CLOWNING ACHIEVEMENTThe surreal world of Cirque du Soleil comes to D.C.BY MICHAEL CLEMENTS
The first Cirque du Soleil show I saw amazed me. The combination of acrobatic precision, dance and surreal characters — the music and lighting — it was a mélange of modern and traditional “circus” I’d never seen before. The show was La Nouba. What I remember most is a clown, a strongman to be exact — a pale, lanky character who lurched his anatomically abnormal frame through the crowd with such eerie precision that it commanded my rapt attention. I’ve been hooked ever since. Abstract procession-ism A less lanky but equally captivating clown is the central figure in the company’s newest show, Corteo, which runs from October 26 through November 26 at the City Center Parking Lot (formerly Washington Convention Center). Corteo derives from the Italian word “cortege,” which refers to a joyous procession, or festive parade. In this case, the procession is promulgated from the fertile imagination of an Italian clown, who envisions his own funeral, thus creating an eclectic world of angels, giants, little people and requisite flying acrobats. This is “Cirque,” so don’t expect the show to be too Italian — or too anything for that matter — for Cirque is about the implied, the indirect, the surreal.
“When you work in a language no one understands, everyone understands,” says Line Tremblay, Corteo’s director of creation with a hint of abstract Québecquois flair that seems to permeate the culture at Cirque’s sprawling headquarters 30 minutes north of downtown Montreal. With her unruly sandy blonde hair Tremblay could easily pass for an East Village painter — not the creative force, who along with founder and chief executive officer Guy Laliberté, has helped transform Cirque from an obscure group of Montreal street performers to global circus phenomenon. She continues: “There is no formula here, no set creative process that we adhere to. There is only a balance of serendipity and organic creation mixed with practical strategy and experience. Corteo creator and director Daniele Finzi Pasca likes to say ‘the stage is a white page – it will tell us what to do.’ ” Over her shoulder, a group of stout Eastern European “catchers,” whom I previously witnessed tossing a “flyer” into the stratosphere over and over, take a much deserved lunch break; next to them a khaki-clad marketing team talks strategy over café au laits. — it’s the perfect juxtaposition of “creative meets corporate” which has enabled Cirque’s success. The company now produces thirteen shows — six of which are permanent “resident shows,” including five in Las Vegas. The group plans to add seven more by 2010, including the permanent production Tremblay is currently working on for Tokyo. “Our goal is not to necessarily make every production better than the next,” she says. “Instead, we strive to reinvent ourselves; to push the boundaries; to never remain stagnant” Clowning Around Creating a Cirque show takes roughly two years. In the end, a traveling show such as Corteo will include a well-oiled team of 150, including 54 performers, five of whom are clowns. Yves Sheriff is the man entrusted with sending in the right clowns … Yes, he is a clown talent scout. But don’t let the title fool you — the slick Montreal native approaches his mandate with the acumen of a Hollywood casting director: “We are constantly scouting the world for clowns,” he says. He says that Corteo came with its own unique set of “little” challenges. “The story called for a little person husband and wife team. By ‘little person,’ we mean anatomically proportionate actors, who are much less common then artists with dwarfism. Plus, we wanted a real couple … with all the tools it takes to be a Cirque artist. Not an easy assignment.” Supporting Tremblay’s belief in serendipity, Sheriff found his couple in the unlikeliest of places: Israel. He recalls: “We heard via our global scout network about a talented troop of little people touring Israel, so Line [Tremblay] and I flew out, to of all places, Bethlehem on Christmas Eve to see them. They were perfect. But it wasn’t an easy decision for them to join us — most performers tour with Cirque for one to three years, and their troop was family to them.” The couple is featured throughout Corteo paired with a giant, who Sheriff explains came with his own set of casting challenges: “Artists on Corteo perform an average of 385 shows a year: two shows a day, eight to ten shows a week. Giants tend to be fragile health-wise, so we had to take extra care our giant could handle this workload.”
Street to global Overcoming challenges is something Cirque is accustomed to. Looking out at the group’s postmodern campus, which Cirque chose to build on one of Canada’s largest landfills — which now stands as a global test case for how to transform an urban landfill into an eco-friendly and biofuel producing site — it’s hard to believe this global business grew from a small band of street performers. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1987 during a breakout run at the Los Angeles Festival that Cirque could afford to tour outside Quebec. “L.A. was a make or break trip for us,” Tremblay says matter of factily. “We literally packed-up a line of school buses and drove from Montreal to California. If we hadn’t actualized a tour out of L.A., we wouldn’t have been able to afford to bring our equipment home.” During the festival, a film producer approached founder Guy Laliberté and offered to buy out the group and take creative control. Although cash strapped, Laliberté turned the offer down. The group still maintains creative control today. Translation: the inmates are running the hospital. Trading podiums for ovations One of the better known “inmates” is Senior Head Coach Boris Verkhovsky. The former Russian Olympic coach is renowned for both his animated professional style and ability to mold world-class competitive athletes into world-class performing acrobats. “My job is strip down the competitive performer emotionally, physically and mentally, and to get them to use their bodies and minds more openly,” he says before leaning in and mimicking a smile. “You don’t learn to smile,” he tells me, “you have to feel the truth of what makes you smile. That is the challenge for the world class athlete: to learn to not perform for a judge; to understand ‘character’; to break away from rigid straight lines; to understand that within a ‘fall’ there is potential to discover movement that expresses your character more truthfully.” Always on the lookout for world-class athletes who have peaked competitively and are ready for a career transition, Cirque talent scouts review hundreds of unsolicited tapes a week and continually hold open auditions and scout gymnastic competitions worldwide. Twenty-six year old former UCLA gymnast Yvonne Tousek is hoping for such a career transition. She has just completed a two-hour “bouncing beds” rehearsal session, but there’s not a drop of sweat on her and she has more energy than most people after a good night’s sleep and a triple espresso. The routine — one of seventeen acts in Corteo — calls for her to “bounce childlike” between trapeze beds with the grace and precision of a pig-tailed ninja. She was the only person chosen from a group of 2,500 hopefuls at an open audition in Las Vegas this past spring. “To be able to continue your passion with Cirque is a dream for anyone serious about this craft,” the brunette sparkplug says. More dreams — clown dreams to be specific — will be on display at the City Center Parking Lot from October 26 through November 26, when Cirque comes to town. In a city used to media circuses, political tight-rope acts and various dark follies, the clowns of Corteo should fit right in. |
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