For Cirque du Soleil performer Kristi Wade, Sundays typically start in one city and finish in another. The Australian-born acrobat, who appears in Toruk, performs two shows every Sunday, before packing up and heading to the next performance destination.
The first thing I think of is eggs on toast. Sunday is a double show day for us. It’s our earliest day – our first show is at 1.30pm so it’s the only day we don’t get to sleep in. Opposite to everyone else in the world. However, we’re very lucky in that the catering team provides us with brunch on a Sunday, which we don’t normally get. They set up an entire kitchen – egg station, pastry station, cakes, cheeses, fruit, nuts, granola, everything you can think of. It’s always a great start to the day.
I see it as adventure day because we’re normally moving to a new city. On top of two shows, we have load out and transfer, all in one day. So, after our second show which finishes at 5.30, we either get put on a bus or on a flight, straight to the next city. Sometimes we don’t arrive until early morning the next day. The longest is six hours on a bus, otherwise we get on a flight. The buses are super fun. It’s something I look forward to. It’s a bunch of friends with our dinner packs, entertaining ourselves for a few hours.
Home for me is in the show. On Sunday morning, we have to check out of our rooms. I would probably get up at 8.30am, have my bags downstairs by 9am and walk to the arena by 10am. I pack the night before, because Saturday nights we finish late – about 10.30pm. Home for me is in the show – and out of a suitcase, and in a hotel room. I still feel “at home” when I go back to Sydney, but it’s been really interesting for me to discover that you can really make home wherever you want it to be.
I start putting on makeup at 11am. We do our own makeup. It takes an hour. I have all these creams that go on first. There’s quite lot of layering and a lot of blending, all different shades of blue. Then I put a powder over the top and then brush it off, which sets the makeup. After I set it I cover my face in powder forms of all the makeup I’ve previously used. Most of the makeup is MAC. We have these luminescent dots we add to our faces that glow in the dark. There’s Blacktrack, which is this liquid liner I have to use. Makeup is one of my favourite parts of the day, actually. It’s a chilled out, zen moment. You have to be focused on the makeup you’re doing. It’s like doing art every day – but different to the art on stage.
Before a show, I like to do cardio to warm up. I might get on the elliptical for five or 10 minutes. Then I’ll go the blue mats and start stretching top to bottom – start from the head and work my way down to my toes. I generally warm myself up as if I was going to do quite an acrobatic routine, because at the start of the show I do quite a bit of tumbling on the floor.
I saw a Cirque du Soleil show when I was nine. I told my parents on that day, that’s what I want to do. Thankfully that worked out. My biggest memories of Sundays when I was young was it was my dad’s only day off work, so I couldn’t have any commitments on a Sunday because he wanted to sleep in. Sundays were good – a family day at home. As I got older, a lot of my performances were on Fridays and Saturdays, so Sunday was for relaxing. I would perform until 5am Saturday nights, so Sunday was a sleep in day.
{ SOURCE: New Zealand Stuff | https://goo.gl/kw8vr3 }
