CLINGING on for dear life to a single aerial hoop as I flew through the air under Cirque du Soleil’s signature blue-and-yellow big top, I quickly realised I had not missed my calling as a circus performer.
My sweaty palms and total lack of upper body strength meant the only thing saving me from eating the gym mat below was the fact I was strapped on with a training belt.
When buff hoops artist Olli Torkkel finally stopped spinning me, it took almost 30 seconds to regain my balance and be sure I wasn’t going to lose my lunch.
“In the beginning, I felt sick and was getting headaches every single day but then I don’t know what changes — your body just adapts,” the 36-year-old said.
Right. So, the first thing I learnt during my backstage experience at Totem in Perth was that I had made the right decision quitting gymnastics as a kid.
While the artists make it look easy on stage, the sheer strength required to support your own body weight with one arm while you’re twisting and whirling around cannot be exaggerated — and I was only about 10cm off the ground.
To call the show’s 46 performers elite athletes is possibly an understatement. They are the best of the best, sourced by the company from all over the world.
Having caught a glimpse inside their world, it was clear the Cirque machine never stopped churning to maintain the seemingly impossible standard seen by the audience.
Here’s what else I learnt during my afternoon at Totem.
2. Every artist in the show, which includes acrobats, actors and musicians from 17 different countries, performs six days and eight to 10 shows a week.
3. The performers practice their acts up to twice a week on stage. While I was there, head coach Beau Sydes was filming the hoop act rehearsal on his phone and playing it back to the acrobats on stage to help them understand his immediate feedback.
4. Even if the artists are not rehearsing on stage, their day starts between 12pm and 1pm, when they arrive at the Cirque ‘village’ to warm up, work out or refine their skills. They can also watch back the previous night’s performance on a TV backstage to critique and improve their own segments.
5. US-born Sydes, who joined the Totem team just before it arrived in Perth, said the training was split up this way to ensure performers could keep up the standard of their act but also give their bodies enough rest and recovery time.
6. Two performance medicine specialists travel with the team and work closely with Sydes to prevent and manage any injuries. A massage therapist and Pilates coach are also hired locally in each city.
7. If an artist is injured, the team alters their act and monitors their workload to help heal them quickly. If they are sick or out of action completely, Sydes said the team had back up plans for “almost every scenario you could think of”. For example, the bars/carapace act has four frog acrobats but, if one of the frogs cannot go on, there is a version of the act the remaining three can do. There are also “back-up acts” that can replace any of the acts in the show.
8. The gym room is muggy. It is kept at about 24-25 degrees to keep the performers’ muscles warm.
9. Totem, which traces humankind’s journey, has been performed more than 1600 times to more than three million people in 28 cities since its world premiere in 2010, and many of the artists have been involved since its beginning. To feed them creatively, the Cirque team encourages them to develop new tricks, which can eventually be integrated into their acts. The artists are also offered classes such as ballet and acting to keep them feeling fulfilled. “You have to love this job otherwise you get tired or bored and you want to do something else,” bar artist and coach Umihiko Miya said.
10. Although strength and precision are major aspects of the acrobatic work, trust and commitment to a trick are also important. Fixed trapeze duo Sarah Tessier and Guilhem Cauchois, were total strangers when they were paired together for their training at the National Circus School in Montreal in 2009. Cauchois, 26, and Tessier, 24, said they now have a brother-sister relationship and can communicate during performances without even using words when something feels wrong or needs to be changed at the last moment. “It was difficult at times (to build that relationship) I’m not going to lie, but overall it’s a really great experience to learn to work together with someone so closely,” Tessier said.
11. Although the pair now trusts each other unequivocally, Tessier said most performers maintained a certain level of “healthy fear” about their work. “If there was not the fear, I would be worried almost,” she said. “Because you need a reminder that what you do is dangerous and you need to always be aware what you’re doing — I think it’s important.”
12. Mistakes do happen. Tessier said that performing as many times as they do a week means their focus can waver. “Of course slip ups happen even though you’re very concentrated and it’s how you hide it and disguise it that makes it a challenge,” she said. “Sometimes it’s like ‘Oh that happened but I’m so happy because we totally covered it and we were in synch’.” If the mistake happens more than once, the pair will talk about it but, if it’s a one-off, they simply move on. She has never suffered a major injury from trapeze work.
13. Torkkel, who plays a beach boy trying to attract and impress the female member of the rings trio, said the hardest part of his job isn’t maintaining his strength and physique, but playing a believable character. “You have focus on the acting side too — it’s not just cool tricks and floating above the audience and flying high,” he said. The former gymnast, who hails from Finland, said this is what sets circus apart from sport.
14. The dazzling costumes, which were designed by Australian-born Kym Barrett, help bring the characters to life and are custom fitted to the performers. There are 750 costumes and accessories worn on stage, each of which has a double travelling with the show as a back-up.
15. The average lifespan of a costume worn by an acrobat is six months. The wardrobe team repair, maintain and handwash the pieces on a daily basis.
16. The costumes are handmade in Montreal by a team of 400 people, working to produce pieces for the 19 different shows currently touring the world.
17. The Crystal Man costume has about 4500 pieces of mirror and crystal attached to a stretchy velvet leotard.
18. Miya, who hails from Japan and has been with Totem since the beginning, said all of the performers do their own make-up for the shows. His frog makeup initially took two hours to complete but he has since mastered it, bringing it down to about one hour.
19. The 34-year-old said his make-up had 21 steps. The artists are given a “cheat sheet” to work from when applying it. Once a year, they have their makeup photographed and sent back to the makeup department in Montreal, who check it and send back notes to keep it true to the original design.
20. Totem’s stage is impressive. The projections used to create different environments have been shot around the world in places. While the show was in Brisbane, the team shot images at the Botanic Gardens and will be used as a background to a back-up act they are currently working on.
21. Infra-red cameras detect the movement of the acrobats and actors, creating movement with animation, such as water splashing, in real time.
22. One of the stage’s main features, the Scorpion Bridge, which weighs more than 4535kgs, is powered by eight hydraulic motors, which allow it to move up and down as well as retract and curl on itself like a scorpion’s tail.
23. The carapace (or turtle shell shape used in the bar routine) weighs about 1225kgs.
{ SOURCE: Perth Now | http://goo.gl/Y8ZiNY }
