Backstage with Cirque du Soleil as the show takes flight again

It is five hours before curtain-up and members of the Cirque du Soleil ensemble are limbering up backstage at the Spaladium in Split, Croatia. Johan Juslin and Svetlana Tsarkova are throwing plastic clubs at each other at lightning speed, while Sasha Yuditnsev spins a diabolo, interjecting with advice. “It looks like we aren’t looking,” he explains, as the jugglers swap a swift rotation of clubs, “but you can see everything. You train your eyes to see everything. You just don’t move your head.”

Behind him, on a bare concrete floor, Roman Munin is climbing an unsupported ladder, using the skeletal frame to walk around the wings, before turning himself upside down to complete a handstand on top. From the ground, it looks like a daredevil exercise in balance, but Munin achieves it effortlessly, before allowing himself to fall, legs linked into the ladder’s rungs, to a pile of thick gym mats stacked to catch him.

Elsewhere in the wings, gymnasts are stretching while watching recorded performances of their routines. Beds on wheels are being rolled into position. Giant balloons are being topped up with air. On the raised platform of the stage, which is viewed from both sides by the audience for Corteo, Cirque du Soleil’s 17th creation, Sasha Kunytskyi and Hitomi Kinokuniya are running through their straps routine.

Just last week, the members of the world’s most famous circus troupe were performing in masks and it can be hard to imagine the acrobats swirling through the air in tightly controlled circles and figure-eights with their mouths covered, even if Covid regulations have become as important a part of their safety routines as any of the other precautions they take as performers. This evening will be the first of 120 European performances that the ensemble will embark on, and the first time they have performed together since Covid brought an end to their international tour in 2020.

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Belfast-born Alison Crawford, artistic director with Cirque du Soleil, explains that the entire Cirque operation, which was founded in Montreal in 1984 and is now an international phenomena that incorporates 20 different touring productions, was brought to a standstill by Covid-19. For Crawford personally, at the start of the pandemic “it was a great opportunity to live at home, in my cottage [in Montreal] for two years and it was wonderful; I had a chance to do things that I usually never have a chance to do.”

However, she also missed life as a member of a travelling troupe. “It’s not made for everyone – moving every week – but at a certain point we thought, ‘Right let’s go! We need to get back to it.’” By January of 2021, Crawford started calling members of the circus’s cast and creative company, seeing if they were available, if they were vaccinated, and plans for bringing Corteo on the road again began slowly to take shape.

Gymnast Santa Fortunato, who performs in Lustre, a breathtaking aerial chandelier act, was one of those who Crawford called. She had settled down during Covid in Vancouver, her home town, with her husband, Yudinistev, who she met when she joined the Cirque du Soleil ensemble 10 years ago. They had established their own two-person circus company, which they toured regionally when Covid restrictions allowed them to, but they were delighted to get back on the road with Cirque du Soleil, this time with their nine-month-old “show baby” in tow.

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Corteo debuted in 2005, and it was an ambitious undertaking for the company’s mobile Big Top venue, dreamed up by Cirque du Soleil clown and artistic creator Daniele Finzi Pasca. The inspiration, Crawford explains, is drawn from a history of circus life. “We meet a man at his funeral, but this is not a sad story, it is a celebration of his life. He was a circus performer, a clown, so we get to meet all his old friends – a giant, two little people, acrobats – and it follows like a dream.” It has been seen by more than 9 million people. Formally reimagined in 2018, it was transformed from a Big Top creation to an arena spectacle, performed in traverse on a scaffold proscenium in big venues in the major European cities; it comes to the 3Arena in Dublin next month.

The show’s title translates from the Italian as “cortege”, and the acts move across the stage in a smooth procession for 120 minutes, the cavalcade broken only by an interval. There is a little bit of stage magic involved – a travelator is employed on stage during one scene to allow a particularly swift and smooth transition, while performers slide on their bellies on dollies under the stage so entrances seem especially effortless. However, the feats we witness being performed are 100 per cent physical skill, with no illusion, no trickery.

Genevieve Corbeil Leduc, head of carpentry, explains how the props department facilitates the various scenes, which include a literally awesome bedtime bouncing routine made possible by recessed mattresses in extra-large bed frames, and a singing glass symphony, performed on tumblers glued to a suspended table top, the better to let the vibrations tune the water-filled glasses.

One of Corteo’s set-piece highlights is a balloon routine performed by little person Anita Szentes with oversized balloons, and Corbeil Leduc explains how complicated it is to get the routine right. Pulling the shockingly heavy balloons towards her, she says that the preparation changes every time the show is performed. “The balloons are very fragile and we have to be very very precise when inflating them. The air pressure is different day by day and show by show, depending if we are [performing] in the mountains or at sea level, and even before the show starts it might not be the same temperature as a few hours ago, or maybe Anita has had a glass of water so she weighs just a little bit more than she did when testing. All these small things will make a difference to whether or not she can fly.”

When the first few acts are on stage, Corbeil Leduc continues, she is in the wings with Szentes, “unclipping the balloons, doing a test. She jumps and we will see if it works. If she is too heavy, she doesn’t fly well, and we add more air.” If she is too light, they give her counterweights for her pockets. When it is Szentes’s turn to take to the stage, the balloons are unclipped again to ensure they don’t get caught on one of the sharp pieces of the scaffold proscenium and reattached on the far side where she is launched into the crowd, who play an important role in allowing her to journey across the auditorium as she gleefully instructs them to “push, push”. It is an edge-of-the-seat spectacle.

As Corbeil Leduc re-ties the balloons, as if on cue, Szentes walks by in a hot-pink robe, towards the dressing rooms. It is time for backstage spectators to clear out, so the performers can get ready for the evening’s show. As we pass through the maze of dressing rooms and temporary offices, we see them seated at tables painting their faces, while their costumes spin around in the washing machines and dryers that accompany the circus everywhere they go, generating more than 50 loads a week.

When the cast are all dickied up in costume designer Dominique Lemieux’s shimmering confections, they will take to the stage for their nightly ritual, a slow preshow procession that follows the labyrinth set out on set designer Jean Rabasse’s elaborate rotating floor, which was inspired by the brickwork labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral. Every night before the curtain rises, the cast slowly follow the circular path to the centre and back again, a meditative journey that allows them to reflect upon what they need to do, how they need to support each other, moment by moment, as the audience files in and the mobile band begins to play.

The audience do not see this critical part of the ensemble’s routine, but for the performers it is one of the most important pieces of this remarkable production, which depends entirely on the trust of all 117 cast and crew members, working together, to make sure everything goes right.

Corteo runs from July 6th-10th at the 3Arena, Dublin.