CRYSTAL CIRCUS
Cirque du Soleil picks up speed with new ice show
Cirque du Soleil is always looking for new worlds to conquer. So, it was only natural that the entertainment giant that has offered everything from a Beatles-themed Las Vegas show to an “Avatar”-inspired extra vaganza should take to the ice.
Cirque’s arena-sized spectacle is “Crystal,” a version of what we’ve come to expect from the Canadian company. Bringing together the acrobatic and skating worlds has added elements of speed and danger, even for a company that incorporates highflying aerialists and BMX riders into performances.
“You go by what you are known for and what your are strong at, which is the acrobatic aspect of your show, the marriage between live music and artistry,” said Fabrice Lemire, the ballet dancer and choreographer-turned-artistic director for touring Cirque shows. “Then we brought the element of the ice skating world into our world, and I love what I see.”
“Crystal” makes its Pittsburgh debut at PPG Paints Arena starting Jan. 17, with eight shows in five days — a Friday matinee was added because of brisk ticket sales.
One element that lends itself to a Cirque spectacle is the ability to have projections on ice, a sight known to hockey fans who have attended pregame festivities at NHL play off games.
“The ice also is offering us the notion of speed we didn’t have in the past,” Mr. Lemire said. “There are some fantastic formations evolving in front of us by ensembles. It’s gorgeous, and we didn’t have that ability on the normal stage floor for a more traditional circus show.”
“Crystal” also offers slippery new challenges, from recruiting performers with adaptable skills to the shoes and gloves worn on the ice by non skaters. The company’s costume and prop department created its own version of hand-and-foot grips that allow an acrobat to do handstands or tumbles without slipping or creating divots.
The search for performers with particular skill sets took the casting department to places it had never been. “‘Acrobat’ is a very big word,” is how Mr. Lemire put it. For “Crystal,” it can mean the ability to excel on blades and, in some case, wheels. Some performers come from the competitive skating world, and others “are the kids on skateboards you might see at a city park, ”Mr. Lemire said.
“We had to be very openminded and think ahead in identifying the skill set we wanted and be open to what the skaters and the skating world had to teach us,” he added.
To help the acrobats become skaters and the skaters become members of a theatrical troupe, Cirque has had some help. Kurt Browning, four-time world and Canadian national champion, American ice dancer and Olympic silver medalist Benjamin Agosto and Canadian coach/choreographer Marilyn Langlois were recruited as members of the creative team.
One basic learned quickly by the newcomers to skating is that different blades (figure skates,hockey skates, etc.) require different methods of sharpening.
One integral element that has not changed is the fantastical storytelling that is the basis for every Cirque show. “Crystal” takes place in the imagination of a teenage girl, played by Nobahar Dadui, a figure skater with film experience.
“The story is about the questioning of a young person, where she wants to go, what she wants to be,” Mr. Lemiresaid.
“She is holding our hands and making us see through her eyes for two hours. I find this fascinating, that we forget she is on skates and we follow it like a movie a little bit,a nd she’s stunning.”
For Penguins fans in the arena packed with Stanley Cup Championship banners, “Crystal” includes a “semblance of the hockey world.” The skaters carry sticks, and there is a net — along with steep ramps, the better to take flight.
“Those are kids you may see in a city park on skateboards or Rollerblades, and then we brought in a few who had never been on ice before, and we said, ‘Can you re-create what you do in the park on the ice floor?’ “Mr. Lemire explained. “And in the typical young attitude, they said, ‘Absolutely,’ and they have jumped on it, and we have this beautiful number as the closing number of Act 1 that has quite a wow factor.”
And that’s not new for Cirque. Only this time, it’s “Wow ”on ice.