The mood: those elusive pre-dawn moments just before waking when nightmare and flights of fancy and conscious dreaded imagry meet head on.
The scene: a post-apocalyptic world designed by Magritte and viewed through a Fellini lens. Spectral figures float beneath the Big Top ceiling and a tall headless figure toting an open umbrella appears from time to time.
The story: a disillusioned young girl cuts her family ties, and with the help of a guide, a doomsday jokester--his face a leering mask, his bald head sprouting a single tuft of hair--journeys into her own mind, a carnival of surreal visions.
Now performing until the end of June in a 2,500-seat tent at Battery Park, the French-Canadian Cirque Du Soleil presents "Quidam," its latest example of circus reinvented: a fusion of theatre, dance, music, painterly effusions, and mind-boggling acrobatics.
"We are not simply about the demonstration of skills," says Cirque Du Soleil's artistic director Andrew Watson. "Our performers have to be multi-disciplinary and unafraid to experiment. And after that, we're about personal evolution. We're constantly trying to break our own barriers and new ground."
There's a philosophy and esthetic behind "Quidam," (pronounced key-dahm) a Latin word meaning anonymous person. Indeed, all nine Cirque shows--the company was launched in 1984--go well beyond pyrotechnical displays of virtuosity, notes Watson. As a starting point, the creative team looks at what's happening in the world at large. "Quidam," for example, began in response to "the massive loss of individual identity in Bosnian and Rwandan refuguees. Thousands of people were dehumanized. And in the process lost their sense of a past, present, and future," recalls Watson. "They had in some ways become anonymous."
Further consideration led the troupe, headed by director Franco Dragone, to focus on the individual person beneath the collective. "We thought about the paintings of Magritte. His works talk to a sense of anonymity," says Watson. "And we also thought about the photographs of Robert Doisneau, whose pictures focus on one face in a group, although if you look beyond that one face you see many and the individuality becomes blurred."
With these images launching the central theme--a girl on a journey--the Alice in Wonderland narrative evolved. Admittedly, this sounds pretentious. Watson acknowledges that most viewers will not grasp the specificity of the story, but that doesn't matter. A mood--an ambience--has been created. Both the music and choreography were also conceived to evoke a flavor with subtle nods to many sources.
Says choreographer Debra Brown, whose speciality is blending gymnastics and dance: "We use the acrobats' strength to create movements, not dance, without forcing the acrobats to adapt to any particular style. It's a meshing process and the goal is to find the particular vocabulary that can exist within the parameters of an acrobatic spectacle."
Spectacle is the operative word. There's an aerial ballerina exquisitely intertwined with swirling volumes of red silk; a dual specimen of muscular perfection--Adonis encountering Venus in a gravity-defying balancing act; and a family of stunning acrobats--catapulting, summersaulting, and flipping through the air, landing on each others' outstretched arms and shoulders, seamlessly forging an ever-mounting pyramid.
Hybrid Expressions
There's no doubt that some of Le Cirque's earlier shows were somewhat more conventional than "Quidam," whose hallmark is its expressionist theatricality. Still, all Le Cirque productions embody a hybrid sensibility that brings together serious esthetic goals and populist elements, awash in glitz and mega-budget state-of-the-art technology.
"Quidam's" set, for example, took five months to build and then 50 technicans 40 hours to erect under the Big Top. The stage is 29,000 sq. feet, the 34-foot diameter turntable can revolve in two directions and support up to 50 people. And the 200,000 kw lighting system boasts 164 individual dimmers, 23 adjustable superscan projectors, 26 color faders, 4 dataflash strobes, 50 low-voltage strobes, 200 conventional household bulbs, 125 leko projectors and 24 globes not unlike ACLs--the intense aircraft landing lights used on runways.
Le Cirque has been praised by the media pundits and earned Obies, Drama-Logue Awards, and a Drama Desk Award, over the years. The company now has a permanent home in Las Vegas in addition to its base in Montreal. A new Cirque theatre is scheduled to open this fall at the Bellagio Hotel, also in Vegas. Cirque houses are on the drawing boards for Disney World as well as Biloxi, Miss. The enterprise conducts an international touring operation with a budget in excess of $40 million. By the year 2,000, eight shows will be entertaining audiences on three continents, and more than 300 new artists will have come on board.
A Modest Start
Le Cirque has indeed come a long way from its modest counter-culture beginnings, "Echassiers de Baie St-Paul," a 15-member troupe of Montreal street players, recalls Giles Ste-Croix, Le Cirque's creative director and founder with whom we spoke some time back in connection with his production "Alegria."
"Like all circuses, we're for the whole family," Ste-Croix insists. "Only at other circuses, the kids bring the parents. In our case, the parents bring the kids." But, he stresses, "They love it. Although we've always been very theatrical, in recent years we've become much closer to theatre than circus. We now present theatrical experiences, using the circus as our skeleton. We don't have a circus master, rings, or animals. And the lack of animals may be why many traditional circuses don't consider us a real circus. The French and Chinese have never used animals either."
