze world medalist 2012
Became a WBFF bikini fitness pro in 2017
Been in Cirque du Soleil for over 5 years
Q. What should TheatreArtLife readers know about you?
I started out in Cirque as a troupe act, in acrobatics gymnastics,
where my background is from. I then started to learn the acrobatic
character role, then transitioning over. I then set myself another
goal of a solo act and ended up being given the back up act for that
too a couple of years down the line. As well as a circus artist I'm a
competing bikini fitness girl.
Q. Where do you find inspiration?
From within and those around me. I surround myself with like-minded
individuals which allows us to feed off each other.
Q. What motivates you to continue performing/creating?
To me as an artist you should never stop growing. When things start to
become boring then you've stopped becoming an artist. You should be
feeling uncomfortable every day and pushing those boundaries always
aiming for new heights. Creating something new, something different,
something unique. Creating yourself as an artist!
Q. How do we follow you on social media and contact you?
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alannabaker/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/alannabaker.92
{ SOURCE: TheaterArtLife }
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Meet BAZZARs Rajesh Mudki Mallakhamb Artist
{Aug.05.2018}
-------------------------------------------------------
Rajesh Mudki, a Mallakhamb champion from Santacruz, is the only Indian
in Cirque du Soleils new show Bazzar, which will premiere in Mumbai
in November.
Rajesh Mudki folds and unfolds his body like a piece of origami.
Defying gravity, Mudki, supported only by his feet, extends
horizontally like a flag from an eightfoot wooden pole; or bends his
body into an L-shape, around the pole; or stands tall, like a ships
lookout, again supported only by his feet. He even hangs upside down,
arms spread out like a soaring eagle.
What Mudki is demonstrating are different Mallakhamb positions. For
those who dont know, Mallakhamb is a mix of wrestling and yoga moves
performed on a standing wooden pole, a hanging wooden pole, or on
hanging ropes. It requires core strength, flexibility, power, agility,
full body co-ordination and creativity. The discipline originated in
Maharashtra. The first mention of it dates back to the 12th century,
and it was revived in the 19th century by Balambhattadada Deodhar, the
teacher of Peshwa Bajirao II. The pole is supposed to represent the
opponent. The exercises we do are completely different from
gymnastics on other apparatus because they are wrestling moves, Mudki
says.
When Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil, the worlds
largest theatrical producer, premieres its latest creation, Bazzar, in
Mumbai in November, Mudki will be performing a four-hand-a-half minute
Mallakhamb routine. He is the only Indian in the show and he has
waited 12 years for this opportunity.
You work so hard to achieve your goal and then one day all of a
sudden .., he says. Cirque du Soleil is such a big company. For me,
I just wanted to work with them and get that experience.
An aerial choreographer and Mallakhamb evangelist, Mudki first applied
to Cirque du Soleil in 2006. Hed seen videos of their performances
while researching aerial choreography routines on YouTube. The company
responded, but only to say they had never heard of Mallakhamb. Still,
they said they would keep him in mind. But after four years of
waiting, Mudki figured they didnt need him. He focused on building
his choreography career, working on movies such as Dhoom 3, and
musicals such as Disneys Beauty and the Beast. He also cofounded
Mallakhamb India, a website that promotes the discipline. Then, last
November, while he was performing in a show in London called La
Soiree, the email he had given up on, unexpectedly arrived. Cirque du
Soleil was looking for Mudki and his fellow Mallakhamb exponent,
Rajesh Amrale. The Cirque du Soleil routine was supposed to include
both Mudki and Amrale, but a week after they joined the company in
Montreal in June, tests showed that Amrale had a torn ligament in his
right knee that would take eight to 10 months to heal, so he was sent
back to Mumbai.
Mirror met Mudki last Saturday evening at the Sane Guruji Vidhya
Mandir in Santacruz, where he trains and teaches Mallakhamb. He is
back in India after rehearsing in Montreal. Wearing a sleeveless t-
shirt and shorts, he looks younger than his 34 years and sports a
well-groomed beard. His body has the chiselled look of a professional
swimmer, or a wrestler, but he has never used weights. Mallakhamb is
like an [exercise] equipment. What you do on Mallakhamb is enough to
build your muscles, he says.
The pole is made of Sheesham wood and is also called Mallakhamb.
Castor oil is used, either on the pole or the gymnasts body, to
reduce friction on the skin and as a disinfectant. That evening, a
group of roughly 20 children were being put through their gymnastics
paces in a rectangular hall. The sound of feet hitting mat
reverberated through the air.
Mudki, who grew up in a chawl in Santacruz, was introduced to
Mallakhamb as an eight-year-old by Yashwant Satam, a coach who is also
one of the co-founders of Mallakhamb India. Slowly, slowly I started
feeling more interested in Mallakhamb. I started going for
competitions, started winning medals, Mudki says. In 2006, having
won a number of state and national competitions through the years, he
was awarded the Shiv Chhatrapati Award, Maharashtras highest sporting
honour.
With nothing left to achieve competitively, Mudki chose to focus on
promoting Mallakhamb both within and outside the country, as few knew
anything about the discipline that is, as he puts it, an authentic
Indian sport. That time, even the [National] Federation and [State]
association were struggling to make it popular, to attract students
and get more states to participate in Mallakhamb championships. he
says.
So a small group of Mallakhamb performers in Mumbai got together and
came up with the idea of creating a website. That was the beginning of
Mallakhamb India, and they soon began receiving emails from production
houses and festivals asking for more information. Back then, we
didnt know about the entertainment side and the artists life. We
started giving them answers and they started inviting us [to
perform].
Their big break came in 2009 when Mudki and Amrale competed in a
reality TV competiton. Mudki chose the rope version of Mallakhamb
while Amrale chose the pole. We went separately so if one of us got
eliminated, the other could still go ahead, Mudki says. He reached
the semi-final while Amrale went all the way to the final. It was a
kind of fame for us. All of a sudden, so many people started asking us
to perform. Thats where the journey started, actually.
The reality TV show led to their first performance outside the country
in Germany. It was called Franko Dragones India Circus Tour, and was
directed by Franco Dragone, who was a Cirque du Soleil director from
1985 to 1998. Various members of Mallakhamb India have since travelled
across the world, from Australia, where they performed for the 2018
Commonwealth Games, to Georgia, where they competed in Georgias Got
Talent.
In 2010, an unexpected email led to his appearing on the Ellen
Degeneres Show in the United States. I didnt know about Ellen
Degeneres. I thought it was spam and thought let me not reply or my
account will be hacked, he says with a full-bodied laugh. A few days
later, he was talking to his friend Sharanya and mentioned the email.
She was like, What did you say? Are you kidding? You got an email
from Ellen Degeneres! When he asked her who or what Ellen Degeneres
was, Sharanya told him she hosted one of the biggest TV talk shows in
America and that he should reply to her right now. So he did. And
they wound up flying him to the United States for a one-day
performance.
Cirque du Soleil represents the crowning moment of his artistic
career. His contract with them lasts until December 31, 2019, but if
the show is a hit, it could be extended. He claims he has already
learned a lot about putting on a big production, from the use of
technology to creating characters to safety. They do everything
possible so that you are comfortable performing, he says.
Mudki says he was encouraged to create his own persona for Bazzar. He
was given a few acting classes to help understand how to think about
his character on stage. Mudki spent about a month mulling over the
kind of image he wanted to project. When I started practicing
everyone, including the director, used to say that it is so spiritual,
it is so pure. And I thought, what I can be that gives that spiritual
energy to the show?
He came up with the character of Mr No, a spiritual being who balances
the energy in the show. So for four-and-a-half minutes, what I am
doing is showing my strength as a powerful individual on stage, which
gives a spiritual power to all the other characters so they can go
through their journeys. He quickly adds, You have to see the show to
understand it fully.
Mudki makes it clear that he could not have accomplished so much
without the support of everyone in Mallakhamb India. And as someone
devoted to spreading the gospel of Mallakhamb, he is aware of the
responsibility of representing it on an international platform,
especially since he will be sharing the stage with a dozen other
disciplines.
Bazzar had a soft launch in Montreal, and Mudki says his performances
were well received, with audience members coming up to him after the
show to ask questions about Mallakhamb. Honestly, they loved it. I am
just waiting to see how India and Indians respond to my act, he says.
I am little nervous.
{ SOURCE: Mumbai Mirror, India Times }
=======================================================================
ITINÉRAIRE -- TOUR/SHOW INFORMATION
=======================================================================
o) BIGTOP - Under the Grand Chapiteau
{Amaluna, Koozå, Kurios, Luzia, Totem & Volta}
o) ARENA - In Stadium-like venues
{TORUK, OVO, Séptimo Día, Crystal & Corteo}
o) RESIDENT - Performed en Le Théâtre
{Mystère, "O", Zumanity, KÀ, LOVE, MJ ONE & JOYA}
NOTE:
.) While we make every effort to provide complete and accurate
touring dates and locations available, the information in
this section is subject to change without notice. As such,
the Fascination! Newsletter does not accept responsibility
for the accuracy of these listings.
For current, up-to-the-moment information on Cirque's whereabouts,
please visit Cirque's website: < http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/ >,
or for a more comprehensive tour listing, visit our Itinéraire
section online at: < http://www.cirquefascination.com/?page_id=6898 >.
