“A Day at the Circus: Les journées de la culture at TOHU”
By: Wayne Leung – Ottawa, Ontario (Canada)
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Every year on the last weekend of September cultural institutions around the province of Québec open their doors for demonstrations, shows and tours as a part of the provincial government’s Journées de la culture (Culture Days) initiative. This event provides fans of Cirque du Soleil the opportunity to make an annual pilgrimage to the international headquarters of the organization and tour the facilities where the magic is created, speak to employees who make the magic happen on a daily basis and watch upcoming artists in training.
This year I noticed that the Cirque du Soleil open house event was a bit scaled down from last year’s. The reason for the smaller event at Cirque’s headquarters was immediately evident on my arrival in the North Montreal community of St-Michel that the company calls home. Last year the entire area surrounding the Cirque’s IHQ was filled with construction sites. This year the construction has been completed and the brand new facilities of Tohu, Montreal’s Circus arts city, have been completed and were also open for tours. In previous years the open house was exclusively a Cirque du Soleil event.
This year the emphasis was on the entire Tohu complex comprised of Cirque du Soleil’s International Headquarters, École nationale de cirque (ENC, the National Circus School), and the brand new Chapiteau des Arts, site of Tohu’s administrative office and Canada’s first circular performance hall dedicated to the showcasing of circus arts. All of the aforementioned sites were open for the public to tour during les Journées de la culture.
I covered my visit last year in an article in our October 2003 issue. Similar events took place at this year’s open house. I toured the costume workshop where employees were on hand to answer questions about the many costume pieces on display from the various shows. Some pieces of note included singer Mathieu Lavoie’s cloak from Varekai, a yellow-tasseled body suit worn by the bungee characters in Mystère, the outfits worn by the character Aurora and by the Duo Trapeze artists in “O”, the Lizard outfit worn by Gareth Hopkins in Varekai, the Manipulation outfit from Alegría, and an entire table devoted to the fabrication techniques used in the making of the costumes for the upcoming KÀ. One major difference this year was that many pieces were prominently displayed in an area where visitors were able to examine them very closely and even allowed to touch them to get a tactile feel for the costumes.
The next area I toured featured masks from various productions; the synchronized swimmers’ masks from “O”, the African-inspired hoop diver masks from Dralion, the Old Birds from Alegría and several masks from Mystère.
Moving on to the props workshop I saw several props from Dralion on display including two completed Dralion Heads, one of Icarus’ wings from Varekai and a display detailing the process of making a mould of an artists’ head to facilitate the making of masks and headpieces specifically fitted to a particular artist.
Moving downstairs I visited an area I did not previously have the opportunity to explore, the fabrics and textiles workshop. Since Cirque’s costumes feature many elaborate patterns the company purchases un-coloured, raw fabric and performs all of the necessary dyeing, printing, painting, and silk screening operations in-house. Many different printed patterns were on display, including the fabric patterns used in the costumes of many of Varekai’s forest creatures as well as the patterns of the costumes worn by the Russian Swing flyers from the show. The print for Dralion’s hoop diver costume was also on display as was a detailed print for the bodysuit that will be worn by a “Forest Man” in KÀ.
The fabric workshop also housed a display featuring headpieces worn in the various productions, among them a collection from Varekai (Icarian Games, Russian Swings, Triple Trapeze and Olga’s old “seashell” headpiece), a selection of headpieces worn by the Baroques in Saltimbanco as well as Funny Bunny’s headpieces from Quidam (both the regular, ear-up version and the skipping rope, ear-down version).
Elsewhere in the Cirque du Soleil IHQ complex, a make shift theatre showed the soon-to-be-released-on-DVD La Nouba television special. Another showed the Soleil de Minuit commemorative concert television special. A photographic exhibition on the costumes of Cirque du Soleil featuring many artistic prints of close-up photos of various costumes. An exhibition highlighting the efforts of the Cirque du Soleil Images team housed in the dance studio featured dozens of video screens showing clips from all of the different television productions.
This year, the large training studio A/B was empty but the doors were open and guests were allowed to step inside for a look (but had to remain in a cordoned-off area). In studio C/D guests gathered to watch a team of artists training on Russian Swing. The particular group of artists I saw was training for Saltimbanco. I also had the opportunity to watch a young girl from China practice balancing upside-down on a unicycle and peddling across a slack wire, I was told this would be one of the new acts that will be integrated into Alegría when the show is overhauled for its Japanese tour.
After completing my tour of the Cirque du Soleil headquarters I walked across the street to visit another institution in the Tohu complex, the brand new campus of l’École Nationale de Cirque. While touring the school’s various studios I had the opportunity to watch many young up-and-coming circus artists training in disciplines as diverse as trapeze, aerial hoop, fast track, tight wire, aerial silks, dance and tumbling. The new facility is well equipped and very well appointed to impart the circus arts to a new generation of performers. It was a little bit strange to look inside the classrooms in this facility; they look just like classrooms in any high school or college. The artists-in-training at ENC are also full-time college students.
Finally I had the opportunity to visit the heart to Tohu itself, the Chapiteau des Arts. The modern, urban yet earthy new building houses Tohu’s administrative offices as well as the headquarters of the Saint-Michel Environmental Complex. The lobby of the Chapiteau is bright, colourfully accented and thoroughly modern; a large interactive video wall provides information about all of Tohu’s residences. Screens hanging from the ceiling show animated images representing the four ancient elements; earth, air, fire and water. The building also houses a permanent exhibit called “Terra Cirqua” presenting pieces of circus history. A temporary exhibit called “Beau risque” in the lobby’s exhibition area featured modern art pieces inspired by circus performance. The 840-seat performance hall was also open and performers from the current show, les 7 doigts de la main, several of whom are Cirque du Soleil alumni, made an appearance twice during the afternoon for discussions on the profession of circus artists and for a few impromptu performances.
All in all, the feeling of this year’s open house event was very different from previous years. It is amazing to see the incredible growth the neighborhood around the Cirque du Soleils international headquarters has seen in the year since my last visit. With the birth of Tohu, now is the most exciting time for the development of the circus arts in Montreal, a city well on its way to its goal of becoming the circus capital of the world.
