CIRQUE PUTS ITS ACROBATS ON ICE
Crystal is company’s first performance on skates
It takes 17 semi trailers, 43 artists of 21 different nationalities, 34 technicians, 100 local stage hands, four wardrobe wizards and 2,000 costume pieces to do what Cirque du Soleil has never done before: perform on ice.
“I came to this contract without knowing how to skate at all, so I started from the very, very first level,” said 23-year-old Belgian, Amber Van Wijk, who has been with Cirque du Soleil since she was scouted at the age of 15.
“Being in a cold environment like this is very unnatural for acrobats because our goal is to keep our body warm at all times,” she said. “As soon as you cool down, that’s when you risk getting injuries. So that was the biggest challenge.”
Cirque du Soleil, known for its spectacular displays of human agility and larger-than-life story telling, invited Postmedia News for a behind-the-scenes look into what it takes to put on a show, and in this case pull off something it had never done before.
The show, named Crystal after its main character, is the first one to combine ice skating with acrobatics. That means ice skaters had to learn acrobatics and acrobats had to learn ice skating, a challenge the performers seemed more than happy to tackle.
Eighteen men and women with a background in competitive skating took to the ice for rehearsal Thursday afternoon, practising backflips, dizzying jumps and, of course, acts that combine skating with trapeze and other aerial acrobatics.
Meanwhile, 20 acrobats took to the mat backstage to practise gravity-defying moves that elicited the odd gasp from onlookers when they didn’t work out quite right.
The skills the artists displayed were no less impressive than they are during a full-scale production.
“Cirque has always been a dream of mine,” said Shawn Sawyer, who began figure skating at the age of nine and represented Canada at the 2006 Olympic Games. “It’s still a dream becoming a reality every single day, every city that we do and every performance.”
Sawyer plays a few different roles in the show — each artist does three to four wardrobe changes — but his main character is a businessman who does a tap dance in the second act. Yes, you read that right. A tap dance. In skates. On ice.
“We have microphones underneath our skates, so they capture every single noise that the blade makes,” said Sawyer. “I can use the toe picks, I can use the heel. We came up with a whole performance using the noises that we make from our blades.”
The show also has more than 28 projectors spilling images onto the ice to help tell the story, and more than 160 moving lights programmed to follow the artists, who have sensors built into their costumes.
“It’s the first time that we combine ice skating with acrobatics into one performance,” said Julie Desmarais, touring publicist for the show.
It’s a show of multiple firsts for the entertainment company.
A deviation from former Cirque shows that feature all original music, Crystal includes four remastered pop songs.
“We follow Crystal, she’s a teenager that doesn’t feel that she fits either at home or at school,” said Desmarais. “She ventures upon an iceberg, and from there her adventure begins.”
The story was chosen because it’s something audience members can connect with: the feeling of not fitting in, said Desmarais.
“There is a Crystal in a bit of all of us,” she said. “It was important to us to create a relation and a connection with the audience.”
The show runs until Feb. 10 at Regina’s Brandt Centre.