They work in a tent on a compound in a foreign land, only to pack all their things up in 85 sea containers to rebuild elsewhere every couple of months. They work out, warm up and hone their skills with the help of state-of-the art equipment and a top-notch support crew, every day of the week. Most have trained their entire lives to be the best of the best.
For the professionals at Cirque du Soleil, high degrees of discipline and dedication are required even during mere practice sessions. If something goes wrong, lives could be at stake. Directors, coaches, performers and other staff carry out their tasks with military precision to ensure everything goes well during seven to ten shows each week.
At home on the road
Nikita Moiseev, who was born on tour in New York City in 1995 during Cirque du Soleil’s Allegria production, is currently one of the stars performing the Russian bars act in the Totem show, which will be in Singapore soon.
During a recent visit by reporters for a look behind the scenes in the Cirque du Soleil big top in Perth, Australia, Moiseev said it can be challenging to develop sustainable relations with people when you grow up in the circus and have to pack your bags and move on just when you’ve started to settle down.
“Since 7 years old I’ve been performing on stage, as a character [in the Allegria show] … and since 2010 I’ve been touring with Totem,” he says. “You meet lots of people but you can’t really develop a long relationship with anyone – because you may meet someone but we move every two or three months.”
“Dating is definitely something that is not easy to do,” the 20-year-old says, adding that fortunately being with the circus feels like having a big family. “We try to help each other out and support each other.”
Despite his already impressive career, the award-winning artist is now thinking about trying something else, maybe going back to school after the Totem tour ends.
But that may be easier said than done. “I feel like I’m going to leaving home when I leave the tour,” Moiseev says.
Attention to detail
Performers like Moiseev stick to rigorous training regimes in order to safely perform their death-defying acts, often twice a day. This schedule also poses a challenge for the support crew.
Performance medicine specialists follow the Totem tour around the world to keep a close eye on the artists, monitor their physical condition and limit the risk of injury. Additional experts are hired locally.
Also, a team of over twenty technicians work on the show every day and have to perform daily maintenance on all props used. Everything has to do exactly what it need to do at exactly the right time and the elaborate costumes worn by the performers also have to be painstakingly examined before every show to rule out accidents.
Jean-Sebastien Gagnon, the technical show manager at Totem, says the action-packed program poses quite a technical challenge as the stage changes constantly as the show progresses and there is only very little room for maneuver backstage.
“In addition to the projection and all the lighting … we have our moving elements like the bridge that you can see curling up,” says Gagnon, describing a key, custom-built element of the show that allows for smooth transitions between various scenes. “Our stage is physically different from one world to the other.”
All this high-tech comes at a price, though, as building up the compound with the 19-meter high circus tent, which weighs 5,000 kilograms and is 51 meters in diameter, takes no less than eight days. The site comes with training areas, administrative offices as well as kitchen and dining area for staff. The big top, as the tent is called, seats over 2,600 people.
“We call it luxury camping,” says Gagnon.
Generations in the circus
Massimo Medini and Denise Garcia-Sorta both come from traditional Southern European circus families. They now perform a high-stakes rollerskating act as part of the Totem show while also bringing up their 9-year-old daughter Gypsy, who travels with them.
“The first time we met each other – I was 7 and she was 9 – it was love on first sight,” Medini says about Garcia-Sorta. “I knew she was to be my wife.”
The circus has been part of the Italian’s family for three generations, but the fourth generation is getting ready for a life in the spotlights as well.
“Traditional circus people, when they are at the age of 7, they start to build their muscle,” he explained, only to be interrupted by the love of his life, who said this is actually supposed to start at the age of 5.
“For me it was 7,” Medini insists, only for Garcia-Sorta to retort, with a smile, “Yes, we can see that.”
But jokes aside, the circus life is serious business, especially for kids growing up, like Gypsy and Moiseev before her.
“When they get stronger, when they’re like 12 or 13, they get to decide which discipline they want to take,” Medini says, stressing however that nowadays school comes first and that at Totem teachers follow the circus to make sure the Cirque kids receive a proper real-world education besides their physical and mental preparation for the circus life.
“When you are young it is important to give to your body more strength, flexibility – after you’ve grown up it is very difficult to push your body, be flexible and everything,” Garcia-Sorta explains.
‘Nothing in the air for me’
Medini has been doing rollerskating acts since he was 12 years old, while Garcia-Sorta’s family traditionally has focused on trapeze.
When asked whether there would be anything in the circus they considered too dangerous for their child to get involved in, both parents said they would prefer for Gypsy to remain on solid ground.
“No trapeze – nothing in the air for me,” Medini says. “I told her you can do anything, but not that.”
“In my family there was an accident — my father when he was young,” Garcia-Sorta adds. “So for me, I don’t want anything aerial.”
Yet in the end it is all about trust, as despite all the elaborate safety precautions, the performers at Totem are required to put their lives in the hands of their colleagues on a daily basis.
Medini and Garcia-Sorta trust each other blindly, but this is something that took a lifetime to build up.
“I trust myself and she trusts me,” Medini says about the breathtaking rollerskating act during which he rapidly swings Garcia-Sorta around head-first while spinning on a tiny podium. “But I wouldn’t trust somebody to take my daughter.”
{ SOURCE: The Jakarta Globe | http://goo.gl/GudJR3 }