------------------------------------
BIGTOP - Under the Grand Chapiteau
------------------------------------
Alegria-25th Anniversary:
Montreal, QC -- Apr 18, 2019 to Jul 21, 2019
Gatineau, QC -- Jul 31, 2019 to Sep 1, 2019
Toronto, ON -- Sep 12, 2019 to Dec 1, 2019
Amaluna:
Quito, EC -- Sep 6, 2018 to Sep 23, 2018
Bogota, CO -- Oct 26, 2018 to Dec 16, 2018
Dallas, TX -- Jan 23, 2019 to Feb 17, 2019
Phoenix, AZ -- TBA
Bazzar:
Mumbai, IN -- Nov 15, 2018 to Dec 2, 2018
New Dehli, IN -- Dec 25, 2018 to Jan 6, 2019
Koozå:
Seoul, SK -- Nov 3, 2018 to Dec 30, 2018
Kurios:
Osaka, JP -- Jul 26, 2018 to Nov 4, 2019
Nagoya, JP -- Nov 22, 2018 to Jan 27, 2019
Fukuoka, JP -- Feb 15, 2019 to Mar 31, 2019
Sendai, JP -- Apr 19, 2019 to May 29, 2019
Luzia:
Guadalajara, MX -- Aug 30, 2018 to Sep 23, 2018
Monterrey, MX -- Oct 4, 2018 to Oct 27, 2018
Mexico City, MX -- Nov 8, 2018 to Dec 23, 2018
Houston, TX -- Jan 10, 2019 to Feb 3, 2019
Orlando, FL (WDW) -- Mar/Apr 2019
Totem:
Zurich, CH -- Sep 5, 2018 to Oct 14, 2018
Paris, FR -- Oct 25, 2018 to Dec 2, 2018
London, UK -- Jan 12, 2019 to Feb 9, 2019
Vienna, AT -- Mar 9, 2019 to Apr 7, 2019
VOLTA:
Seattle, WA -- Sep 7, 2018 to Nov 4, 2018
San Francisco, CA -- Nov 15, 2018 to Feb 3, 2019
San Jose, CA -- Feb 13, 2019 to Mar 24, 2019
San Diego, CA -- Apr 4, 2019 to May 5, 2019
Chicago, IL -- May 18, 2019 to Jul 7, 2019
Denver, CO -- Jul 19, 2019 to Aug 25, 2019
Atlanta, GA -- Sep 13, 2019 to Nov 30, 2019
------------------------------------
ARENA - In Stadium-Like Venues
------------------------------------
TORUK - The First Flight:
Rotterdam, NL -- Oct 11, 2018 to Oct 14, 2018
Oberhausen, DE -- Oct 17, 2018 to Oct 21, 2018
Cologne, DE -- Oct 25, 2018 to Oct 28, 2018
Hamburg, DE -- Oct 31, 2018 to Nov 4, 2018
Berlin, DE -- Nov 7, 2018 to Nov 11, 2018
Turin, IT -- Nov 15, 2018 to Nov 18, 2018
Bologna, IT -- Nov 22, 2018 to Nov 25, 2018
Frankfurt, DE -- Nov 28, 2018 to Dec 3, 2018
Zagreb, HR -- Dec 7, 2018 to Dec 9, 2018
Barcelona, ES -- Jan 18, 2018 to Jan 27, 2018
Madrid, ES -- Jan 30, 2018 to Feb 3, 2018
Pamplona, ES -- Feb 6, 2019 to Feb 10, 2019
Milan, IT -- Feb 14, 2019 to Feb 19, 2019
Antwerp, BE -- Mar 14, 2019 to Mar 17, 2019
Helsinki, FI -- May 15, 2019 to May 19, 2019
Vilnius, LT -- May 22, 2019 to May 26, 2019
Prague, CZ -- May 31, 2018 to Jun 2, 2019
Munich, DE -- Jun 5, 2019 to Jun 9, 2019
OVO:
Newcastle, UK -- Aug 29, 2018 to Sep 2, 2018
Glasgow, UK -- Sep 5, 2018 to Sep 9, 2018
Nottingham, UK -- Sep 12, 2018 to Sep 16, 2018
Leeds, UK -- Sep 19, 2018 to Sep 23, 2018
Manchester, UK -- Sep 26, 2018 to Sep 30, 2018
Birmingham, UK -- Oct 3, 2018 to Oct 7, 2018
Dublin, IE -- Oct 10, 2018 to Oct 14, 2018
Belfast, IE -- Oct 17, 2018 to Oct 21, 2018
Lille, FR -- Nov 8, 2018 to Nov 11, 2018
Bordeaux, FR -- Nov 14, 2018 to Nov 18, 2018
Toulouse, FR -- Nov 21, 2018 to Nov 25, 2018
Montpellier, FR -- Nov 28, 2018 to Dec 2, 2018
Strasbourg, FR -- Dec 5, 2018 to Dec 9, 2018
Nantes, FR -- Dec 12, 2018 to Dec 16, 2018
A Coruna, ES -- Dec 21, 2018 to Dec 30, 2018
Lisbon, PT -- Jan 3, 2019 to Jan 13, 2019
Murica, ES -- Jan 16, 2019 to Jan 20, 2019
SÉPTIMO DÍA - NO DESCANSARÉ:
Buenos Aires, AR -- Aug 31, 2018 to Sep 23, 2018 (FIN)
CRYSTAL - A BREAKTHROUGH ICE EXPERIENCE:
Hershey, PA -- Aug 29, 2018 to Sep 2, 2018
Sioux Falls, SD -- Sep 20, 2018 to Sep 23, 2018
Grand Forks, ND -- Sep 26, 2018 to Sep 30, 2018
Winnipeg, MB -- Oct 3, 2018 to Oct 7, 2018
Green Bay, WI -- Oct 11, 2018 to Oct 14, 2018
Des Moines, IA -- Oct 17, 2018 to Oct 21, 2018
Wichita, KS -- Oct 24, 2018 to Oct 28, 2018
Oklahoma City, OK -- Oct 31, 2018 to Nov 4, 2018
Tulsa, OK -- Nov 7, 2018 to Nov 11, 2018
Norfolk, VA -- Nov 29, 2018 to Dec 2, 2018
Washington, DC -- Dec 5, 2018 to Dec 9, 2018
Miami, FL -- Dec 13, 2018 to Dec 16, 2018
Tampa, FL -- Dec 19, 2018 to Dec 23, 2018
Cincinnati, OH -- Dec 27, 2018 to Dec 30, 2018
Baton Rouge, LA -- Jan 3, 2019 to Jan 6, 2019
Kansas City, MO -- Jan 16, 2019 to Jan 19, 2019
Sacramento, CA -- Mar 27, 2019 to Mar 31, 2019
CORTEO:
Fresno, CA -- Sep 20, 2018 to Sep 23, 2018
West Valley City, UT -- Sep 27, 2018 to Sep 30, 2018
Victoria, BC -- Oct 4, 2018 to Oct 7, 2018
Vancouver, BC -- Oct 10, 2018 to Oct 14, 2018
Kelowna, BC -- Oct 17, 2018 to Oct 21, 2018
Kamloops, BC -- Oct 24, 2018 to Oct 28, 2018
Lethbridge, AB -- Oct 31, 2018 to Nov 4, 2018
Minneapolis, MN -- Nov 8, 2018 to Nov 11, 2018
Cleveland, OH -- Nov 15, 2018 to Nov 18, 2018
Quebec City, QC -- Dec 6, 2018 to Dec 9, 2018
Toronto, ON -- Dec 12, 2018 to Dec 16, 2018
Montreal, QC -- Dec 19, 2018 to Dec 30, 2018
Worchester, MA -- Jan 3, 2019 to Jan 6, 2019
Detroit, MI -- Jan 10, 2019 to Jan 13, 2019
Pittsburgh, PA -- Jan 16, 2019 to Jan 19, 2019
---------------------------------
RESIDENT - en Le Théâtre
---------------------------------
Mystère:
Location: Treasure Island, Las Vegas (USA)
Performs: Saturday through Wednesday, Dark: Thursday/Friday
Two shows Nightly - 7:00pm & 9:30pm
Extra Performance Dates:
o Mon, Dec 31, 2018 | 4:30 p.m. & 7:00 p.m.
Single Show Dates (7:00pm Only):
o Monday, Nov. 26, 2018
o Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018
2018 Dark Dates:
o Saturday, Sep 29, 2018
o October 27 - 31, 2018
"O":
Location: Bellagio, Las Vegas (USA)
Performs: Wednesday through Sunday, Dark: Monday/Tuesday
Two shows Nightly - 7:30pm and 9:30pm
Special Performance Dates:
o Tue, Oct 09 - 7:00pm & 9:30pm
o Tue, Dec 11 - 9:30pm only
o Mon, Dec 31 - 4:00pm & 6:30pm
2018 Dark Dates:
o September 16
o November 26 - December 11
o December 27
Zumanity:
Location: New York-New York, Las Vegas (USA)
Performs: Tuesday through Saturday, Dark Sunday/Monday
Two Shows Nightly - 7:00pm and 9:30pm
KÀ:
Location: MGM Grand, Las Vegas (USA)
Performs: Saturday through Wednesday, Dark Thursday/Friday
Two Shows Nightly - 7:00pm and 9:30pm
LOVE:
Location: Mirage, Las Vegas (USA)
Performs: Tuesday through Saturday, Dark: Sunday/Monday
Two Shows Nightly - 7:00pm and 9:30pm
2018 Dark Dates:
o September 15
o October 20
o December 4 8, 11 15
MICHAEL JACKSON ONE:
Location: Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas (USA)
Performs: Thursday through Monday - Dark: Tuesday/Wednesday
Two Shows Nightly - 7:00pm and 9:30pm
2018 Dark Dates:
o October 22 -25
o November 5 - 7
o December 11 - 13
JOYÀ:
Location: Riviera Maya, Mexico
Performs: Tuesday through Saturday, Dark: Sunday/Monday
One/Two Shows Nightly:
9:00pm (Weekdays)
7:00pm & 10:15pm (Fri, Sat & Holidays)
=======================================================================
OUTREACH - UPDATES FROM CIRQUE's SOCIAL WIDGETS
=======================================================================
o) WEBSERIES -- Official Online Featurettes
o) VIDEOS -- Official Peeks & Noted Fan Finds
---------------------------------------------------
WEBSERIES: Official Online Featurettes
---------------------------------------------------
*) BAZZAR: BEHIND THE SCENES
In this NEW YouTube series, 'BAZZAR: Behind The Scenes', discover
the journey of how BAZZAR came to life. Tune in bi-weekly to follow
us around from training at the Cirque du Soleil Headquarters to
planning for our debut in India!
o) EPISODE 1 - THE CIRQUE EXPERIENCE {Aug.16}
With its creative concept as much as its new format, BAZZAR
pays tribute to the roots of Cirque du Soleil for an authentic
experience. The show will premiere in India, a company first,
before visiting Greece and various countries in the Middle
East.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/ho4_bbiCtlk >
o) BONUS - OFFICIAL BAZZAR TRAILER {Aug.21}
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/18aCyVKNw1w >
o) EPISODE 2 - A CIRCUS FAUNA; CREATING CHARACTERS {Aug.29}
In episode 2, we explore the creation of characters and the
use of technology for certain acts.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/b-ytEr1KY0Q >
*) ALEGRIA REUNION SERIES
Alegría has brought laughter and wonder to over 14 million spectators
in more than 255 cities across the globe from 1994 to 2013. Beloved
by fans around the world, the iconic Alegría is coming back on tour
in the Big Top. Meet some of the show's previous artists to share
their timeless stories. TUNE IN WEEKLY to learn more about each of
their experiences touring with Alegría.
o) EPISODE 1 - Elena Lev {Aug.03}
Meet Elena Lev as she explains her journey on Alegria. She was
a Hula Hoops Artist on the show from 1994 to 2001.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/v5-JsnoJsUg >
o) EPISODE 2 - Kaser Falkesgaard {Aug.10}
Meet Kasper Falkesgaard as he reminisces about his past
experiences on Alegria. He was a Power Track Artist on the
show from 2004 - 2009.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/ZGk8FGW31nU >
o) EPISODE 3 - Kristina Ivanova {Aug.17}
Meet Kristina Ivanova as she reminisces about her past
experiences on Alegria. She was a Power Track, Tumbling, and
Russian Bar artist on the show from 2004 - 2009.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/6n_UfN3hFUo >
o) EPISODE 4 - Masha Silaeva {Aug.24}
Meet Masha Silaeva as she gushes about her past experiences
on Alegria. She was a Hula Hoops Manipulation artist on the
show from 2001 - 2013.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/5DY8j5Wuhyw >
o) EPISODE 5 - Gaston Elias {Aug.31}
Meet Gaston Elias, a Synchronized Trapeze artist from
1999 - 2009.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/yBsyQsyroGA >
o) EPISODE 6 - Uliibayar Chimed {Sep.07}
Meet Ulziibayar Chimed, a Contortionist on the show from
1996 - 2005.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/1hqPfRT8fIM >
*) MUSIC VIDEO w/LYRICS
o) KA - "We've Been Waiting For So Long" {Aug.14}
Where in this world do we belong?
Tell me when will the light shine on us?
Why did we come this far tonight
And will anyone be here for us?
Where is the truth? Why must she hide?
Is there only one way to her heart?
When did this start? When will it end?
We've been waiting so long.
Oh time will leave us behind. Don't fear her.
Be brave. You must hold your head up high
Theres no reason to stop, to worry, to tremble
Or to think of turning back.
Truth and beauty might well be waiting
Beyond our vision of things!
Turn away from the light
Look toward the shadows.
Learn from the shadows.
Where are we now? Why must we leave?
Can't we sleep? Can't we dream forever?
Fear like the wind can chill the soul
Must we face her all alone?
Oh no matter how long we must journey
We will
every night and new day.
Since the shadows whisper their secrets, their story
We must gently make our way.
'Cause time will leave us behind. Don't fear her.
Be brave. You must hold your head up high
There's no reason to stop, to worry, to tremble.
We must gently make our way.
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/ssPKKFjlUs4 >
o) Kurios - "Gravity Levitas" {Aug.21}
Hov-er-ing here,
Ópou to só_ma-mou gyrna
IIfthohi mou kardiá
Sakolouthi sti skotiniá
A caelo, caelo, caelo
A caelo, caelo, caelo
A caelo, caelo, caelo
A caelo, caelo, caelo
Where does it end?
Where does it start?
Calibrate my heart
Hov-er-ing here,
My will, my fear
Gravity, Gravitas
Levity, Levitas
Gravity, Gravitas
.
Levity, Levitas
Gravity, Gravitas
.
(repeated)
No trace, no clue
Is it all in vain?
Gravity, Gravitas
Levity, Levitas
Gravity, Gravitas
.
Levity, Levitas
Gravity, Gravitas
.
Opu ki an gyrna
Mes sti skotinia
I reach in the void
Looking for you
I reach into the void,
Into the dark,
Looking for you
Unreal or true
Entre chien et loup
What can I do?
Gravity, Gravitas
.
Levity, Levitas
Gravity, Gravitas
.
Levity, Levitas
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/0Dudgul9i40 >
---------------------------------------------------
VIDEOS: Official Peeks & Noted Fan Finds
---------------------------------------------------
*) CIRQUECAST is BACK for SEASON TWO!
CirqueCast is a Vodcast (that's video podcast) for Cirque fans
by Cirque fans featuring artist interviews, Cirque headlines,
and the inside scoop to your favorite Cirque du Soleil shows!
Join your hosts José Pérez (TheChapiteau), Richard "Richasi"
Russo (Fascination!), Ian Rents (Hardcore Cirque Fans), and new
addition Max Olson, as we bring you a behind-the-scenes look
into Cirque du Soleil, complete with discussions and the latest
Cirque news.
o) SEASON 2 EPISODE 5 - MAJO CORNEJO INTERVIEW
August 19, 2018
On this episode of CirqueCast, we interview Luzia singer Majo
Cornejo. Watch to find out how Majo started her singing career,
how she ended up at Cirque du Soleil, and how it feels to
represent her own country every night on stage!
