Acrobat’s death was Cirque’s 1st casualty

LAS VEGAS — The founder of Cirque du Soleil says his tight-knit performance company, renowned for extravagant shows that challenge the boundaries of the body and the stage, is “completely devastated” after a veteran acrobat died in Las Vegas in a fall witnessed by the audience.

Coroner’s officials said Paris-born Sarah Guillot- Guyard, 31, was pronounced dead at a hospital late Saturday night shortly after falling about 50 feet from the show’s stage during a production of “Ka” at the MGM Grand.

“I am heartbroken,” Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte said in a statement. “We are reminded with great humility and respect how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family.”

While Cirque performers defy gravity every show — soaring over audiences, scaling vertical walls and dangling aloft in aerial ballets — the incident was the first stage casualty in the company’s 29-year history, according to Cirque spokeswoman Renee-Claude Menard.

Witnesses told the Las Vegas Sun that the accident occurred during a fight scene near the end of the “Ka.”

Visitor Dan Mosqueda of Colorado Springs, Colo., said the woman was being hoisted up the side of the stage when it appeared that she detached from her safety wire and plummeted to an open pit below the stage.

Guillot-Guyard, a mother of two, had been with the original cast of “Ka” since 2006, and had been an acrobatic performer for more than 20 years, according to Cirque officials.