Insectile spectacle
Cirque du Soleil returns to OKC with new arena show ‘OVO’
With spiderlike dexterity, Qui Jiangming traversed the bouncy line stretched over the Chesapeake Energy Arena floor, posing dramatically between headstands and flips.
He also rehearsed pedaling a unicycle upside down across the single strand Thursday afternoon before somersaulting to the ground with easy grace. He yielded the floor to another pair of practicing performers and continued his own training backstage, where a hive of activity has been temporarily built this week for “OVO,” the new arena touring production from Cirque du Soleil.
The Chinese slack-wire acrobat is playing a silver spider in the 25th Cirque du Soleil show, running through Sunday at the Oklahoma City arena.
“‘OVO’ is a show happening in the bug world,” said publicist Nicolas Chabot, as the cast and crew busily prepared for Thursday’s opening-night performance. “It’s the story of this community of insects living peacefully all together, but one day there’s this funky blue
fly that is different from everyone. I like to think that this guy is kind of the guy coming from New York in a small town and kind of disturbs everyone. He falls in love with the ladybug … and he has to prove to the rest of the colony that he deserves the love of the ladybug.”
“So, it’s kind of a romantic comedy,” he added, “but it’s a Cirque du Soleil show. So of course, there’s lots of different circus acts.”
Mobile workforce
The insectile spectacle features aerialists, contortionists, foot jugglers and other performers portraying crickets, cockroaches, butterflies and other bugs. “OVO” means “egg” in Portuguese, and the strange blue fly arrives in the community with a large egg on his back.
“The director and composer of the show are Brazilian, and there’s a lot of Brazilian inspiration in the show, mainly in the music. A lot of samba. I love the music of the show,” Chabot said.
But it takes a veritable army of worker bees engaged in an elaborate backstage dance to hatch “OVO” in a new venue every week.
The show brings with it 100 cast and crew from 21 different countries traveling in 19 trucks loaded with everything from lighting equipment and trampolines to clothes washers and massage tables.
“Pretty much everything you see that is not the seats is our equipment. There was the (Thunder) game on Tuesday, so first thing on Wednesday morning, we were here to unload the 19 trucks. About 15 hours (Wednesday) was all setup. And when we load out on Sunday night, in about three hours and a half, that will be all gone,” said Chabot, adding that the touring technicians get help at each site from many locally hired workers. “We don’t travel light.” The seven-person band plays live during the shows from four musician booths behind the stage, although the singer sometimes emerges in costume to perform before the audience. Beyond those booths, a workout area with free weights, another slackwire and tumbling mats is set up adjacent to cubbies and cabinets packed with juggling props in the shape of the red ants’ kiwi slices and stilts cloaked in the brown garb of the wood insects.
The visitors’ locker room has been converted into the wardrobe workshop, with racks of handmade costumes in brilliant greens, crimsons and yellows spilling into the hallway. While one costumer brushes the furry trim on a spider costume, another examines a golden scarab outfit to see if it needs repairs.
“The costumes are washed every night after the show,” Chabot said. “There’s a lot of fur on the costumes and there’s a lot of parts of the costumes that can’t go in the washer. So when they wash them, they have to remove all these parts, wash the costumes, air dry them, put (the pieces) back. Right now, brushing the fur makes sure it will look good onstage.”
Ensuring that every detail of the production, from the crickets’ shiny eyes to the cockroach’s spiral headdress, helps to transport the audience into the insectile world is the goal of everything that goes on backstage.
“It’s one of the biggest circus companies in the world. If you know how many people in total work on a show, with like the costumes, the music, the light, the sound, the design, everything, it’s an incredible amount of people,” said high-flying performer Alexis Trudel. “It’s a huge amount of people that are working together for the same goal — to make the magic.”
Astonishing feats
Although the costumes, props and lighting effects help to transform arenas into a bug’s life, the astonishing feats of strength, flexibility and daring are the bee’s knees of any Cirque du Soleil show.
“What people like the most are strong acrobatic acts because these are things that you cannot see in other types of shows,” Chabot said. “That’s the goal and that’s why they train so much. The casting department tries to get the best people from all around the world.”
The 50 performers touring with “OVO” come from 17 different countries and a variety of backgrounds. Qui hails from a traditional Chinese circus family; his father and grandfather were both circus performers and his mother is his coach on the slackwire. Other performers come to Cirque from a sports background after training in gymnastics, tumbling and trampoline.
Trudel and Catherine Audy met eight years ago at circus school in Quebec, Canada, where Cirque du Soleil is headquartered, and developed their aerial strap routine there. In “OVO,” they soar together as butterflies, and they said flying through the air is still a thrill after all these years.
“We fly for a living, so I will never get tired of it. We were rehearsing just now flying and it gives me goose bumps again. It’s amazing,” Audy said.
She said it is particularly exciting to travel to a different city every week and fly for new audiences.
“They will have fun for sure. For two hours, they will forget about their lives, they will forget about everything and they will just be in the insect world,” Audy said. “They will be amazed.”