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/lYB59gI2KeQ >
*) OTHER CIRQUE VIDEOS
o) Artists Reveal their Favorite SODA STEREO Sep7imo Dia Songs
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/kjsDO5wwkus >
o) 2018 TORUK-THE FIRST FLIGHT Trailer
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/jI1cvcq53BU >
o) Septimo Dia Pre Show Routines
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/UzlXBp3lNVo >
o) 2018 MICHAEL JACKSON ONE Trailer
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/Hj7B3DaOCy4 >
o) Surprise London! TORUK is back at the RAH in January 2019
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/Vl-mGRwhIdo >
o) 2018 KOOZA Trailer
LINK /// < https://youtu.be/4TiKajdOKSY >
o) Corteo's Singer - Alain Labrie - Performing US National Anthem
LINK /// < https://www.facebook.com/Corteo/videos/326195821452205/ >
o) Some Fun Facts about TORUK
LINK /// < https://www.facebook.com/176944122341116/videos/274765689791965/ >
=======================================================================
FASCINATION! FEATURES
=======================================================================
------------------------------------------------------------
"We're Off and Running II, Part 1 of 4: The Company"
By: Ricky Russo - Atlanta, Georgia (USA)
------------------------------------------------------------
In "We're Off and Running", the 16-part series that we concluded last
month, Fascination! explored some of the first reviews, peeks, and
evaluations of Cirque du Soleil's touring shows (from Le Cirque
Réinventé through to Varekai) as they took their first steps across
North America. Sometimes the coverage was just a brief blurb about the
show and its theme, occasionally there was a short interview with a
performer, a stage hand, or creation director, and other times the
article was an assessment of the show itself, evaluating its technical
and acrobatic merits with what had come through before. Although we
narrowed our series to focus on touring shows that had hit the road
before Fascination began publication (with the exception of Varekai),
what of Cirque's signature resident shows? What interesting blurbs did
we uncover about Mystère, "O", La Nouba or even the company itself in
the course of our investigation? Enough, as it turns out, for "We're
Off and Running II", a four-part sequel series to begin... right now
with a double-helping of articles about Cirque du Soleil as a company.
# # #
CIRQUE PROVES A LITTLE CIRCUS CAN MAKE THE BIG TIME
By: Doug Lindeman & Michael Small | People Magazine
May 2, 1988
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Step right up to Cirque du Soleil, the
greatest
well, one of the greatest shows on earth. Youll thrill to
the sight of a single circus ring that has never been marked with the
hoofprint of a wild beast. You wont see packs of pachyderms stand on
their heads, but you will gape in awe at the multipletalents of
performers who play clowns and then transform themselves into
acrobats, trapeze artists and jugglers. You wont see an alligator
tamer wrestle with the jaws of death, but youll swoon as two tango
dancers culminate their romance with an amazing hand-balancing act.
And youll gasp as a tightrope walker jetés across the wire while
playing a haunting theme on the oboe.
Okay, so razzmatazz-wise, Montreals Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the
Sun) isnt exactly Ringling Brothers, but thats just the point. The
4-year-old troupe has captured the imagination of audiences across
North America by replacing circus pomp with up-close, often beautiful
surprises and some unusual thrills. In a comparatively tiny 1,754-seat
tent, Cirque doesnt need a pack of exotic aerialists when a lone
trapeze artist can stop heartbeats by swooping just a few feet above
the heads of spectators, without a net. So successful was the troupes
scheduled three-week run at the Los Angeles Festival last September
attended by such stars as Joan Rivers, Dustin Hoffman and David Bowie
that it returned for four months, and Columbia Pictures bought film
rights to the little big tops story. The show finally closed so
Cirque could begin a four-week run in San Francisco on April 8.
Because youre so close, said one satisfied L.A. customer, Sandy
Gillis, 31, you can see their facial expressions, beads of sweat and
their muscles tensing up. Its more fun to watch than a bunch of
spangly headdresses and froufrou costumes. Troupe member Debra Brown
sees other reasons for the shows success: Usually a circus has
spectacle but no heart, or intellect but no risk. Whats exciting
about this one is that it has a balance.
As far back as the 1890s, Barnum & Bailey set a bigger-is-better
standard for circuses with shows that included 1,200 players, 338
horses and 20 elephants. But the past two decades have brought a
revival of the simpler one-ring circus popularized by British Sgt.
Maj. Philip Astley in 1768. While New Yorks Big Apple Circus (PEOPLE,
Jan. 11) and San Franciscos Pickle Circus perform traditional stunts
in one ring, Cirque du Soleil takes advantage of the single rings
intimacy to merge acrobatics with refined acting. Id rather feed
three artists than one elephant, says founder and director Guy
Laliberté, 28, who hired 27 players ranging in ages from 7 to 36.
Their performance follows a vague story line about a group of frumpily
dressed, awkward people who are transformed by a magical queen into
circus stars for a couple of hours before they revert to their lesser
selves again. Dreamlike purple and gold lighting sets the mood as a
five-piece band plays a romantic score on synthesizers and woodwinds.
Brown, 33, a former coach for the Canadian Olympic gymnastics team,
carefully plans every move in the ring. When you think of dance, you
think of people on two feet, she says, but my choreography explores
four feet because of the way acrobats use their hands.
Laliberté, a college dropout whose mother is a pianist and whose
father is a vice president of an aluminum company, was once just
another itinerant musicianfire breatherstilt walker. He honed his
skills in Baie Saint Paul, an artist's colony 55 miles northeast of
Quebec City where street performers congregate each summer. While
there, he co-founded the High-Heeled Club, an acting troupe that
performed on stilts. After organizing a 1981 street-performers
festival, Laliberté decided to recruit friends for a hot-blooded
French-Canadian circus. At first he couldnt find backers. I had
hair down to my ass, and we were all on unemployment, he recalls.
And there I was asking bankers for millions of dollars. All the
business community was laughing at me. Finally, government grants
helped Laliberté pay for most of a years expenses. A 1984 tour of
Quebec province received good enough notices for Cirque to play across
Canada.
With todays high ticket sales, Cirque du Soleil requires very little
government aid to pay the bills. In 1986 the troupe used some of its
earnings to renovate an old Montreal fire station into workshops for
set design and special effects. Now Laliberté can afford to recruit
additional players, who undergo up to two months of rigorous training.
We make actors more agile and acrobats more theatrical, he says.
Their improvement continues on the job. One gymnast who flips to the
top of a three-man human ladder has grown so sure of foot that hes
stopped using guy wires.
The whole circus is similarly unbound. Not willing to compromise
Cirques freedom, Laliberté usually books shows just 10 days in
advance so that the troupe can always strike the tent and move on like
Gypsies. He doesnt worry about where the road will lead them. I came
up with our name, he says, when I was looking in a dictionary of
symbols and saw soleil, sun. It means youth, power, freshness.
Everything was there. I just knew at that moment that we would be a
success.
* * * * * *
BIG TOP GOES BIG TIME... THE CIRQUE'S GROWING PAINS
by Jan Breslauer | The LA Times
October 7, 1992
Cirque du Soleil may still feature perky young faces in feats of
derring-do, but organizationally speaking, they are babes in the big
top no more. The Montreal-based circus has come a long way since it
first popped up in Los Angeles in 1987, but making it big has been a
tightrope walk.
"With success, there's money and internal change," says Cirque
founding president and former fire-eater Guy Laliberte. "There are
always goals that we give ourselves, but it also means new ways of
doing things. Going from being street performers to being
professionals has created surprises. We were no more the small family
organization. We did have to adjust."
Adjust is an understatement. The expansion of Cirque has entailed
diversification and merchandising, along with an exponential increase
in output. Once it was a straight shot from the gate to your seat, but
today you can't pass from the ticket-taker to the big top without
being dazzled by an array of sweatshirts, jackets, CDs, badges and
other Cirque paraphernalia.
Even the expansion just since 1987, when the Cirque opened the L.A.
Festival, has been considerable. It's gone from an $8-million annual
operating budget in 1987 to today's $26-million yearly nut. Five years
ago, it used a big top that seated 1,700; since 1990, Cirque has been
holding forth under a tarp that holds 2,500.
Most significant, Cirque is no longer just one show. Since it began
touring the 1987 production to Europe, Japan and Switzerland during
the past couple of years, Cirque has had two troupes going at once,
plus sundry other ventures such as an HBO special last year.
In fact, shortly after Cirque du Soleil opens "Saltimbanco" Thursday
in Santa Monica, the organization will open yet another show in the
Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Vegas will also become a second home of
sorts, thanks to a special theater that's being constructed at the
Mirage to house a permanent tailor-made Cirque spectacle.
All this go-go, however, has made it that much harder to keep the
seat-of-your-pants aesthetic of street performance alive. "There's a
price to pay for success, which is that one has to spend more effort
in trying to keep the spirit which brought us together," admits
Laliberte. "Sometimes it's tough."
Cirque's origins trace to 1982 and a group of street performers who
called themselves Le Club des Talon Hauts (High Heels Club). Guy
Laliberte was one of the members.
Cirque du Soleil was officially launched in 1984, thanks largely to
subsidy from the government of Quebec. (Government support has
decreased from about 95% to about 1.8% of the budget now.) It first
toured to Toronto in 1985, and to more of Canada in 1986.
It was in September, 1987, though, that L.A. and the United States
first met Cirque. "The L.A. Festival gave us promotional support, but
not a contract," says Jean David, vice president of marketing and
communications. "Cirque had to take all the financial risk. In
exchange, we got the right to open the festival."
The circus got not only boffo box office, but all the Tinseltown
courting it could handle. The run extended again and again, as
countless film and TV deal makers courted Cirque.
"It could have been a great temptation, but we decided not to enter
into any deals," says Laliberte. "That was wise, knowing that we want
to control and organize our own development."
Still, the Hollywood rush did turn their heads. Negotiations with
Columbia and Walt Disney and others eventually fell through, but not
before the organization was changed by the attention.
"By the end of '88, there were a lot of people who left the company
and new people were coming in," says Laliberte. "There was planning,
negotiations for movies that we didn't get. It took six months to a
year to readjust and think of how we were seeing our future."
"The challenge was to stay ourselves," adds David.
In 1988, Cirque toured the East Coast. Then, the following year, it
brought the same show back to L.A. "We made some mistakes," admits
David. "In 1989, when we came back with the same show, the reviewers
didn't miss the opportunity to give us mixed reviews."
Other missteps followed. In 1990, Cirque produced itself in London and
Paris. "We lost some money there," recalls David. "In London they had
the hottest weather they'd had in the last 60 years, so everybody
left. In France, they like more traditional circus, which has less
expensive tickets."
In 1990, Cirque also launched its second show, "Nouvelle Experience,"
which toured North America while the first show played in Europe. "We
learned from Europe in 1990," says David. "The contracts that we've
had since with Japan or Switzerland are no risk at all for us, because
the producers are taking the risk."
And while there's little denying that Cirque has refined its business
savvy over the years, the impact on the artistic product is more
ambiguous. Corporate practices have inevitably transformed the
familial camaraderie that was so much of Cirque's charm in 1987.
"We have more responsibility than in '87," says creative director
Gilles Ste-Croix, who began as a performer with Cirque in 1984. "My
workload in '87 took one secretary, whereas now I work with three
assistant directors."
The shows themselves have come to rely more on high-tech production,
and less on commedia dell'arte-like theatrics. "We have been involving
more different mediums in our production," acknowledges Ste-Croix.
"1987 was the first time we designed the production with costumes and
a choreographer. Before that, there was not really the budget. The
1990 production was designed even more, moving even further away from
circus than the 1987 show."
"Saltimbanco," although its name pays homage to 16th-Century Italian
street performers, is less reliant on theater than previous Cirque
shows. The narrative story line, for instance, figures less
prominently than it did in either the 1987 or the 1990 show.
"In 1987, it was still circus," says Ste-Croix. "Now it's something of
its own, a whole different product. But I don't think we can turn out
shows like McDonalds, with five running around the world at once.
Cirque cannot be duplicated that way."
To some extent, however, it can be cloned. Once the new specially
constructed theater is built at the Mirage, Cirque will install a show
that will play there for three to five years, at which time it will be
replaced by yet another new production.
Meanwhile, Cirque will continue to tour North America. It already has
plans, for instance, to return to Los Angeles with a new production in
October, 1994. It also expects to be back in Japan with another show
by 1994.
