Going for baroque: Cirque du Soleil melds athletics and artistry in ‘Alegria’

By Diana Nollen

The Olympics are a gold mine for Cirque du Soleil.

While you may not see curlers and hockey players running off to join the circus, plenty of acrobats and gymnasts do.

“We recruit from the world of sports,” says Michael Smith, 50, a British native now based in Montreal. He's senior artistic director for Cirque du Soleil's “Alegria,” coming to the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids from March 10 through 14.

“Each time an Olympics finishes is a very fruitful time for us. We offer them a career and a way of making a living for people who have been amateurs and spent so much time and energy and commitment to achieve what they do and get to the Olympics,” Smith says by phone from the company's international headquarters in Montreal.

“We need more than just acrobats and gymnasts. We need singers and clowns, too. We have agents in every country in the world. It's a big net we have to throw. We're always looking for new talent.”

Hiring world-class performers helps keep the Cirque machine soaring to world-class heights with its blend of circus and theatrics, athleticism and artistry under big tops and in arenas and permanent venues from Vegas to Valencia.

“That's what makes us so different from traditional circuses,” Smith says. “The finesse and ability of these people is incredible. Their self-discipline is extraordinary.”

Moving between worlds isn't always easy for Olympic athletes, he adds.

“One of the biggest challenges for us is that the performing psychology is different. They have to detach emotionally to do their best to win the gold,” he says. “We want them to feel their emotions to feed their performance to create an emotional reaction in the audience. We do lots of work in Montreal to help them make the transition from elite athlete to artist. It's a tough road for some of them.”

Those who do join the Cirque family find just that.

“They're away from their friends and away from their entire support system so we have to create that” family atmosphere, Smith says. “That's very much part of the package.”

Attention to detail is paramount, from the artistic design to the performers' safety, and it doesn't come cheaply.

Smith says “several million dollars” went into the newly expanded “Alegria,” billed as “A baroque ode to the energy, grace and power of youth.”

It spent 15 years as an intimate big-top show before being transformed into an arena show in 2009.

“It was the most successful touring show and had been everywhere in the world more than once,” Smith says. “We could either stop the show or go the route of ‘Saltimbanco.'” That arena production brought 12,774 audience members to the U.S. Cellular Center for eight shows in April 2008 and became the local venue's largest-grossing event, with $707,906.50 in ticket sales.

While the core show of “Alegria” hasn't changed, the physical scope has.

“We didn't want to make any compromises creatively or artistically,” Smith says. “Everything had to be rebuilt.”

So Smith brought in the show's original creators to help make it play to audiences on three sides and at a farther distance.

“We asked the choreographer to restage things to include everybody,” he says. “We wanted the choreography to create the same experience and emotional reaction for the audience. The lighting had to be redone, the stage had to be redone, the colors had to be made bolder so the audience in the back would see the same value. ...

“The difference between a big-top and arena for the show, itself, is nothing,” he says. But a big-top show is designed to play for audiences up to 2,500 people, whereas arena shows play for more than twice that number.

“In some arenas, like Montreal's, you may have 5,800 people. There's a very different size payoff. When you get 5,800 people screaming and standing on their feet at the end of a show it's an astounding experience for all of us. You're losing some of the intimacy but gaining in the density of the sum of the people seeing it.”

What they'll see in “Alegria” is a celebration of joy, with heart-stopping aerial acts, contortionists, feats of strength and agility, fire knife dancers, flying acrobats, clowns, nymphs, singers, musicians and other colorful characters who help propel the story.

“One group represents the establishment, power, money and religion,” Smith says. “Two groups represent youth, with its fearlessness and naivete. How they deal with the generation gap is in every culture. Its success is the universality of a theme people can relate to.”

But don't worry if you don't follow the story. Smith says it's designed to be esoteric and draw people into its universe of sight and sound.

“It's still about the spectacle of circus and the amazing images people will see,” he says. 

ARTS EXTRA

What: Cirque du Soleil presents “Alegria”

Where: U.S. Cellular Center, 370 First Ave. NE, Cedar Rapids

When: March 10 to 14; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $42.25 to $92.25 at the U.S. Cellular Center Ticket Office, all Ticketmaster outlets, 1-(800) 745-3000 or www.ticketmaster.com

Information: www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/alegria/default.aspx

FUN FACTS

More than 10 million people have seen “Alegria” in more than 65 cities all over the world.

The international cast consists of more than 55 performers from 17 countries, including Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Mongolia, Poland, Russia, Spain, Ukraine and the United States.

Tour staff includes 12 artistic staff, 21 technicians and five administrative staff.

“Alegria” travels with more than 200 costumes, 300 pairs of shoes, 100 wigs and 22 Old Birds masks.

Approximately 500 balls of knitting yarn, 1,094 yards of braid, 1,586 yards of lace, 22 pounds of glitter and 2,515 yards of silk jersey are used in making the costumes. A thousand buttons and jewels are used for the two singers' costumes alone.

More than 1,000 springs hold up the Power Track trampoline.

More than 10,000 kilos of “snow” have been used in the “Storm” act.

For a show under the big top, it usually takes nine days to set up the infrastructure of the whole site and 2.5 days for tear-down. With the arena tour of “Alegria,” setup will take nine hours while tear-down will take only two hours.