Training the illusion
Multiculturalism and synergy in Cirque du Soleil
by Dave Kirby (buzz@boulderweekly.com)

On the Bill:

Cirque du Soleil will perform Corteo June 22 to July 29, 2007, in the Pepsi Center parking lot, 1000 Chopper Cir., Denver, 303-405-1260, cirquedusoleil.com.

Press day for Cirque du Soleil arrived at the Hotel Teatro last month. A new show opens in Denver this weekend — Corteo — and press relations are handled with typically relaxed precision. Stacks of shiny Corteo press packs and some of the organization's advance people are greeting press interviewers.

Boris Verkhovsky, Cirque du Soleil Acrobatic Performance and Coaching Director, is fielding 30-minute sets of questions from local press types in a sixth-floor suite. Verkhovsky, a longtime acrobatics coach for both the Soviet and the Canadian National Teams, is a gregarious, bearded Russian expat in his mid-to-late 50s, his otherwise perfect English shaded by echoes of his Slavic native tongue and a hint of Québécois French.

We sit down to chat about acrobatics, the Cirque du Soleil experience and managing the skills of stupendously gifted young people from around the world who make up the acrobatics portion of Corteo.

There is a bowl in front of us on the coffee table, with some red balls in it. I glance down at it from time to time.

"Just like it is for some of the elite athletes that come to us, for me, I also came from an elite sport, and when I grew up as an athlete, the word 'circus' was used as a little bit of a negative word."

While coaching the Canadian Gymnastics team in Calgary, Verkhovsky was asked in 1993 to consult on a tumbling act the company was doing for their first permanent show, Mystere. The logistics and demands of the act just didn't add up, but he quickly realized, being outside the rigid constraints of competitive sport, he was now allowed to change the rules a little.

"The first experience I had with Cirque du Soleil was when I was asked, 'We want to do a tumbling act,' and I said, 'You're crazy.' To tumble 10 times a week at that level of performance, nobody's legs will withstand that.

"I suggested we modify the equipment. We basically took what at that time was called Tumble Track, Fast Track, which is basically a very long trampoline, [and] I said, if we make it a little bit tighter, it dramatically reduces the impact on the body. It also increases the height — tighter than the trampoline but much softer than the tumbling floor, because there is a range of compression, so it becomes very forgiving for the body.

"It also allows for more height, and then height could easily be translated either into more difficulty or into easier way of performing, with more room for artistic expressions."

Thinking outside the box, or the trampoline, has been one of Cirque du Soleil's driving paradigms since it was founded by Québécois street performer Guy Laliberté almost 25 years ago. By borrowing the costume pageantry and some big-top attractions like trapeze and tumbling; crafting elements of avant-garde and modern theater, live performance, new-agey rock music and thematic narrative into the production; and leaving the animals out, Cirque du Soleil essentially re-invented the circus for a demographic weaned on rock concerts, concocting a production primarily for adults and the steeper ticket prices they could afford.

Two-and-a-half decades since getting their original charter from the city of Montreal for an annual street performance, they are a privately held company that takes in almost half a billion dollars per year, with six currently touring productions on the road, seven permanent shows in Orlando and Vegas, and deals in the works for shows in Japan and China.

Their shows are impeccably produced, with a vibe that teeters between campy vaudeville, spectacular athleticism and gripping suspense from the sometimes-astounding gymnastic acts.

After suggesting to the company back in 1993 that what they really needed was a single acrobatics coach who trained the standards and set performance guidelines rather than multiple coaches on multiple routines, and then getting the job he just suggested, Verkhovsky has now been with the organization long enough to see plenty of the growth first hand. As Cirque's reach has expanded, so has their need for athletes and performers from around the world, and thus came the need for handling performers from different cultural and training experiences.

"I remember when the multiculturalism was addressed in a very structured way for the first time. [It] was during creation of the show we called Dralion, because the majority of the cast was Chinese. So that, when we knew that we had so many Chinese coming in, none of them spoke English, so we brought in a specialist in multiculturalism, and we were expressing our thoughts, concerns ... How do we integrate them? How do we help them to become part of our company?

"And at one point in time in our conversation, he said, 'You guys are making a major mistake. You haven't asked a single question of: How do we help you to work with them? How do we help you to respect their culture? How do we help you to take advantage of their culture?'

"We were so one-sided that we didn't even realize that."

But Cirque du Soleil's real legerdemain has been managing staggering growth while maintaining its aesthetic counter-orthodoxy — the paradox of trying not to succeed too consistently in a genre essentially of your creation. Verkhovsky insisted, though, that Cirque du Soleil remains a creatively vibrant company, always questioning itself and its values through the integration of new people and new creative talent.

"Absolutely, it is one of the core values. I think we became better at it. It's a fairly new thing, but we now have a Vice President of Synergy ... someone who will challenge the process. We're always asking, 'How do we keep ourselves from becoming too complacent?'

"It's very challenging, but you're in this giant playground, and you're allowed to play."

And as we shook hands, I looked down and noticed that the bowl was filled with ... round red clown noses.