The question that remains is not so much whether Cirque can sell
tickets this time, but whether all this expansion will fundamentally
alter it. "We did flirt with the devil," says Laliberte. "But today,
we make a point of reminding ourselves regularly where we came from."
* * * * * *
CIRCUS WITH AN ATTITUDE
By: Richard Christiansen | Chicago Tribune
July 25, 1993
Perhaps the most amazing aspect in the amazing growth of Cirque du
Soleil is that it began less than a decade ago as the brainchild of a
group of long-haired street performers, stilt-walkers and fire-eaters
who had the crazy idea that they wanted to start a circus of their
own.
Today, these graying, balding but still youngish entrepreneurs have
become proprietors of an operation that is spreading its engagements,
and its influence, on a global scale.
The highest profile in this enlarging empire belongs, of course, to
the newest edition of the Cirque productions. There is, for example,
"Saltimbanco," the fifth and latest presentation, which arrives in
Chicago Wednesday under corporate sponsorship of AT&T. But that's just
the tip of the Cirque juggernaut.
Elements of Cirque productions were incorporated into the venerable
Circus Nie in Switzerland last year; and "Nouvelle Experience," the
Cirque edition that played Chicago two years ago, went to Japan in
1992 in a tour that sparked interest in creating a permanent
relationship there.
At present, a somewhat trimmed-down version of "Nouvelle Experience"
is playing 12 shows a week in a traditional blue-and-yellow-striped
Cirque tent set up near the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas; and
late this year, as Las Vegas seeks to position itself as a center for
family entertainment, work is to begin on a permanent, year-round
Cirque du Soleil structure, which will be home for a specially created
extravaganza outfitted with lifts, traps and facilities for scenery
hanging that the tent shows could never accommodate.
Meanwhile, as the New Wave music that has become associated with
Cirque catches the ear of more and more customers, RCA Victor has
released CDs and cassettes containing composer Rene Dupere's music for
"Nouvelle Experience" and "Saltimbanco."
Quick to pick up on the tie-in possibilities present in the
distinctive designs and colors of the Cirque's scenic and costume
displays, the producers also are marketing a full line of T-shirts,
sweat shirts, posters, balloons, dolls, umbrellas, tote bags, coffee
mugs, watches, baseball caps, key chains, lapel pins, childrens'
pajamas, jigsaw puzzles and boxer shorts-available on the site or by
mail order.
Little wonder that in addition to such artistic prizes as a 1993 Obie
Award honoring outstanding achievement in Off-Broadway or Off-Off-
Broadway work in New York, the Cirque, which is based in Montreal, won
the 1992 "business of the year" category for small and medium
businesses, in a competition organized annually by the Chamber of
Commerce of the province of Quebec, Canada.
Despite their expansion into a global business, the managers of Cirque
du Soleil keep their productions fresh and changing.
"We're not trying to do the (producer Cameron) Mackintosh trip
(keeping a big show running indefinitely in dozens of productions
around the globe)," says Gilles Ste-Croix, the Cirque's veteran
directeur de la creation. "Our success rests on fragile things; the
maximum run for any of our shows is four years, which gives the
artists a certain job security but doesn't keep them tied up forever.
We try to treat our people well, but it's very hard to keep a show
alive and challenging and not let down the quality over a long
period."
The maximum first-run tour for a Cirque production is now two years,
beginning in Montreal, its hometown, and then touring to large cities
in the United States and Canada for the rest of the run.
At first a strictly home-grown, home-based product that was born in
1984 through a one-time government grant, Cirque has grown to embrace
circus artists from around the world and is now a regular visitor to
such major U.S. cities as Los Angeles (where it made its acclaimed
U.S. debut in 1987), New York, Washington and Chicago (where it first
appeared in 1989).
While one show is making the grand tour, another show is being
developed in workshops and think tanks at home. By the time
"Saltimbanco" ends its travels this year, for instance, the new Cirque
edition will be in preparation to premiere in April, 1994, in
Montreal. And once the initial two-year tour is over, there is now a
possibility for further travel abroad, such as last year's Japan
engagement.
To keep its enchanting circus environment on the road, Cirque uses a
50-truck caravan carrying 650 tons of homes, offices, scenery,
dressing rooms, a classroom, the 2,500-seat big top tent and a well-
equipped kitchen that regularly serves about 300 tasty meals a day to
the show's 40 performers and the support staff of 70 persons working
behind them.
The title chosen for this fifth production of Cirque du Soleil,
"Saltimbanco," derives from a 16th Century Italian word meaning
skilled street performers and acrobats.
The general theme for the show, however, is described as "urbanity,"
or as Ste-Croix explains it, the evolution of man from a naked,
newborn creature into a social being who lives and works in a complex
urban environment.
In describing one aspect of the show, the program says: "In
`Saltimbanco,' the characters, like all human beings, are born nude.
These are the Worms, at the very base of society. All similar in
appearance, yet different one from the other, they must, with time,
adapt themselves to their environment. Thus, as the show goes on, they
embody various types of social characters, hoping to one day accede to
the rank of Baroque, a cast of visionaries. The Baroques constitute
the most important family of `Saltimbanco.' Armed with a deeply
perceptive vision of the world and sleeping under bridges, the
Baroques, throughout the fable, reveal the countless contradictions of
our civilization when imagination has not yet taken power."
This is not the scenario of your usual three-ring, sawdust and
spangles circus.
There are no ostrich plumes or animal acts in Cirque. The design,
rather, is sleek in its spectacle, what the Cirque people call "Neo-
Baroque." The clown makeup is streamlined in its stylization; the
costumes, brightly colored, are often skin tight and borrow elements
from punk and street fashion.
But customers worried that all this might be too intellectual, special
or rarefied should relax. The tickets, reflecting the show's Broadway-
grade production values, are more expensive than those for most
circuses ($12.50 to $35.50 for adults, and $6 to $23.50 for children);
but such traditional circus delicacies as popcorn and soft drinks are
always on sale, and, more important, "Saltimbanco" carries a full load
of thrilling and graceful circus specialty acts peopled with top-
notch jugglers, acrobats, aerialists, contortionists and clowns.
But, in the Cirque style, these are circus acts done with a
difference, with a definite attitude. The trapeze act this year, for
example, employs the elastic straps of bungee jumping to create a
unique aerial ballet. And the tightrope performance is given more
excitement by having the tightrope walker hop from one tightrope to
another.
Each of the circus artists, in addition to performing his or her
specialty, is given a personality that will fit within the structure
of the show's environment; and all of the players, whether developed
by the Cirque staff or imported from other arenas, must be able to act
and dance and (new this year) sing as part of their duties within the
integrated production.
Over the last nine years, the Cirque team has developed into a solid
core of creative talent. In addition to Ste-Croix and founder-creator
Guy Laliberte, the team includes director Franco Dragone, costumer
Dominique Lemieux, scenic designer Michel Crete, composer Dupere,
choreographer Debra Brown and lighting designer Luc Lafortune.
Their efforts combine to produce a special style, in which the age-old
elements of circuses are mixed with the technical innovations and new
age design that makes Cirque so remarkable.
This season, according to Ste-Croix, the total effect of "Saltimbanco"
may be "a little more aggressive, daring, more hard-edged" than in
past shows. The singing, which the producers felt could finally be
tackled by the performers, adds a fresh, operatic touch that fits the
already established image of balletic grace in the proceedings.
Yet, even with this addition, "Saltimbanco" remains anchored in the
tradition of Cirque du Soleil performance. It is like nothing else in
the circus world.
"Through the last few years," Ste-Croix says, "we have been able to
build up a good team. We function well. We understand each other. We
know where we want to go. Our work is continuing, constant; it grows
and develops. It's like a painter. You have to look at all of his
pictures to see the complete range of his work, but they all clearly
come from the same artist."
Then, shifting to another metaphor, he adds, "We are like good chefs
in a kitchen. We know that our recipe works. But what we present to
our customers is in no way a warming up of the sauce."
* * * * * *
THE BIGGEST CIRQUE ON EARTH
By: Diane Haithman | The LA Times
September 22, 1996
When Gilles Ste. Croix, a street performer in Montreal, became one of
the founding members of Cirque du Soleil, the last thing he would have
imagined was that someday he would find himself sitting in a Santa
Monica hotel talking about a $100-million industry forging mega-deals
with Las Vegas hotels, European real estate developers and 30,000-acre
theme parks.
But that's exactly what he's doing--and he doesn't want to. Ste.
Croix, 46--who used to fly through the air, launched from a teeter-
board, and land on stilts in Cirque's first show--is bored with
earthbound concepts like profits and box office.
"We were just trying to make a show and live off our art," he says.
Numbers? "I don't know, I have no idea," he says. "I would say a
number, and I might be wrong. I don't say numbers. I don't learn them,
and I don't say them."
Ste. Croix, the troupe's director of creation, would rather talk about
the theme of its ninth production, "Quidam," opening Wednesday in
Santa Monica. "Quidam is a Latin word meaning anonymous and unknown,"
he says. "We are at the end of a millennium. We always pick a theme
that is close to our lives, and everyone is concerned about what the
end of the millennium will be like. . . . Through technology of the
past 10 years, there is now a global community, but at the same time
we have become more and more lonely, more individually separated; the
community feeling has been forgotten.
"There have been many changes in the past five years, and there will
be more in the next five. We talk about the individuals who are
suffering the changes, but they don't have a word to say about it. So
quidam is the scream of all the quidams, to wake up and make
themselves known."
Ste. Croix doesn't want to talk about the numbers. But in the second
year of Cirque's second decade, the numbers are too big to be ignored.
In 12 years, Cirque du Soleil--French for "Sun Circus"-- has
transformed from an eccentric show-biz quidam into a popular global
commodity with four touring shows, one permanent show in Las Vegas and
three new permanent productions slated for the near future--in Vegas,
at Disney World and in Berlin.
The troupe is also looking at film and television, as well as more
international shows. As Cirque continues to grow, balancing art and
commerce has become as precarious an act as anything you'll see under
its blue and yellow big top at the Santa Monica Pier.
"The people who created Cirque, some of them were performers, and some
of them were entrepreneurs," marketing director Jean David says. "So
we found out it was very important to marry the relationship between
the arts and the business, the culture and the business--it was
extremely important if we want to survive. We are the kind of people
who, when we learn something, we learn it forever. And we learned that
at the very beginning."
The Cirque machine has its entrepreneurs, but it is also an
organization in which a publicist is as likely to have walked the
tightrope in an early show as to have studied communications in
college. Although it is big business, it still contains plenty of
renegades like Ste. Croix, who describes the show as "acrobatics with
emotion."
Cirque was born in 1984 when Ste. Croix, founding member Guy Laliberte
and a small circle of French Canadian street players put a tent over
their heads and reinvented the circus as we know it. The players had
already begun performing together in local festivals in the early
'80s, calling themselves Les Echassiers.
Laliberte was the chief negotiator in bringing the troupe here for its
U.S. debut at the 1987 Los Angeles Festival, an offshoot of the 1984
Olympic Arts Festival, in a tent at 1st and Alameda streets. Back
then, festival artistic director Robert Fitzpatrick said the festival
could offer Cirque only minimal financial guarantees, so its decision
to venture to L.A. meant taking a substantial risk.
"Other festivals wouldn't touch them because it wasn't quite
'cultural' enough, and towns looking for a standard circus were used
to dealing with horses and elephants," says Fitzpatrick, who was first
mesmerized by the troupe in Toronto on a trip with his daughter, then
12.
He decided instantly to showcase Cirque as the festival's opening
performance, though Peter Brook's nine-hour "Mahabarata," was the more
obvious choice because it was a more serious entry with extensive
artistic credentials.
Cirque sold out every night, says Fitzpatrick, former chairman of Euro
Disney and now dean of the Columbia School of the Arts in New York.
"If I'd been smart, and rich, I would have paid all of their costs and
taken 10%," he adds ruefully.
Even in its early days, Fitzpatrick says, the Cirque clan was hardly
wide-eyed when it came to business: "That's part of the savvy myth
they have created. For all the 'naivete' and street smarts they are
supposed to have instead of MBAs, these guys can negotiate like
Michael Ovitz and still come off well."
The exponential growth of Cirque would indicate Fitzpatrick is right.
It boasts a worldwide staff of 1,250, including 266 performers from
around the world. There are two main offices--in Montreal (where a
$30-million headquarters is under construction) and in Amsterdam--as
well as a permanent office in Las Vegas.
