The latest Cirque show was created by Bastien Alexandre and Jean Guibert. At the press preview of the show Tuesday morning, Jean-François Bouchard — head of the creative department at the Cirque du Soleil — described the duo as “deux jeunes du Cirque” (two young people from the Cirque). But in an interview after the preview, Alexandre, the show’s writer-director, and Guibert, its creative director, both noted that they’ve actually been with the Cirque for quite a few years. Alexandre began working as a concept artist with the Montreal circus in 2001 and Guibert has been on staff for a decade, mainly working in branding and advertising. But there is no question, judging from what we saw Tuesday, that Alexandre and Guibert have brought a breath of fresh air to the Cirque.
The first number features a madcap game show called Quid Pro Quo, and the scene soon segues into an acrobatic rope-skipping routine, with single rope and double Dutch sequences. The next number is a pas de deux with a traditional ballet dancer and a guy pulling off some eye-popping flatland BMX moves on his bike (almost like break-dancing on a bike). The final number presented in the preview was a full-scale BMX showcase, with bikers whizzing up and down giant ramps and flying through the air.
Guibert and Alexandre thought it would be a blast to give a BMX flavour to a Cirque show. “We fell in love with the culture, more than the disciplines themselves,” Guibert said. “The culture of extreme sports is all about inventing rules and not following rules. That’s been in our guidance in the creative process — how much we can challenge our Cirque rules and push the limits even further.”
“Everybody knows action sports,” Alexandre added. “So how can we bring that to the Cirque world and use it narratively to tell a story and touch people.”
It’s something quite different for the Cirque, but they weren’t overly worried about alienating the core Cirque audience. “We were happy to promote something with a little edge,” Alexandre said. “We feel the Cirque audience is broad enough and savvy enough to embrace it. But we’ve kept a lot of the DNA of the Cirque du Soleil.”
Bouchard noted that this is the 41st Cirque show and that the Montreal-based performing-arts giant has to constantly re-invent itself. “It’s about always bringing something new,” Bouchard said. “That’s a law for us. The planet evolves and we evolve. And we make the extreme sports theatrical in our own fashion. We have to give a personality to every show.”
The narrative of Volta revolves around Waz, a popular game-show host who has lost his identity in his relentless quest for fortune and fame. Part of the story focuses on Waz going back through his childhood memories to try to give meaning to his life. “The (theme) is to shed your fear … finding your true self and being able to promote that to the world,” Alexandre said. Guibert added: “It’s about embracing differences, celebrating differences. Today, more than ever, this theme is extremely relevant, and we’re happy to give people a chance to reflect on this.”
{ SOURCE: Brendan Kelly, Montreal Gazette | https://goo.gl/iGgz7w }