In varying degrees, Cirque is influenced, Ste-Croix says, by the Bread & Puppet Theatre, the Fratellini Circus, the Big Apple Circus, and many late '60s groups, like the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Pickle Family Circus. Still, Ste-Croix contends, Le Cirque's calling card is its originality.
"There are only so many ways an act can be done, but one of the reasons we'll choose one act over another is that we've never seen it done quite that way before." Another criterion is the performer's willingness "to not be a star. The show is the star. And that means whoever you are, you help bring the carpet out for the next act."
Ste-Croix laughs. "In 1990 we had a Russian acrobat who insisted he was a star and he refused to carry anyone else's carpet. I said, 'This is how we do it here.' He said, 'This is communism.' I said, 'Maybe. But if you expect to work with us, you'll carry the carpet. If not, you can go back to Russia.' He carried the carpet."
As part of the communal philosophy, the touring company--it's almost a complete village with well over 110 people--includes a school for kids, a physiotherapist, and a catering kitchen which travels with the troupe. The purpose--controlling the artists' diets--is obvious enough. But equally important, the kitchen maintains that sense of community. "Eating together creates a dynamic for group discussion," Ste-Croix asserts. "To my knowledge we're the only circus that provides this."
Yet '90s amenities thrive too. The players travel by plane and rent apartments with living rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens. Bourgeois comforts!
"The traditional approach," Ste-Croix continues, "is train travel, then living in trailers or hotel rooms. Apartments cost the same as hotels and they're more comfortable. Apartments also offer privacy. See?" he smiles. "If you want to have breakfast alone, you can. And at the same time, the apartment offers more space for gatherings, or a group viewing of a video."
Theatre in Their Blood
During its lifetime, Le Cirque has clearly had some noteworthy moments, but setting up shop in Vegas in 1994 must surely head the list. Interestingly, Ste-Croix doesn't find any contradition between the non-stop neon-glare of Vegas and his grander vision.
"When I first went to Vegas I wondered, how can a place like this exist? Why would people want to come here and lose money? I always want to be pure and good and in Vegas you can't." And then it hit him: that was precisely its appeal. "I realized no one is forcing you to do anything in Vegas. It's a place where you can truly be who you are." What better environment to set up a theatre?
Ste-Croix acknowledges that Vegas audiences may be generally less educated than Cirque's usual crowd. But that doesn't curb its pleasure. "You ask any cab driver what to see in Vegas and he'll recommend our show, "Mystere" [the theme is the mystery of life]. We've had very big success with it since its opening. One reviewer felt we should be on Broadway. I'd like a permanent home on Broadway if we could find the right space and then be allowed to re-design it."
One Character's Journey
Back in "Quidam," John Gilkey, the show's sepulchral court jester and central figure, is more downtown than uptown. Indeed, Gilkey says that his roots are in European circus.
"When I auditioned for Cirque, I had already created the character and some of his routines." Gilkey's, uh, special look was also in place: a shock of spiked hair atop an otherwise shaved pate. "That haircut was the best career move I ever made," he chortles. "The directors liked all of it and incorporated it into the production. The show is pulled together in a very abstract way, although themes are hinted at.
"All the characters are facing decision time in their lives. They either commit suicide or break through, except for my character. I've gained enlightenment, a kind of wisdom about the world. So I take the little girl on a tour to see the kind of things she'll encounter. It may be somber and frightening, but really it's not all that terrible."
Gilkey says his character is not a clown, nor does he emerge from that tradition. "He is more cerebral, controlled than the conventional clown. And his movement vocabulary is sharper and more angular, although in sections I vacillate between rigid gestures and a flailing about. It's a loss of control, a desperate cry for help. I am showing the child the dark aspects of life and therefore I'm a little scary. But I too have taken a journey and so by the close of the show, I've loosened up. Perhaps I've been influenced by the clowns. I do a little dance with the coatrack."
Gilkey makes the point that what happens at each performance may vary depending on his mood. If he's feeling aggressive, he may become a hard-edged presence on stage. If, on the other hand, he's in a lighter frame of mind, he can evoke a character suppressing laughter."But he's always passionate."
Gilkey's alter-ego has another role too: a kind of emcee, serving as a conduit between the show and the audience. "There's a little mockery. I'm winking at the audience, especially when the numbers get pretentious. I create that bond by saying, 'I see it the way you do.' And then when I do my version of some of the more complicated tricks--tossing the darts into the air that land on a board on my head--the audience can really identify with me: my modest abilities and the fact that I'm using everyday objects. I've become familiar, and the audience gets to feel comfortable with the show."