More than 7.5 million people have seen its shows, which include
"Cirque du Soleil--Le grand tour" (1984), "La magie continue" (1986),
"We Reinvent the Circus" (1987-89), "Nouvelle Experience" (1990-91),
"Saltimbanco" (1992-96), "Mystere" (running since 1993 at Las Vegas'
Treasure Island hotel), "Alegria" (1994-98) and the new "Quidam,"
which will tour through 2002. Tours have taken the troupe to 118
cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, Paris,
London, Amsterdam and Vienna.
Although Cirque officials decline to spout budget figures, Alan
Feldman, spokesman for Mirage Resorts, which owns Treasure Island,
said $27 million was spent building the permanent theater for
"Mystere" and $24 million more on creating the show. Feldman adds that
"Mystere" ranks as the second most financially successful show in
Vegas, topped only by the Mirage Hotel's Siegfried & Roy show,
featuring the flamboyant German magicians and their cadre of lions and
white tigers.
The Siegfried & Roy act earns about $54 million in ticket sales;
"'Mystere' brings in about $40 million," Feldman says. "There's not a
Broadway show in the land that does as well."
The cost of "Mystere" more than doubles the current budget for the
touring shows, which Cirque public relations director Diane Laberge
reluctantly estimates at between $10 million and $15 million. (This
year Cirque will replace the big top's bleacher seating with chairs.)
In 1998, Cirque plans to open an as-yet-unnamed show in Las Vegas at
the soon-to-be-built $1.3-billion 3,000-room Bellagio Hotel and
casino--the troupe's self-described first "water production." For it,
the Bellagio complex, also a Mirage Resorts hotel, is building a $50-
million 1,800-seat water theater to Cirque's specifications. The
production budget: more than $20 million. Marketing director David
would reveal only that the show will take place "in the water, on the
water, over the water" in an area the size of three Olympic swimming
pools.
Also in 1998, Cirque is to open a new show at the 30,000-acre Disney
World in Orlando, performing in a 70,000-square-foot, 1,650-seat
theater that will be part of the Disney Village Marketplace
entertainment district with the House of Blues, a Wolfgang Puck Cafe,
Virgin Records and 24 AMC theater screens. It's a 12-year deal for two
shows a day, five days a week.
Cirque has also reached an agreement with German real estate
developers Peter and Isolde Kottmair to open a new show in 2000 in a
new $52-million permanent theater in the heart of Berlin. That
agreement extends to 2015.
Cirque officials, as well as representatives of the new venues, agree
that Treasure Island's success with a grand-scale version of the show
triggered the new deals. Feldman says Cirque came along just as Mirage
Resorts and other Vegas hotels were trying to broaden their family
appeal, as well as to attract a more sophisticated international
clientele.
Feldman notes that Cirque, like Siegfried & Roy, appealed to Mirage
because it transcends language barriers:
"It isn't like Bill Cosby. We love Bill Cosby, but if you don't speak
English, it's going to be a tough evening. And [someone like] Kenny
Rogers, who we also love dearly--if you really don't like country
music, if Cher is your thing, then Kenny is going to be tough to spend
an evening with. . . . We saw Cirque in Chicago and Los Angeles and
immediately reacted to the humanity and excitement. But we wanted
something bigger; there's only so much you can do in a tent when you
are traveling every six weeks."
In order to feed an increasingly hungry appetite, Cirque officials are
combing the globe for potential artists. Cirque has an affiliation
with the National Circus School in Montreal and finds artists at
prestigious circus schools in Russia and Europe. The organization also
draws talent from Olympic competition. The Olympics may also become
the talent pool, no pun intended, for the Bellagio water show.
"[Some athletes] do the Olympics, and then their career is finished,"
David says. "If you are the 10th- or 12th-best diver in the world,
nobody talks about you anymore. Yet they are fantastic performers,
fantastic athletes. We do recruit those types of people."
Whether drawn from the Olympics or from circus schools, most Cirque
artists undergo a year of training with the troupe's coaches.
"They are fantastic gymnasts," David says, "but they don't know how to
dance, they don't know how to smile on the stage, how to cry on the
stage, how to sing. We teach them those things."
Along with training its artists to think Cirque-like, observers say,
the troupe has fought off all comers who would change them. About
eight years ago, David says, Cirque was approached by Columbia
Pictures about doing a movie. About the same time, partly because of
Fitzpatrick's ties to Disney through his former Euro Disney
chairmanship, Cirque also began talking to Disney. Cirque nixed both
efforts for fear of losing creative control.
"We were young and they were big," David says now of Disney. "They are
still big, but we are not as young. And then Columbia Pictures at the
time also tried to do something with us, but you know, they were
asking for too much, and we said, 'No, sorry. Forget it.' They wanted
to put us in a position where we would have to change what we are, to
do something we didn't believe in. We said, 'No, sorry. We don't make
a deal on that basis.' "
Although there still are no deals with Columbia, Disney World's Weiss
says Disney is more than willing to give a more mature Cirque complete
creative control. Where Las Vegas wanted Cirque mostly to increase
family appeal, Weiss adds, Disney World wants the troupe for the
opposite reason: to expand its attractions for adult audiences.
Hollywood remains more elusive.
"We found it's not easy to just take the Cirque production and put it
on the air," David says. "There's a need to adapt your production to
television, we understand that. So we are still talking to Hollywood,
Hollywood is talking to us. . . . For each of our shows, we create 40
or 50 very original characters; each character offers a lot of
possibilities for major television production."
Along with the new productions, David says, Cirque has its eye on
Tokyo, London's theater district and Broadway. It all raises the
question: When does the big top get too big?
"I don't think any of us knows what that point is," Fitzpatrick says.
"I went to see them in Las Vegas, and I've seen them in other places,
and I'm always a bit worried: Have they 'gone Hollywood' in the worst
connotation of that term? And to my joy and surprise, they've kept the
edge."
David says Cirque is determined to walk that edge.
"There is an enormous demand for what we are doing; we could have 20
permanent productions around the world, just from the offers that we
have," he says. "But we don't take all the business offers that we
have, because we know that we cannot. We have to take time to respect
the people in each of these productions. You do not rush the
characters; you do not rush the designers. But we were ready for the
new contracts we signed.
"We learned a lot with the experience at Treasure Island. We were used
to touring, and we thought it would be very difficult to be in one
city, and Las Vegas--my God, not everybody wants to live there. But,
in fact, it's not tough at all, living conditions are wonderful,
people are very nice. Artists are buying their own houses, with pools...
People are happy."
And Cirque will probably always have people like Ste. Croix to make
sure business never overwhelms the pleasure.
"Every two years, we change 30% [of each show]," Ste. Croix says. "And
we don't have shows that are the same; we can't. When you do a musical
like 'Cats' or 'Phantom,' you can have 10 of them. The cast influences
what our content is.
"I look for artists who have an open mind. . . . We don't want stars;
we want really a team spirit. Of course, there are some people who are
making a big impression, but we will not put them on a billboard.
"We were 12 people; now we are 1,200. We've become a great success,
and I think Guy Laliberte is very responsible for that; he always took
great care in keeping the spirit of what Cirque was in the beginning,
to see that we do things in a respectful way.
"We must not let that go. It is what we do for a living. We don't make
T-shirts; we make shows. So if we cannot do this anymore because we
have too many shows? We should stop making so many shows."
* * * * * *
DEBRA BROWN BRINGS ORDER AND FANTSAY
By: Daniel Gesmer | Dance Magazine
July 1, 1998
Choreographer Debra Brown can claim that more people have seen live
performances of her work than have seen that of most better-known
choreographers. Brown has worked on every production of the acclaimed
Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil since joining the globe-trotting
troupe in 1987. Although most of the performers she works with are
formally trained as acrobats rather than as dancers (she prefers to
call them simply "movers"), the Cirque is almost certainly one of the
world's most widely seen touring theatrical productions that feature
dance. As many as 2,500,000 people may see its ninth production,
Quidam (pronounced "key-dahm"), during its current North American
tour.
The rapidly growing Cirque du Soleil entertainment empire might be
described as "Ballets Russes for the end of the century." Its
innovative combination of New Age-inspired theatricality, avant-garde
set design and costuming, intricate lighting effects, live
instrumental and vocal music, award-winning choreography, and
spectacular physical display must astonish and enchant audiences in
much the same way that Diaghilev's company did at the beginning of the
century. Cirque can be said to have truly invented the medium of
acrobatic dance-theater.
Other individuals create the themes of the various productions and
select the assortment of acts, but Brown is responsible for
choreographing the awesome physical feats that are the heart of
Cirque's appeal. Currently three different shows are being presented
on two continents, and by the end of 1998 six productions will be
shown on three continents. Each Cirque performance bears Brown's touch
in every handstand, somersault, swing, twirl, and gesture.
Brown was born in Brantford, Ontario (near Toronto). Drawn by a
compulsion to spring about on her strong legs, she began studying
gymnastics at age nine, eventually becoming Brantford city champion
and one of the top university-level competitors in Ontario. Her
attraction to dance began at an equally tender age. She says that as a
young child she choreographed dances to perform for her classmates or
at small neighborhood parades. In high school she choreographed the
floor exercise routines of virtually all her fellow gymnasts.
(Fortuitously, floor exercise and vault were her favorite events.)
Brown's formal dance education began in earnest with Donna Peterson at
the University of Western Ontario in 1973, where she was competing as
a gymnast, and continued at York University in 1976, where she majored
in dance. There she studied Cunningham technique with Sandra Neels,
Graham technique with Norrey Drummond, and ballet with Earl Kraul,
Grant Strate, and other teachers from National Ballet of Canada in
Toronto. Brown remains grateful to Neels and Drummond for spending
extra time helping her body shift from gymnastics to dance.
After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from York in 1978, she
moved to Vancouver, where she choreographed, continued her ballet
studies with Chiat Goh, and performed with independent groups, such as
Experimental Dance and Music. In 1978 she also began an eight-year
association with Vancouver's Flicka Gymnastics Club, spending twenty-
five hours a week developing a unique blend of dance and gymnastics
with a group of eight- to ten-year-old girls. The Flicka group gained
international recognition in the world of competitive gymnastics,
particularly after two of its members represented Canada at the 1984
Olympics. They also presented innovative performances of expressive
gymnastics in an artistic context--good preparation for Brown's
current metier.
In 1985 some of Brown's friends suggested that she see the fledgling
Cirque du Soleil, which had been founded in Montreal the previous year
by an itinerant group of misfit street performers and stilt walkers.
When Cirque came to Vancouver for Expo '86 and the Children's
Festival, Brown, in classic storybook fashion, literally sneaked under
the big top at intermission to watch. Sensing a kinship with the
Cirque and its approach to movement, and having learned from a chance
meeting with veteran clown Michel Dallaire that the troupe was
planning to add a choreographer to its creative team, Brown ventured
backstage the next day to announce her availability as a
choreographer. Dallaire later mentioned Brown to Guy Caron, Cirque's
artistic director at the time. Andre Simard, the Canadian men's
national gymnastics coach, who was familiar with Brown's work, vouched
for her. Previously, Cirque productions had been put together by a
director using contributions from various associates, but Brown's
strong background in competitive gymnastics, combined with her proven
talent for innovative dance-gymnastics, made her a natural choice to
be put in complete charge. Caron hired her to choreograph its 1987
production, Le Cirque Reinvente.
New Cirque productions are now born from brainstorming among the
creative team of directors Franco Dragone and Gilles Ste-Croix, set
designer Michel Crete, costume designer Dominique Lemieux, and
lighting designer Luc Lafortune. They decide on the theme or concept
of the show, the casting of acrobats, the choice of apparatus, and the
set and costume designs.
Dragone, who has been with Cirque since 1985, gives Brown tremendous
freedom in her work once these decisions are made. On two occasions he
simply gave her a word or phrase to guide her as she worked with the
artists. For Quidam, it was simplicity. For the dance sequences in
Mystere, Cirque's permanent Las Vegas production, it was birds mating.
Brown feels that her only requirement is "to come up with images that
provoke. My only restrictions, really, are my own creative limitations
and the constraints imposed by the set environment."
She begins working with the performers within the first month of their
arrival for a nine-month training period. As always, she is driven by
the search for new, expressive, yet simple movements that are uniquely
provocative on traditional acrobatic apparatus. An almost Buddhist
surrender to the immediate present is at the heart of her method. She
works collaboratively and spontaneously, "relying on the artists'
talents, creativity, and personal qualities" for inspiration during
rehearsals. She places special emphasis on drawing out their
individual creativity, since they must live with their roles for from
three to six years.
Quoting singer Loreena McKennitt, she says that the creative impulse
is "a visit--a thing of grace, not commanded or owned so much as
awaited, prepared for. A thing, also, of mystery." Brown adds, "During
the creative process, with the direction becoming clearer along the
way, the work reveals itself. If you listen, keep your eyes open, and
trust your intuition, creation is all about trust."
