Cirque du Soleil performer makes the transition to the new normal
How does a former Cirque du Soleil member transition to the new normal when a pandemic shuts down their worldwide touring?
In 2000, 12-year-old Laura-Ann Chong was on the Canadian gymnastics team. An alternate for the 2004 Athens Olympics team, she graduated from high school and scored an NCAA scholarship to Oregon State University.
“Those are the two goals you have growing up in gymnastics, to go to the Olympics and to get a U.S. scholarship,” said Chong. “I was totally in the dark about where to go aside from UCLA, and was getting recruited by LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma and others, but my criteria was I didn't want to go anywhere there were hurricanes or tornadoes. Oregon State reached out, and it was a familiar area with tax-free shopping so that was it.”
A two-time all-American on bars and beam, she graduated with a BSc in sport science and was aiming for physiotherapy. Her first year of applying to grad schools didn't go well. So she considered going to the 2012 Olympics.
“Halfway through the year of training, I realized I wasn't sure I had the mental discipline to really push to enter all the training camps, trials and so on,” she said. “Then I met the former head physiotherapist for Cirque du Soleil at an event in Montreal and that planted a seed. It wasn't that I didn't know about the opportunities there, I just hadn't really seen myself as part of it.”
The truth was, the general view around Vancouver at the time was that a career in the circus was part of a “freak mentality” that just didn't fit the Lower Mainland as well as Montreal. But the reality was that, at age 21, she was the oldest competitor at any competition she entered as gymnastics was very much a girl's sport.
“Today, there are more women in their 20s involved at the Olympic level, but at that time it was a field of 16-year-olds,” she said. “Fast-forward to May 2012, and my application was submitted to Cirque and I received an email invitation to Formation Generale, a program where you get trained in everything from clowning and dance to extreme clowning where you have to forget about formality and just be in-character and play. As a gymnast, where everything is so meticulous, that character-building training was the absolute hardest part for me.”
Seven months later, there was no word about a job. So much for running away to join the circus.
“Then I got called in for an ESPN pro-gymnastics challenge which was really fun, and the offer came in to perform with Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna,” she said. “It was a brand new show with an uneven bars act that was tailor-made for me.”
Chong spent seven years touring with the show. From North America to Europe and South America, she travelled the world performing under the big top. In keeping with the modern world, it was a gig-by-gig existence.
“It became kind of a running joke and a mental challenge after 16 temporary contracts, then I got hired fulltime on No. 17,” she said. “Not long after, around March 1 last year, the pandemic hit and everything got cancelled.”
While everyone was hit with the same situation in March 2020, the reality for someone in Chong's line of work came with quite a different set of demands. You can't just shift from performing a Korbut — a move now banned in competition that was perfected by the legendary Olympic gold medallist Olga Korbut — in a Cirque routine to assuming a desk job while waiting for a callback. Maintaining your fitness chops is critical.
After three months, it became clear that nothing was going back to normal. Chong eventually decided to join the Simon Fraser University public relations certificate program, and to get an ankle surgery she had been putting off for five years.
“For a lot of us, no one had ever made a resume and that led to feelings of isolation and panic, because doing a fantastic backflip is a hard-to-define transferable skill,” she said. “So Projet Lumière Project was started to connect performing arts professionals and keep spirits up, as we all tried to figure out the next move. We have a series coming called the Pivot, which is now a huge buzzword, that looks at options that are out there.”
Naturally, keeping fit requires more than the standard gym equipment. Chong needs the full spectrum of balance beams, bars and mats to keep herself in working shape. Teaching at the Circus Lab in Langley has been a great option for Chong and others.
“Strangely, in the midst of a pandemic, we've seen an uptick in our professional program, which was not what we'd expected,” said owner Jason Waugh. “In the past few years, we've been homing in on our adult postgraduate program, which runs up to three years, and prepares people for professional performance. We've got a lot of dancers and gymnasts, as well as some martial artists who come from various backgrounds and levels of experience in performing.”
Waugh is a pro acrobat who also owns a performance company. Opening up the Circus Lab began as a place to train for that and grew from the more standard children and youth training and special events into more career-focused training. The facility is also used by many stunt people for working out as well.
“We've only been doing OK because of these adult programs, depending on the more standard parties, camps and such wouldn't have been good at all,” he said.
“While we are governed by the same safety protocols and rules as everyone else, there is recognition that physical maintenance is essential to maintaining our arts. From being a small part of what we did, the graduate professional programs are more than 50 per cent of what we do now. Obviously, being able to bring in instructors such as Laura-Ann has been a huge boon to expanding the repertoire of what we can do.”
Waugh notes that, while the pandemic has been awful for performing, it has meant there is a rare chance for program members at the Circus Lab to access instructors that would otherwise be working.
What's hot with students in 2021?
“For sure, the Russian bar is a big one right now,” said Waugh.
Combining the gymnastic skills of the balance beam, trampoline rebounding and uneven and parallel bars strength skills and more, the circus act is a masterpiece of multiple talents.