Where in the world am I today?: St. Maarten, The Caribbean aboard the Emerald Princess.
OK… I have to admit that I’m both a fan and a bit leery of Cirque du Soleil… I attended La Fete Foraine du Baie St. Paul in 1984 and got to see Cirque in it’s infancy when it really was a bunch of Street Performers from Quebec who got a big ass grant to buy a tent and put on a show and those shows were electric in a way that’s much different than the slick polish that the shows have become. At the time, it really did feel like a group of twenty acts all of whom easily had enough material for their own show, so every night the shows I saw at the Festival were completely different as though the shows had been thought out the day of the show and thrown together from people’s best bits. It was a ton of fun. Gritty, spontaneous, surprising and human on a much different scale. The shows I’ve seen in recent years (some 26 years later) have given up the grit for polish and although the shows are beautiful eye-candy, I find that I’ve left these recent shows with a sense that something was lost when they opted for the polish and I find myself pining for some of what I remember from the companies origins…
Man, listen to me I’m sounding like an old man… Yikes!
I’ve always had a sense that I’d end up working for Cirque at some point too. I remember doing street shows in Old Montreal near where Cirque was set up doing shows and seeing a group of performers walk by the pitch where I was working. We looked at each other as they past and their eyes lingered in a sort of acknowledgement of a shared ideology and sensibility…
Over the years I’ve known lots of friends who’ve gotten jobs with Cirque, in fact, I was just talking to one of the Dancers here aboard the Emerald Princess the other day about his experiences working in ‘O’ in Las Vegas. The comment that resonated with me from our conversation went something like –
It was great, but they work you hard!
The overwhelming sense I get is that you either love it or hate it once you start working for Cirque and I’ve always been a bit tentative about pursuing a performance position with the company. I think in my own arrogant way I figured that when the time was right they might come and ask me if I wanted a job with out putting in much of an effort to make that happen myself. I had some sort of weird sense of entitlement about the whole thing which I know is completely absurd, but I was quite content taking other gigs and just watching the growth of the Cirque Monster from the sidelines…
For those of you with more ambition and a less perverse sense of ego than I’ve had for years, you should check out the casting page for auditions in your area.
http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/jobs/casting/home.aspx
I had the chance to visit Cirque’s headquarters in Montreal two years ago and was really impressed. They have an amazing facility in Montreal dedicated to building amazing shows and have departments capable of building a show from the ground up – the costuming department alone blew me away with a section specifically dedicated to making just shoes or just hats, or just this or just that… AMAZING!!!
Through an odd set of circumstances it looks like I might given an opportunity to participate in the auditions that are coming to Vancouver in April and I’ll admit it’s got me feeling a little excited. I have no real ambition to give up what I’m doing and pursue a career with Cirque at the moment, but being asked to be involved was a nice feather in my cap (finally someone woke up and smelled the coffee and realized that I should be asked) and I look forward to seeing what the opportunity may bring.