The title of the Cirque's currently touring production, Quidam, means
"nobody" in Latin; in French the word suggests a nameless passerby, a
solitary figure on the street, a person coming and going in our
anonymous society. Director Dragone says the show is a tribute to the
joys and sufferings of everyday people, a casting of light on our
frailties and anguish in the face of the new millennium that is fast
approaching. There is as much lament and melancholy as gaiety and
irreverence in the live musical accompaniment. Unlike previous Cirque
productions that were thronged with such allegorical figures as
angels, devils, and birds, Quidam features tramps, trollops, and
strapping laborers. Their ragged outfits suggest both the wear and
tear that acrobats' bodies must endure and the suffering of the
anonymous everyday person, the quidam in each of us.
Brown, who cared for her mother during a drawn-out terminal illness,
has been no stranger to such suffering. Moreover, during the
development of Quidam, Dragone asked all the performers to pretend
that they were in great pain and facing the choice of whether to live
or die. Choosing imaginatively to live, be felt, would lead the
artists to experience life more fully and passionately, and to "be
much more sensitive to the fluttering of butterfly wings, to a kiss
that you see in the street, to the sound of the wind, to noise and
music."
Although Quidam's story line is abstract, its music and imagery create
a thematic unity that evokes the tension between happiness and sorrow;
between the infinite possibilities of the dream-world and the too-
frequent dreariness of everyday life, between the left-brained Western
conscious mind and the right-brained creative, intuitive imagination.
The show suggests, in a rather Eastern-philosophical style, that these
tensions can be resolved by unearthing what is repressed--a caged red
balloon is released at the beginning of the show--and by bravely
plunging into the dreamy unknown of the subconscious with the open-
minded innocence of a child.
The protagonist of Quidam is a young girl--double cast with Emily
Duncan-Brown and Audrey Brisson-Jutras, daughter of composer Benoit
Jutras--who flees her parents' bland, mundane, closed-in existence.
Her journey is a distinctly psychedelic stream-of-consciousness
affair, replete with lightning strikes, physical danger, mysticism,
joy, death, and awesome superhuman feats that test the skills of
Cirque's astonishing performers. The young girl returns to her parents
at the show's end with enough vision and faith to heal their pained,
alienated reality.
"Just be in the moment," Brown says, when asked about the message of
Quidam. "Take it in as a gift to the soul, a gift for the eyes. I love
it when audiences walk out of the show feeling transformed by what
they've just seen. I say, yes, we have done our job when we have
lifted their spirits during the performance."
Seemingly driven to reinvent art forms, Brown has choreographed for
pop artists such as Celine Dion, rhythmic gymnasts such as Lori Fung
(who won a gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games), and
Apogee, a touring fifty-minute exploration of the bed of the
trampoline as a dance floor, using three to four musicians and three
to five performers. She was the choreographer for the Metropolitan
Opera's 1991 world premiere of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of
Versailles. At the Chicago Lyric Opera, she choreographed a twenty-
three-minute "bungee ballet" for the Rhine maidens in its 1992 Das
Rheingold and had acrobatic spear-wielding valkyries bouncing across
the stage on a row of trampolines in its 1993 Die Walkure. She is
already at work on 1998 Cirque productions for Las Vegas and Disney
World in Florida.
Although Canadian arts granting foundations have usually turned down
her applications because they didn't consider her work "dance," Brown
was honored last November with the Fosse Award for most innovative
choreography. Performing at the awards ceremony in Las Vegas was a
group of four contortionists with whom Brown has worked for the past
eight years. Her widely known "quidripedal choreography" with these
contortionists--in which all four limbs are exploited as means of
locomotion--won her the first-ever Soviet Press Award for most
outstanding choreographer at the 1990 World Circus Festival in Paris.
As childlike in her enthusiasm for her life and work as Quidam would
have us all become, Brown hopes to continue working with Cirque "for
as long as we're growing together, and for as long as they're still
interested in working with me." (She also humorously notes her
ambition to continue drinking fresh juices, a passion.) She is
grateful to Cirque for "a lot of wonderful experiences that I've had
and will, hopefully, continue to have." She would love to choreograph
for dance companies, and resolves to schedule her career counter to
the usual order, "starting as a choreographer and finishing as a
performer. The standing joke is that one day I'm going to perform
again." Constantly buoyed by Cirque's insistence on the power of
dream, we should not be at all surprised if that comes to pass.
The dance technique of some of the acrobats in Quidam can be a bit
rough around the edges, and the interludes of pure dance are mostly
comic. The notable exception is Austrian-born Karl Baumann, who plays
Fritz, a scampering sprite of a sidekick to the lanky, cranky
Ringmaster of the American juggler John Gilkey. Baumann's impish,
fairy-like character exudes the spirit of commedia dell'arte and the
red-and-blue target design on his chest (echoed several times in the
show) emphasizes his role as the circus heart of the production. The
numerous prickly spikes attached to his costume recall the suffering
of St. Sebastian, but Baumann's Fritz remains lighthearted and gaily
acrobatic.
Born thirty-six years ago in Salzburg, Baumann received the sort of
eclectic education (engineering and classical guitar, as well as
ballet and modern dance at Juilliard) that makes him a natural for
Cirque. His dancing credits include work with Moses Pendleton,
appearances at BAM's Next Wave Festival, and tenures with the Berlin
Opera, the Munich State Opera, and Momix. He was a principal dancer
and choreographer for Momix from 1989 to 1993, the year he joined
Cirque. Recalling the audition, he says, "Debbie and I connected right
away. We spoke the same language." He was eventually cast as a dancing
lizard in Mystere and imbued the role with such personality that
Dragone decided to make him a main character in Quidam Baumann seems
to have run away to the circus for good and may never return to the
world of concert dance. He likes the excitement and experimental
nature of Cirque and enjoys the movement possibilities opened up by
apparatus not commonly found on concert dance stages.
In Quidam he spends time hanging and spinning on high ropes in an act
known as "Spanish Webs," where his dancerly polish is particularly
oustanding. "Being around acrobats," he says, "you can't avoid
learning acrobatics." In spite of the directors' initial skepticism,
Baumann diligently practiced the rope work over the course of an
entire year and eventually won the opportunity to take part in the
act. "It would be good training for any dancer to spend a little time
upside down," he says. "Dancers may not realize that there can be a
place for them in a show like this." Baumann confides that Brown
challenges him to "go all the way" with his improvisational
creativity, that her vitality and enthusiasm have a way of possessing
those she works with.
During her journey, the young girl in Quidam meets characters hovering
"on the border between life and ultimate foolishness." Gilkey's
Ringmaster and Baumann's Fritz have stepped across that border and
entered what Baumann calls "the live Fellini movie" that is Cirque.
For the duration of the enchanting two-and-a-half-hour journey, the
audience can't resist following them. "The whole world is yearning for
more spirit and fantasy," Baumann says. "We bring the audience into
that dimension."
* * * * * *
CIRQUE DU SUCCESS
By: Brian D. Johnson | Macleans
July 27, 1998
Las Vegas is the last place you would expect to find art. The city
rises from the Nevada desert like a pop-up cartoon of American
consumerism. On the Vegas strip, you can get married in the morning,
pawn your wedding ring in the afternoon, sell a pint of your blood at
sunset and feed the proceeds into slot machines all night long. But on
this same strip, Quebec's Cirque du Soleil - an exotic hybrid of
music, theatre, acrobatics and dance - has taken root like a cactus
flower.
Mystère, the Cirque's permanent show in Vegas, is located in the
depths of Treasure Island, a resort easily identified on the strip by
the huge skull hanging under the sign and the two pirate ships that
exchange cannon fire at regular intervals. Anyone looking for the
circus has to walk through the casino, past factory rows of gamblers
working the slots with buckets of change. The room percolates with the
cheerful din of machines, hundreds of them chiming the same calliope
notes, the rat-tat-tat of coins spitting percussion. The oxygenated
air carries a vaguely coconut scent, memories of Tropic Tan. But past
the casino, past the Black Spot Grille and the corridor of souvenir
shops, is the incongruously elegant Mystre Theatre. Plush reclining
seats - twilight blue with gold stars - circle an enormous stage,
where gambling of a very different kind is about to go down.
With a thunderous din, a Japanese drum the size of a car descends from
the ceiling, pounded by a shirtless drummer who hangs by a harness.
Fog swirls across the stage, which suddenly sinks away and turns into
a staircase. The fog is sucked down the steps into a pit. A bare-
chested Russian with a triangular torso soars through the air in the
chrome frame of a twirling cube. A live band plays, a woman sings. The
stage swarms with creatures, amphibian riddles of skin, scales and
tendrils. It is a circus without animals, just people who look like
them. Gecko gymnasts with masks on the backs of their heads slither up
Chinese poles. Pear-shaped men in padded spandex catapult from teeter-
boards and trampolines. There are leaping lizards and jumping
Jacobeans - courtly acrobats in white wigs and pearl-white breeches
who somersault over flaming candelabras. And high overhead, six
trapeze girls trailing fringes fly through the air on bungee chords,
zooming in and out of each other's slipstreams in starburst
formations.
The show doubles as a sexy Vegas extravaganza and a surreal New Age
sacrament. It is an otherworldly celebration of celestial bodies. But
it is also a business, a feat of corporate stunt work no less
audacious - and elevating - than the one onstage. In partnership with
Mirage Resorts mogul Steve Wynn, the Cirque has been packing the
1,500-seat Mystre Theatre with two shows a night since 1992. It is the
hottest ticket in town. And at $100 a pop, it is the most expensive
after Siegfried & Roy's fabulously tacky magic-and-white-tigers
spectacle.
Cirque du Soleil also has two shows touring under its familiar blue-
and-yellow big top: Quidam, launched in 1996, is playing American
cities this summer, while Alegría (1994) tours Europe. But the Vegas
production - an oasis of refinement in a town built on bad taste -
offers the most striking example of how the Cirque has evolved into a
high-wire balancing act between art and commerce.
Founded by a ragtag band of Quebec street performers in 1984, Cirque
du Soleil has grown, literally, by leaps and bounds. It is now an
industrial-strength circus operating on three continents. It has won
more than 70 awards, for both art and business. Its shows have sold
more than 17 million tickets in over 120 cities around the world. And,
with revenues of $175 million for 1997, and annual profits averaging
15 to 20 per cent, the company is expanding at a breakneck pace.
By the year 2000, the company plans to have eight shows running
simultaneously. Saltimbanco will tour Asia after an October run in
Ottawa. This fall, the Cirque will open a second permanent show in Las
Vegas - an aquatic spectacle on a proscenium stage built as a giant
water tank - in a $100-million theatre at Mirage's lavish new Bellagio
resort. Another Cirque theatre with a custom-made show will open in
Orlando's Disney World in December. Alegría, meanwhile, will find a
permanent home in Beau Rivage, a Mirage casino-resort due to open next
spring in Biloxi, on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. Two more productions
are planned for Europe and Asia.
Cirque du Soleil has evolved from a street troupe of jugglers and
acrobats into a circus juggernaut, an international brand complete
with its own line of souvenir merchandise, clothes, CDs and videos.
But as the Cirque falls into the orbit of mega-corporations such as
Disney and Mirage, its autonomy remains miraculously uneclipsed. The
company is still solely owned and controlled by the same daredevil
entrepreneurs who created it. With offices in Vegas, Amsterdam and
Singapore, they are stubbornly based in Montreal, in new, $30-million
headquarters. And, for all their success, they still seem committed to
a corporate culture rooted in idealism. "We never forget where we come
from," says Daniel Gauthier, the Cirque's 39-year-old president, "and
we come from the street. Our shows have no age barrier, no class
barrier. When Vegas was looking for family entertainment, they called
the Cirque; when Disney wanted adult entertainment in Orlando, they
called the Cirque."
Gauthier co-owns the company with 38-year-old founding director Guy
Laliberté, a former performing fire-eater. Both were born and raised
in St-Bruno, a half-hour drive from Montreal. And both are high-school
dropouts who ran away from home in their teens, though not together.
Now they are affluent family men, two bilingual cosmopolitans busy
reinventing show business. Gauthier talks of their five-year plan for
the Cirque like a cautious commissar trying to keep a successful
revolution from going sour. "There's always the danger of
bureaucratization," he says. "We've taken on size and weight - we're
conscious of that. But we do everything so that we won't become a big
machine controlled by Montreal with tentacles everywhere. Our strength
has always been our ability to turn on a dime. It's all a question of
balance."
