‘Crystal’
class athletes and artists. They live for the impossible. In this case, it’s an Alice falling through the looking glass fable framed by a glittering wonderland of ice. As always, this avant-garde circus celebrates a fusion of daring and dazzle that tries to take your breath away with one gobsmacking tableau after another.
“I am the kind of guy who jumps in when you say we are heading for new territory,” says artistic director Fabrice Lemire, best known for directing the Cirque Icarus-themed show “Varekai.” “That is how we continue to grow as a brand, we continue to push and explore and experiment. You have to keep thinking ‘where do we go from here’ or you can become redundant. We always head for the horizon.”
While some Cirque fans have wondered if the pressure to always come up with something
new doesn’t lead to gimmickry instead of artistry, others applaud the drive to endlessly innovate.
“They keep pushing the boundary of human physical achievement,” says circus expert Patty Gallagher. “I deeply admire that.”
But Cirque experienced the darker side of pushing boundaries last weekend when an aerialist died while performing a new routine during a show in Tampa, Florida. “The entire Cirque du Soleil family is in shock and devastated by this tragedy,” said Daniel Lamarre, president and CEO of the entertainment company.
While performers mourn the loss of one of their comrades, the incident will not affect “Crystal’s” production in San Jose, which features 80 skaters under the expert advice of legendary Canadian skater turned commentator Kurt Browning. Finding skaters who could adapt to a Cirque show was no easy feat.
“You can be a superb aerialist and still have two left feet on the ice,” says Lemire. He looked hard
to find athletes who were ambitious and artistic enough to yearn for an insane challenge.
“Yes, it does sound crazy but it’s a good crazy and I’m always down for that,” as trapeze artist Danica Gagnon Plamondon puts it. “Doing trapeze with ice skates on my feet was a little scary. I am used to feeling grounded with my feet on the bar but with skates it’s slippery. That was a big challenge.”
After years of flying through
the air, she now had to learn how to skate backward, gracefully.
Meanwhile, Stammen knows how to do a triple lutz by heart but she had to learn how to tumble. Fast.
“I never once thought I’d be in the circus and I love it,” she says. “Cirque has opened new doors for us and we get to be the pioneers. It’s exciting.”
The acrobat couldn’t agree more. Both have had to push their
bodies, already hardened by years of arduous training, way past their comfort zone and into a brave new world of physical prowess.
“It has never been done before,” Plamondon says. “This is the first time and that’s so rewarding for us.”
For the ice skater, the straps has been the hardest act to pull off.
“I’m an athlete but I’m all butt and legs and the straps demands an upper-body strength that I don’t have,” she says. “You have to have that for an aerial discipline.”
Certainly for Lemire, the most magical aspect of the show has been watching the two disparate genres of ice and air somehow merge into something ineffable.
“The marriage of the two disciplines together has been so surprising. They do not just exist side by side but they merge,” the director says. “Sitting in the audience you may completely forget that there is ice. The show transcends that knowledge and you lose yourself in the story.”