The Montreal Gazette is kicking their coverage of TORUK-The First Flight into high gear ahead of the show’s premiere on the 21st.
TORUK-AT A GLANCE
BY: BRENDAN KELLY, MONTREAL GAZETTE
The latest Cirque du Soleil show, Toruk — The First Flight, inspired by Canadian director James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster film Avatar, has its official world première Monday at the Bell Centre, though it was road-tested for several weeks in smaller markets in Louisiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. It will then tour arenas across the continent until at least September, with runs scheduled in 26 other cities.
But if Toruk writer-directors Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon are feeling the pressure, they’re certainly doing a good job of hiding it. We were sitting recently in a lounge at the Cirque’s massive world headquarters in St-Michel, and the two seasoned Montreal multimedia creators looked mighty relaxed, talking about the lengthy creative process behind this ambitious reboot of the most successful movie ever made — a strange tale of human-like creatures on a moon named Pandora, far from Earth.
This is a huge deal for the Cirque. It is the company’s first major production since founder and chief shareholder Guy Laliberté sold his controlling interest in the Montreal-based circus to a U.S. private equity firm and a Shanghai-based company this year. And it comes after a bumpy couple of years for the Cirque — the show Zaia closed in Macau, China in 2012, and then Viva Elvis bit the dust, becoming the Cirque’s only failure in Las Vegas. There were also 400 layoffs in 2013, most of them at the Montreal headquarters.
Some producers might favour the tried-and-true given all this pressure, but not Cirque du Soleil. Toruk messes with the classic Cirque formula big-time. I saw a 30-minute excerpt in Bossier City, La., in late October, and this is not your father’s Cirque.
In the past, the company’s shows have had thin poetic storylines, and the focus has always been on the show-stopping acrobatic acts. But not here. Toruk has a relatively straight narrative by Cirque standards, and it even has a narrator, who will speak on stage in English (and also in French in Montreal). That’s a first for the circus. Another first is that several performers will have microphones and will be speaking in the Na’vi language that was invented for the film.
It’s a high-wire act (pun intended). On one hand, it’s very different from the usual Cirque fare; on the other hand, it’s not at all a stage recreation of Avatar.
“It’s a challenge and it’s a risk,” said Lemieux.
“But we have to take risks or we just end up repeating the same recipe from one show to the other,” added Pilon. “The Cirque has the audacity to try something different and to bring something theatrical to this show. But it’s a hybrid, between the circus, cinema and theatre.”
Lemieux underlines that, yes, there is more of a story than in most Cirque shows and, yes, there is narration for the first time, but it’s only four or five pages of text in the whole show, he notes. So Toruk is not a play.
The story takes place 3,000 years before the film — Laliberté’s idea — and so there are no humans, no Jake Sully. The main characters are three Na’vi teens — Ralu, Entu and Tsyal — who are on a mission to find Toruk, a giant red and orange predator who rules the skies over Pandora.
Another innovation is the use of life-sized puppets that depict creatures from Avatar — including Viperwolves and Direhorses — and some other creatures invented by the Cirque team.
“The Cirque always comes to us when they want to renew themselves,” said Lemieux.
Lemieux and Pilon have worked on several Cirque productions, notably Delirium, Midnight Sun and Michael Jackson ONE.
“Delirium was their first arena show and the Cirque wanted to do something different,” said Lemieux. “It had techno music and had a different esthetic look. And they also wanted to do something different with Toruk.
“We want to spark people’s imaginations. That’s our job. We have to communicate our enthusiasm for the show to our performers, and their job is to communicate that enthusiasm to the public. That enthusiasm is for beauty, for nature, for humanity. That’s what the Cirque celebrates. I rediscovered that when we presented Toruk in the U.S. You look at the audience — they watch violent films and TV shows, and all of a sudden they’re in front of something that demands imagination. There’s something European about it.”
Of course, Toruk has that arty Euro flavour that’s been the Cirque’s bread and butter since the troupe began wowing audiences in the mid-‘80s. But it’s also based on a big Hollywood movie.
“The challenge is to respect the work of James Cameron,” said Pilon. “The challenge is to create something in an arena. That’s a big constraint. Every arena is different. And it’s big. So we have to create something intimate and spectacular in a gigantic space. What’s unusual is there’s a story, a narrator, and we’re not in a theatre. We’re not at Place des Arts. We have intimate moments and it’s in an arena, a place where you go to see hockey games or big rock shows. So we’re giving them something they don’t normally get in arenas.”
{ SOURCE: The Montreal Gazette | http://goo.gl/GXux0T }