In a seven-storey studio at Cirque's Montreal headquarters, half a
dozen acrobats are developing aerial routines for the new Bellagio
show in Vegas. High above the floor, they sail back and forth on a
huge double cradle, a swing made of metal tubing in the shape of a
stylized galleon, hinged to the ceiling at both ends. Swinging the
boat in a steady arc, the acrobats jump off and catch each other in an
intricate rhythm, as if their flying bodies are being passed through
the hands of an invisible juggler. Occasionally, they miss and drop
dangling in mid-air from their harnesses.
Later, two trapeze artists - 23-year-old twins from Montreal named
Karyne and Sarah Steben - lie side by side on mats in the gym,
stretching. They have been with Cirque du Soleil from the age of 16,
when they answered a newspaper ad. "We just showed up and they
believed in us, I guess," says Sarah. "They trained us for a year."
The twins talk about working together with giddy enthusiasm,
completing each other's sentences as if handing their bodies back and
forth in mid-air: "We have a message with our act ... something to say
to the public together... yes, the trust, the complicity ... the
amazing relationship you can have with someone you love."
For Saltimbanco, the twins came up with a breathtaking manoeuvre in
which they catch each other using only their feet. Now, another set of
twins - Elsie and Serenity Smith - is rehearsing to duplicate the
routine while the Stebens work up a new act for Bellagio. They say
they have carte blanche to do whatever they want. With improvisational
philosophy similar to that of another Quebec visionary - stage
director Robert Lepage - the Cirque forges its new material out of
creative accidents. "Every show we start with a blank page," says
Cirque creative director GillesSte. Croix, 48, who started out as a
stilt-walker with the founding troupe. "By now, we have covered all
the existing acrobatics. We created this studio to explore new ones.
It's a cathedral where we can protect and develop the artists. But it
shouldn't become a shell where we just go and hide for 10 years,
saying 'I have a job.' "
The Montreal headquarters, where about 500 of the Cirque's 1,300
employees work, is located in the East End - beside a city garbage
dump that is being transformed into parkland. It is a gleaming white
complex that looks like a vast IKEA outlet, or a high-tech fortress
for a villain in a James Bond movie - a building with attitude. Inside
is an open-concept rehearsal studio/office/factory where everyone can
watch everyone else work. Expanses of corrugated steel. Curved metal
stairs. White catwalks spanning a vertiginous atrium. Some employees
have desks overlooking a rehearsal gym the size of an aircraft hangar.
A publicist typing a news release can look up from her computer to see
a trapeze artist fly past her window. Or, if she is enterprising, she
can take trapeze lessons after work.
The building has a discernible buzz. The average age of the employees
is 32. Many of them wear clothes sporting the Cirque du Soleil logo -
and express a visible enthusiasm for their work, as if they are
conjoined in some utopian experiment. In a sense, they are. Their
benefits and working conditions are unusually progressive. The
employees, who are not unionized, are paid at a competitive rate - and
receive 10 per cent of company profits. At lunch they can choose from
a menu of superb, inexpensive meals at a cafeteria run by François
Martin, who was once Brian Mulroney's private chef at 24 Sussex Drive.
And the kitchen uses fresh vegetables grown right outside the
building, where there is also a cornfield with a yield of 13,000 cobs,
which are given to employees and the neighboring community.
But Cirque du Soleil is not a utopia. It is a dream factory, a
profitable corporation in the business of making rainbows. Among 140
workers in a sprawling costume shop at the Montreal headquarters, a
seamstress will spend her day hand-sewing 2,500 sequins on the fringes
of a costume to be worn by a bungee girl in Vegas. Four floors up,
their bosses run the business from a penthouse aerie.
Laliberté's corner office is flooded with sunlight from a vast expanse
of window. A wall separates him from his partner, Gauthier, but their
offices open onto a common solarium. They take their soleil seriously
at the Cirque. Laliberté's desk is flanked by sleek blond cabinetry
and a state-of-the-art entertainment console with a giant TV. The
decor is ripe with images of fertility - African sculptures and meaty
orchids that droop from huge pots suspended from the ceiling.
Laliberté has the look of an affluent bohemian. Balding with a thin
braid curling down his neck, he wears blue jeans and a black shirt
with silver studs.
"As a kid, I always dreamed of travelling," says Laliberté. The son of
a nurse and an Alcan vice-president, he left home at 14 to become a
busking accordion player. At 18, he went to Europe and fell into a
romantic demi-monde of circus street performers. He learned to breathe
fire. Then, working as a theatrical animator at a youth hostel in Baie
St-Paul, a small town northeast of Quebec City, he hooked up with Ste.
Croix. Together they formed Club des Talons Hauts (High Heels Club), a
street circus designed to play festivals. Then, with Gauthier, another
animator at the hostel, they started up Cirque du Soleil - it was
founded, with a provincial subsidy, to mount a $1.5-million tour of
Quebec in 1984 as part of the 450th anniversary of Jacques Cartier's
arrival in Canada.
"In the beginning, we had no fear," says Laliberté. "We just jumped
in. In our second year we had $50,000 in the bank and we'd signed more
than $1.2 million in contracts, which meant buying a lot of equipment
- it was insane." The Cirque moved from a disappointing run in Toronto
to a disastrous engagement in Niagara Falls. "That's where we
established a policy that if there are less people in the audience
than performing, we cancel the show." Then, in 1987, Laliberté gambled
on a make-or-break gig in California, at the Los Angeles Festival. "We
went down there barely paying for the gasoline," he recalls. "The
festival had no advance money. So I said, 'I'll take the risk, but
give me some publicity and the opening-night slot.' It was a hit. The
next day, the scalpers were making money from us. But if we had
failed, we had no money to bring our equipment back to Quebec."
In California, the Cirque started up a long-term love affair with the
media and the show-business elite. Hollywood stars became regular
backstage visitors. And now, although the Cirque is not the biggest
show on earth - Ringling Bros. employs twice as many performers - it
is the class act. It can hire the cream of acrobatic performers from
around the world. Competitors have accused it of strip-mining talent.
And Pierrot Bidon, founder of a more avant-garde French troupe called
Archaos, has gone so far as to call Cirque du Soleil "the McDonald's
of circuses."
"That's bullshit," says Laliberté, stressing that, unlike producers of
such blockbusters as Phantom of the Opera or Cats, his company does
not clone any of its shows. At any one time, there is only one troupe
performing Saltimbanco, Alegría, Quidam or Mystère. Any backlash
against the Cirque, he adds "is a jealous reaction more than anything
else. We're shaking their world. We're getting into their European
market. And we're a big buyer of talent - if we go to a festival, acts
approached by other circuses will say, 'I'll wait to see if Cirque du
Soleil is interested first.' "
The Cirque scours the world for talent, auditioning gymnasts,
jugglers, dancers, divers, clowns, musicians - and swimmers. For the
new Vegas water show, it has recruited synchronized swimmers,
including Olympic champion Sylvie Fréchette. But athletes trained for
competition have to learn to become actors in a theatrical ensemble.
"Here, they teach you to become an artist," says Eligiusz Skoczylas, a
Polish acrobat in Mystère. "This is not a competition. It's a
showroom. It's like a playground. All the differences of language and
tradition disappear. We're trying to create one tradition, one spirit
on stage."
The creative process is collaborative, and often laborious, which can
come as a shock to new recruits. When the Cirque hired its first
Russian artists in 1990, they expected star treatment. "Once they were
asked to go and take a mattress over to the stage," recalls Ste.
Croix. "They refused. And when we explained that everyone at the
Cirque works collectively, they said, 'But that's communism.' " Adds
Ste. Croix: "Well, maybe it's a kind of Quebec socialism."
Although Cirque du Soleil prides itself on being a circus without
stars, some acrobats are more equal than others. Laliberté says the
performers' annual earnings can range from an apprentice rate of
$30,000 (which includes free food, lodging and training) to $250,000
for a veteran who owns creative rights to his or her act. There is no
danger pay.
Each night, Pierre Dubé, the drummer in Mystère's 10-piece band,
watches the action from a catwalk perched 18 metres above the stage.
Standing beside his drum kit before a show, he gazes out over the
railing. Far below, acrobats are busy rehearsing somersaults off
teeter-boards, a nightmarish version of what children are told not to
do in playgrounds. "We had a very bad accident here a year ago," says
Dubé. "On the high bar, two of our flyers met in mid-air. They were
both going full speed, coming at each other head-on. We heard a big
bang. It was one of their legs breaking. One flyer was in shock in the
net, shaking. His leg was all crunched up. The other was completely
unconscious."
Both recovered, and the one who broke his leg is back performing on
the high bar. "A lot of people here have been taking St. John's
Ambulance classes," says Dubé. "Not very long ago, we had a high-bar
catcher who fell on his head. We thought he'd broken his neck." As it
turned out, he was all right. "But the worst thing for me," the
drummer adds, "is seeing some guy getting injured, and I have to keep
playing. The music doesn't stop."
Although serious accidents are infrequent, Laliberté admits that "we
have a lot of injuries." Any night of the week, there are always two
or three Mystère artists missing in action. "I can never get over the
fact that people, even with injuries, keep coming back and performing
higher and better than they did before," adds the founding director.
"You can't do that unless you have passion and pleasure in doing it. I
think you have to be a little mad to be a circus performer. It's a
wild job."
And it attracts a wild variety of personalities. The Cirque's cast is
an international playground, dominated by Eastern Europeans (35 per
cent) and Canadians (33 per cent) - English and French tend to be the
working languages. "You have all kinds," says Laliberté. "There are
people who are disciplined, training at 6 a.m. Then you have Russians
who are doing triples in the air - guys who run the most risk of
breaking their neck - and five minutes before they go on, they're
smoking a cigarette, and they'll drink half a bottle of vodka the day
after. You have vegetarians, macrobiotic types, and people who just
eat junk food. It's a total mosaic."
And sometimes pieces come unglued. "There are fights, and
depressions," says Laliberté. "We've had clowns chasing after
technicians with their motorcycles. One day, we had a clown arrive
with such a big depression. Imagine - the guy is supposed to make
people laugh and he's crying for 20 hours. What do you do? Clowns are
the most anxious people in the world. It's the discipline that takes
the longest to learn. And they're the people who break down most
easily."
Living together for months on end, a Cirque touring company is like a
big, sprawling family. But for the 160 members of the Mystère cast and
crew, who drive to work each day from houses in the suburbs, the
circus is a job.
Backstage at Mystère, any New Age mystique quickly falls away. The
facilities are cramped, the decor spartan. Between the two evening
shows, performers stroll around half out of costume, in pink spandex
shorts and white greasepaint. The artists' lounge is thick with
cigarette smoke. A group huddles around a video of the show that has
just ended. A pool game is in progress. And two acrobats in whiteface
play a deadly serious game of table tennis; they look like a parody of
a Bergman film.
Down the hall in the physiotherapy room, Lizard Girl lies on a massage
table, groaning as a therapist slides a chunk of ice up and down her
calf muscle. Lizard Girl is Andrea Ziegler, a pixieish dancer with
lively green eyes and short orange hair. "I jammed my leg," she says.
"They don't know what it is." Pumped with anti-inflammatories, she
will still be able to dance, but alone: Lizard Boy is out with a
broken ankle.
Ziegler is new. The 25-year-old dancer was recruited to Mystère from
the Toronto cast of Phantom of the Opera in December. Her job is to
leap around the stage and look as much like a lizard as is humanly
possible. "It's much more carefree than Phantom," she says. "When I
came here I had one rehearsal and they just threw me in. Here
everyone's really cool. What's so unique about this show is that
backstage all the artists are watching what's going on from the wings,
or on TV monitors. They're cheering and rooting for each other."
As for the Vegas life, Ziegler has no complaints, aside from missing
her husband, who is a student back in Toronto. "I share a really nice
house in the suburbs with another dancer. A lot of the artists who
have been here a long time have a lot of money. They have their houses
with their pools and their four-wheel-drive vehicles." But there is
still some circus spirit, even in Vegas. In April, many of the Mystère
cast gathered in a spectacular stretch of Nevada desert called the
Valley of Fire for a lesbian wedding - between the stage manager and
the wardrobe mistress. "We all sang," says Zeigler. "The musicians
played. And at the end, as a surprise, 10 of us stood in a circle and
sang Fools Rush In - we'd secretly rehearsed it for three days
backstage. They were crying. I was crying. It was beautiful."
