The business of Cirque du Soleil

He glides onto the stage, a hefty man with bright blue walking sticks. Are those crutches? His bare chest shows well-contoured muscles. There, in the midst of his colleagues who slink on bended knees, Dergin Tokmak seems to skate across the stage with his feet barely touching the floor. His presence says,”I am mighty and strong,” yet his legs look limp. He does a handstand using his crutches to balance on and the audience watches in wonder: Are those dangling legs just props?

Then three boys bounce up, swinging ropes that they twirl at very high speed. Suddenly, the ropes turn into stiff batons. Their blue outfits make them look like pixies with ruffled pleats on their bloomers. Are they 10 years old? Perhaps 12? The young lads wave their stiff rope batons and toss them up high. The batons get switched around, are caught on cue and flicked up while the boys do forward rolls and catch the falling batons as they land on their feet. One child misses the catch. The crowd is ready to forgive any error that these young performers might make and the boy repeats the act successfully. There is a dignity about the way they conduct themselves.

It’s all happening at the same time. Performers crawling up the bamboo poles at the back of the stage. A female voice chanting, a fiddler’s violin flattering the drumbeat that inspires the performers to enjoy the risks they are taking. This is a premier group of acrobats and the reality is that they have to keep challenging themselves. Here on stage, the mood is set for the return of the creatures in Varekai. It’s the Cirque du Soleil, the international group of acrobats performing in Manila until July 17.

Going to the circus could be about how many bags of popcorn you had or how corny the magician was. Maybe even how you could do better than the person doing flying back flips in the finale. It is an event, a memorable event, and it takes dedicated people to make it work.

Under the big top: Cirque performer Dergin Tokmak with his crutches Photo by Patrick UY/AsianDragon

“ We have 200 people as part of the cast and crew: 54 are artists and the rest are crew,” says Cristina Clemente, the Colombian publicist for Varekai. She explains that every artist has to be in the tent two hours before the show. If they have a rehearsal, they have to come earlier. When on tour, there are about eight shows each week.

Many of the Cirque’s performing artists, most of whom are acrobats, have won medals and competed in the Olympics. The casting department in Montreal, Canada, where Cirque’s head office is, has recruiters that go around the world looking for talent. The schedule for casting dancers, circus performers, clowns and athletes reads like a frequent flyer’s dream itinerary. From January to July 2011, for example, auditions were held in France, Russia, Italy, the USA, India, France, Ukraine, Taiwan and Canada.

Fortunately for the crew and artists of Cirque, they live in hotels, unlike other circus groups who live in caravans. They are staying at the Manila Hotel. While the performers adjust themselves to their new homes, much of the activity involved with setting up the tent has calmed down.

“We had 64 containers shipped in from South Korea where we performed for two months,” Sarah Dosch explains. Sarah is a “fly-in” and her role is to be on site  what they call Base Zero  when the containers, trucks and anything that comes with their equipment arrives. She is there when they take them out of the containers “We have a tent master named Alex,” she says.” He knows exactly what steps need to happen; he tells us and we tell the locals. We are all working together and use all the manpower to push the tent up.”

Almost everything inside the tents and the big top, including the blue fencing, the infrastructure, generators and chairs, were brought in. Sarah got a taste of our hot sun during their setup, which took seven days, and she expects to stay in Philippines for one month. Then it’s teardown time. “Our last show is on a Sunday, and we would usually be done with the teardown by Tuesday morning. The containers will be shipped off to Brazil, our next stop.”

For their electrical needs, Sarah asks their local contacts what the voltage is and the crew tries to adapt their kit to fit the voltage. “That was a challenge here that we are still trying to work out,” she said. Weather is their biggest concern here with the high winds, she added.

Flags representing the different nationalities of Cirque du Soleil’s artists surround Varekai’s striped tents: (from left) Georgie Diaz, Georgina Wilson and author Aurora Diaz-Wilson after watching the dress rehearsal.

In the three years that Sarah has been working with the Cirque troupe, she says that the best part of her job comes from seeing how happy people are and how inspired they are by the amazing artists. “It makes everything worthwhile.”