Cirque du Soleil taking over SOEC
New show, Crystal, performed on ice
The high-flying world of Cirque du Soleil has frozen over, putting its performers on an icy stage during a five-day run in Penticton.
Billed as the first-ever Cirque show on ice, Crystal opened on Wednesday at the South Okanagan Events Centre.
Adding a slippery surface and sharp skates to the already daunting feats of Cirque athletes is made a bit easier when they are in good hands back stage and on tour.
Jaclyn Arduini, performance medicine therapist with Cirque, is originally from North Vancouver, but with her parents retiring in Kelowna a few years ago, the Okanagan has become a new home for her.
“It’s awesome. We had two days off, so I went home for a few days and spent some time with them,” Arduini said.
Working with hockey and ice sports before, skating, at least in terms of athletic therapy, is not new for Arduini.
“But then obviously you have people in the sky,” she said with a laugh. “That’s still a bit new, but we’ve got a great team of people in Montreal, we make sure we tick the boxes in respect to health and safety.
“They wouldn’t being doing what they do out there if it wasn’t safe.”
Working as an athletic therapist in the U.S. and Canada since 2011, Arduini followed her passion for college sports. She was eventually picked up by Cirque and is now on tour after spending a year with the show in Las Vegas.
In sports, injuries are slightly more straightforward compared to what the Cirque shows take on, she said.
“Here it’s like, ‘Oh I was hanging from the sky and this felt weird.’ Those sorts of things are always interesting,” Arduini said. The Penticton show comes during the sixth month of the Crystal tour, still young by Cirque du Soleil standards, according to Julie Desmarias, touring publicist.
The show revolves around a girl who breaks through the ice of a pond, falling into a world of her own imagination.
“She dives into this world that’s super high-speed and meets her alter-ego that drives her into who she is supposed to be and who she becomes, which is empowered and free,” Desmarias explained.
The combination of skating and acrobatics includes a swinging trapeze act wearing skates — a Cirque first.
It also marks the first Cirque show to have a skate-sharpening station back stage.
“It’s really a combination of both worlds. A lot of new excitement, a lot of new acrobatic element features that we’ve created especially for this show that have never been seen before,” Desmarias said.
Cirque du Soliel Crystal runs through Sunday at the SOEC. Tonight’s performance is set for 7:30 p.m., with two shows on Friday and Saturday (4 and 7:30 p.m.), and two more on Sunday (1:30 and 5 p.m.).