After a performance of Mystère, a dark-eyed Bulgarian gymnast is all
aflutter after meeting Bruce Willis, who visited backstage with his
three daughters after the show. Mikhail Matorin, the Russian cube
artist, seems indifferent. In four years with the Cirque, he has
already met Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Goldie
Hawn and Robin Williams. With his sculpted torso, high cheekbones and
mane of brown hair, Matorin, 33, has a noble bearing. He grew up in
the Moscow Circus, where his father was the director, his mother a
trapeze artist. "Mystère is like a big machine," he says. "Touring is
more fun - it's like a gypsy thing, partying all the time. But after
15 years on the road, I don't feel like it any more." Matorin now
lives in a big house, with two golden retrievers, and is dating the
lead dancer from Splash, a showgirl revue at the Riviera casino.
Reluctantly, he is teaching his act to a Cirque colleague. Another
show in town has already copied it: a Russian does a cube act down the
Strip at Bally's.
Inevitably, Cirque du Soleil's success has spawned imitators, arty
circus shows with French names. "I take it as a tribute to what we've
done," says Laliberté. "But the public could be confused. When someone
starts a show in the Lake Tahoe casino called Mystique with the same
lettering as Mystére, it's a little obvious."
Meanwhile, as the company expands, Laliberté and his partner try to
keep it agile and ahead of the game. "We study lots of other corporate
models," says Gauthier, citing a principle at Hewlett-Packard called
"the double ladder," which allows those on the creative side, as well
as management, to rise to the top. Both partners stress that they have
no interest in going public with their company, which has no outside
investors. "We don't even talk about it," says Laliberté. "We're
having too much fun playing in our own sandbox." Explains Gauthier:
"We don't want the pressure of going public. One year, we might decide
not to make a profit, in order to develop a new show. Or if we decide
to delay a development, we don't want shareholders asking us why we
didn't do what we promised."
The Cirque's two partners are an odd couple. Both are married with one
daughter each and live in St-Bruno. While both are clearly astute
businessmen, Laliberté plays the dreamer while Gauthier is the money
man. "It can be difficult sometimes," says Gauthier. "We have the same
basic values, but we don't have the same lifestyles - I'm more
conservative. The two sides need each other: if we want to fulfill all
these dreams, it's going to take money."
The Cirque takes risks that do not always pay off. It entrusted its
director, Franco Dragone, with making a $7-million dramatic feature
called Alegría, a surreal art film that its North American
distributors say has little commercial potential. Meanwhile, new
windows of opportunity continue to open up. The Cirque has turned down
offers to stage shows for opera companies and rock stars. To fill its
expanding cast, it holds mass auditions every month in different
cities around the world. And it has programs to teach disadvantaged
children circus skills in Montreal, Quebec City, Amsterdam, Las Vegas
- and in the urban slums of Chile and Brazil. For all its
international ambitions, the Cirque retains its Quebec identity.
"We're born here," says Laliberté. "Our head office is here. And we
bring a part of Quebec around the world whenever we set up our big
top." But he stresses politics do not enter the picture. "Cirque is
more universalist than nationalist. We believe in one world. It's a
philosophical thing."
The Cirque du Soleil's founding director still talks like a visionary
whose goal lies forever beyond the horizon. "After 14 years," he says,
"we've done nothing. The real test will be the next 10 years." Under
the Cirque's ever-expanding big top, the former fire-breather seems to
have found his place in the sun - but he is still the boy from St-
Bruno, running away to join the circus that has yet to be invented.
* * * * * *
DREAM OF A NEW CIRCUS
By: Michael Point | Austin Chronicle
May 2, 2003
It started on a street corner in Quebec and now it literally spans the
planet, amazing audiences worldwide with its ability to transform a
simple tent into a focal point for the fantastic.
The circus of Cirque du Soleil is not lions, tigers, and stale
popcorn. Instead, it's an adventurously artistic alternate reality
where sight, sound, and spectacle interact with unexpected results. As
aerial acts fearlessly hurl themselves through space, seemingly just
above you, gnarled figures decked out in elaborately sequined outfits
and bright plumage patrol the stage. A costumed band parades through
the crowd, stopping to serenade fortunate fans. A grinning hunchback
in a scarlet tailcoat introduces a fire-dancer, who spins so close to
you, you can hear the flames and smell the smoke. With stunning sets,
outrageous costumes, modern music, and an attention to art in every
aspect of the production, Cirque du Soleil conjures up an almost
hallucinogenic sense of magic that is often as surreal as it is
sensational. And it is sensational beyond description.
The Cirque du Soleil concept -- integrating dance, music, and story to
expand what circus performance is while retaining the inherent
excitement of a circus -- was a flight of fancy made physical, and it
has spiraled upward for two decades, creating a seemingly insatiable
international appetite for its enlightened upgrade of the traditional
entertainment event.
For all the art and athleticism of its performers and productions,
Cirque du Soleil -- undoubtedly one of the most unexpected and
unlikely of entertainment empires -- is almost as impressive a
business story. The troupe was founded in 1984 by Guy Laliberté, an
accordionist, stilt walker, and fire-eater. Whatever his skills as a
performer, Laliberté made his greatest contribution to the evolution
of the circus as the organizer and mastermind behind Cirque du
Soleil's surprising ascent to global eminence.
Cirque du Soleil began staging its shows in Quebec in an 800-seat
tent. Once fans were exposed to the troupe's cutting-edge attitude and
magical mix of artistic disciplines, the small tent became the
destination of choice for those seeking a theatrical experience unlike
anything else on the scene. Tours of Canada and the U.S. built the
company's audience so dramatically that in just six years Cirque du
Soleil was able to premiere its Nouvelle Expérience show in Montreal
in a 2,500-capacity big top, a precursor to the state-of-the-art
"Grand Chapiteau" under which it now stages its traveling productions.
In 1992, the troupe played Las Vegas for the first time, presenting
Nouvelle Expérience in a yearlong residency at the Mirage Hotel. Its
success was so overwhelming that a theatre was custom-built for the
troupe, which opened Mystère at Treasure Island in 1993. As more
productions have been added and tours expanded to Europe, Asia, and
Australia, audiences have continued to fill the troupe's assorted big
tops in record numbers, averaging more than 60,000 fans per weekend in
2002.
In the 19 years it has taken for Cirque du Soleil to reach Austin,
more than 32 million fans have personally witnessed its performances.
Alegría, the production that will serve as the city's introduction to
the company in live performance, was created for its 10th anniversary
and has been on the road for almost a decade. Like all the troupe's
touring productions, it is thematically unique and physically self-
sufficient. With 1,000 tons of equipment and a week of site
preparation, Cirque du Soleil has transformed the old Robert Mueller
Airport into its current home away from home. Alegría is now a village
unto itself, with its own power source, offices, kitchen, and storage
facilities. While the tours are a major undertaking, the troupe has
grown accustomed to them.
Cirque du Soleil currently has four touring productions in addition to
Alegría. Varekai, the newest, is currently in New York City as it
makes its first full-scale North American tour. Saltimbanco, which
premiered in 1992, is in Geneva after a three-year tour through the
South Pacific. Dralion, which set box-office records in Houston last
year, is in Baltimore as it works its way back to Montreal. Quidam,
the fan favorite that first brought Cirque du Soleil to Texas in 1997,
is presently playing in Tokyo. And Alegría, which was in Mexico City
before pitching its tent in Texas, will move on to Western Canada
after departing Austin.
While the touring shows take Cirque du Soleil everywhere from
Amsterdam to Atlanta, three resident productions provide stationary
shrines for its ever-growing legion of devotees. La Nouba, located in
the Downtown Disney entertainment district of Walt Disney World in
Orlando, established a permanent East Coast base for the troupe in
1998. That same year "O," the first Cirque du Soleil aquatic show,
opened at Bellagio in Las Vegas. A new resident production, Zumanity -
- rumored to include a bit of R-rated sensualism -- opens July 31 at
New York-New York Hotel & Casino, and a fourth Vegas production will
open next year.
The Cirque du Soleil empire stretches far beyond the big top, however.
Films of the troupe's performances were among the highest-rated events
on the Bravo television network, leading to the 2002 reality series
Fire Within, which showed the behind-the-scenes development of Varekai
from the perspective of artists auditioning and rehearsing for the
production. Next year Bravo will air a 13-part series of Cirque du
Soleil miniproductions, each an independent realization of the type of
thematic shows the company takes on the road. In 2000, the company
filmed Journey of Man for IMAX, a format befitting its larger-than-
life presentations. Such activities have increased its public profile
to the point that Cirque du Soleil has become an icon of contemporary
culture.
Cirque du Soleil, however, is a live experience, and even IMAX can't
capture the sensory saturation of the live shows. Each production has
its own storyline and imagined universe, from the dreamy Quidam, with
its mysterious characters, to the energetic Saltimbanco, with its
whirlwind of urban life, to the jubilant Alegría, with its birdlike
figures and images of flight. It is circus as theatre, a
multidisciplinary creative collusion that delivers more than the
traditional form ever imagined. "Our productions are much more than
just a circus," says Artistic Director Pierre Parisien. "But we always
try to remember our first responsibility to the audience is to create
something that evokes that special sense of awe and wonder that can
only be experienced at a circus."
Parisien is entrusted with the duty of keeping Alegría at once fresh
and yet true to its original vision -- a vision that includes sound at
the center of things. The distinctive music of Cirque du Soleil,
available on more than a dozen CDs, is a primary component of all its
productions and one of the most obvious differences between the
original and the assortment of "extreme circus" imitations that have
sprung up in its wake. Composed by Cirque du Soleil stalwart René
Dupéré, the music serves to brings harmony to the wildly disparate
elements of the show, embellishing and bridging the onstage
activities. The score for a production is created much like that of a
motion-picture soundtrack. Broad themes expressive of the production's
storyline and sensibilities are composed and then synchronized to the
action.
But it is the death-defying nature of that live action that sets the
music and its creative process apart from the after-the-fact cinematic
approach. With performers literally flying through the air, a
misplaced beat or an out-of-time accent can be disastrous on both
physical and performance levels. "It is crucial for the music to not
only sound right, but to also make the right sound at the right
moment," Parisien explains. "It is a part of the show, but artists
also must depend on it for their performances. Like most elements of
the production, it has more than one purpose and meaning."
In other words, the music exists to serve the circus. It is that
succession of mind-boggling activities performed by incredibly agile
and accomplished artists that has always been Cirque du Soleil's
primary source of awe. Everything, whether fire-dancing or a
synchronized trapeze act, is done with style and a casual virtuosity
that serves to disguise the difficulty of the feats. But there is
simply no way to obscure the astounding athleticism of the artists and
the physical poetry of their performances.
At the Houston Alegría engagement Jim Pierce watched a slender young
female contortionist casually twist herself into shapes rarely seen
outside comic books. "These people are just not from this planet," he
said in astonishment. But they are indeed earthlings, if admittedly,
almost supernaturally talented ones drawn from across the globe.
Alegría features 56 artists from 13 countries, including Mongolia,
Finland, Argentina, Russia, and Poland, in addition to its American
and Canadian natives. They soar, somersault, and generally defy the
normal limits of human activity with a level of physical precision and
graceful body control above and beyond the best and brightest of past
circus stars. And they do it nightly.
In a way, Alegría tells the story of Cirque du Soleil. Its bent
characters in fantasy finery represent the old and obstinate while the
energetic, enthusiastic performing artists personify the young and
innovative vanguard. A torch is being passed, albeit reluctantly, and
the theatrical device re-creates the early clash between a group of
Quebec street performers and the rigid structure of the traditional
circus.
Cirque du Soleil revitalized the big top at a time when the ageless
dream of running away to join the circus had become an almost archaic
concept. But when a new generation saw the dream reimagined and
invigorated, the circus was assured of surviving into the 21st
century. And the dream continues to fuel the imagination of both fans
and, more importantly, potential performers.
"We have people coming to our Montreal headquarters all the time,
intent on performing in the circus," Parisien says with pride.
"Because of what we've accomplished they know they can achieve their
dream and that is a wonderful thing to be part of."
To Be Continued...
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COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
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Fascination! Newsletter
Volume 18, Number 9 (Issue #176) - September 2018
"Fascination! Newsletter" is a concept by Ricky Russo. Copyright (C)
2001-2018 Ricky Russo, published by Vortex/RGR Productions, a
subsidiary of Communicore Enterprises. No portion of this newsletter
can be reproduced, published in any form or forum, quoted or
translated without the consent of the "Fascination! Newsletter." By
sending us correspondence, you give us permission (unless otherwise
noted) to use the submission as we see fit, without remuneration. All
submissions become the property of the "Fascination! Newsletter."
"Fascination! Newsletter" is not affiliated in any way with Cirque du
Soleil. Cirque du Soleil and all its creations are Copyright (C) and
are registered trademarks (TM) of Cirque du Soleil, Inc., All Rights
Reserved. No copyright infringement intended.
{ Sep.10.2018 }
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