SXSW overlapped with Quebec Day this year and Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group celebrated with a special presentation at Canada House. Michel Laprise, Cirque du Soleil’s newly appointed Creative Guide, led a presentation that gave insight into how Cirque du Soleil is leaning into technology to continue to create productions that delight audiences all over the world.
Born out of Montreal street performance, Michel began the presentation by talking about the importance of circles. On the streets, a chalk circle creates an impromptu stage, letting passersby know that something special is happening over the divide. Circus performances have historically taken place inside a ring, and Cirque du Soleil takes that tradition into the design of many of the company’s 32 active shows worldwide, and counting. The circle is even important backstage, where the tapis rouge (red carpet) is a circular meeting space on which all members of the team are equal. Michel Laprise took the significance of the circle back to Cirque du Soleil headquarters where new shows are born. The traditional rectangular meeting table was replaced by a circle to level the playing field for all creatives seated at the table helping to design the next show.
Cirque du Solei is about to launch a new traveling show in April titled ECHO and while we didn’t get much information about the new production, Michel did discuss the creation of three shows he directed: KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities, Septimo Día – no descansaré, and Drawn to Life, created exclusively for Disney Springs at the Walt Disney World Resort. With Drawn to Life, a show inspired by Disney Animation, Michel discussed how the story changed. Originally, the main character of Julie’s mother worked in the Ink & Paint Department and had to bring Julie to work one day, with the child wandering off and learning how animation is made. But as the creative process went through more phases of development, the more heartfelt story the show features today was created, with Julie being the daughter of a deceased Disney animator who left her a scene to complete. During the collaborative process with Eric Goldberg and a cabal of animation experts, Michel shared that he got to visit Pixar Animation Studios where the process of creating a film from scratch felt similar to developing a Cirque show, with the sum of its parts resembling an “ugly baby” until it’s pretty far in development. The show recently introduced new acts for the first time, which is one of the many reasons that Cirque du Soleil shows often run for decades, inviting audiences back to repeat their favorite acts while experiencing something new.
KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities launched in 2014, a steampunk touring show that’s currently playing in Europe. One of Michel Laprise’s philosophies is to involve as many creative players as possible to solve problems and come up with unique ideas. An example of this was the show’s acro net, an expensive pop-up net that gets used for some extreme stunts. To solve the problem, Michel asked the show’s choreographer to step aside and invited the acrobats to freely explore the space. The result is one of the show’s stand-out acts, still going strong nearly a decade later.
In the case of Septimo Día – no descansaré, a touring arena show inspired by the music of Soda Stereo, the Montreal-based production team knew that they needed to think outside the box to connect with the culture that made the best-selling band in the history of Argentina so popular. While it wasn’t popular to completely create the show in South America, the solution came through crowd-sourcing, allowing 90,000 Soda Stereo fans to have a seat at the round table during the show’s development. As a thank you, body mapping technology allowed some of the fans who helped pick the songs and acts for the show to digitally appear in it. This fan-based collaborative process proved so successful that Michel is hoping to do it again in the future.
Speaking of the future, while there wasn’t any news to share about ECHO or beyond, Michel Laprise did reaffirm Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group’s commitment to involving all of its employees in the creative process. Their secret to success has been “trust, communication, and audacity” and Michel feels the company is in its golden age.
For more information on current shows, locations, and tour stops, visit cirquedusoleil.com.