Cirque du sore legs

[Times photos: Cherie Diez] Claassen works on Edward Skwirsky, who plays the father in the show. The performers get regular massages for their tired muscles.

By SUSAN ASCHOFF, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 12, 2002

And backs. And arms. The elite performers in Quidam have a team of people to help ease their many body aches.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Night after night, in city after city, audiences watch the woman in a leotard, a blood-red tear in the fabric evoking her broken heart, spin and wrap and dangle her body from a suspended hoop.

The aerial dance is about loss in the tale of disenfranchisement told in Quidam, the Cirque du Soleil show that opened last week under the big top in St. Petersburg.

The audiences see only poetry. But sheer physical strength keeps Holly Rollins aloft. If her arms give out she will use her legs to grasp the hoop so she does not crash to the stage 25 feet below.

Rollins and Quidam's 55 other performers train until excruciating physical moves become so programmed in their bodies they can give their psyches to the drama.

"The very best part," Rollins says, "is when I go very close to the people in the front row, and I can see their faces." They are entranced. The physical has become spiritual.

To appreciate that accomplishment is to imagine Warren Sapp, after flattening a quarterback, not dissing him, but gracefully flying over the stadium.

Most of the Quidam performers would put the title "actor" before "athlete" to describe their calling. Yet they invest off-stage hours in pushing, then coddling, the bodies they use each day to tumble, climb, swing, lift and pirouette.

Bronwyn Claassen, physical therapist for Quidam, instructs Cirque performer Jonathan Cole as he does Pilates exercises. The makeshift gym/physical therapy clinic is under one of the tents in the Tropicana Field parking lot in St. Petersburg.

In ramshackle spaces under the tent designated as warm-up area and physical therapy clinic, Quidam becomes as utilitarian as a locker room. Physical therapists Bronwyn Claassen and Nathalie Chartier travel with the troupe, working stressed muscles and sprained joints with hands smeared in oil. They find physicians at each tour stop, should they be needed. They remind performers of appointments for massage. Portable filing cabinets house medical records. A trunk propped open on its end becomes a bookshelf crammed with medical references. An 18-inch skeleton and two pairs of crutches dangle from hooks near the tent wall, swaying as the canvas ripples in the breeze.

"Yesterday I had to find a doctor for one of our artists who fractured his foot at the last stop," says Claassen, 36. "'He's a flyer. The flyer is someone who gets thrown on top."

The artist, tossed aloft by teammates, turned a flip before landing feet-first on the shoulders of a man standing atop two others -- only to fall.

Most of the medicine Claassen administers is for sore muscles and sprains, says the former dancer. She previously toured as physical therapist with Australia's production of Cats.

Performers range in age from about 12 to 52. The majority are in their 20s, culled from circuses in Europe or award-winning gymnastics teams and other sports clubs. They train for three to four months at Cirque du Soleil's Montreal home before being offered a contract with one of Cirque's eight shows.

Cirque du Soleil Quidam coverage

Rollins, a dancer and gymnast, heard about Cirque du Soleil when she was teaching guests how to swing on a trapeze at a Club Med in the Bahamas. "I loved being in the air," she says. She trained for two months for her audition, where she demonstrated her flexibility with splits, aerial daring on the trapeze and strength in a rope climb using only her hands.

Quidam performers, says Rollins, must pace themselves for the brutal demands of 10 shows a week and life on the road.

"You have to find ways to stay fit but not tire yourself for the show. Some days I'll do some light jogging in the morning," says Rollins, 30, a vegetarian. "Some days I feel tired and decide my body is telling me it needs more sleep."

Training is often about building upper-body strength and maintaining flexibility. Quidam coach Matthew Sparks, 32, a Canadian whose parents winter in St. Petersburg, says the goal is not to see how much more you can curl.

It is to support one's own body weight, for long periods, in masochistic positions.

Jonathan Cole, one of the performers on "Spanish Webs," or ropes, trains by lowering his body from the chin-up bar after spotters boost him above it. He cannot do the pull-up unassisted: He is wearing a 100-pound weight belt to strengthen already powerful lats and biceps.

Performers take saunas and soak in hot tubs. They attend in-house Pilates classes. Therapy, says Claassen, often includes "bilateral work" to compensate for overuse of one side: "They're always spinning their body one way -- I want them to spin in the other," she jokes.

Holly Rollins, who performs in the aerial hoops act, stretches before a rehearsal. "You have to find ways to stay fit but not tire yourself for the show," says Rollins, who along with the other performers does 10 shows a week.

As a "house troop" coach, Sparks works with Rollins and others on aerial hoops, and with the contortionists and those on the ropes -- 10 performers from nine countries.

"Artistic people like to contribute," he says of the often-lively discussions among performers, coaches and artistic directors on how to change the act to keep it fresh.

As athletes, the performers must sometimes be reminded that injuries or exhaustion demand a retreat to the wings.

"I understand the mentality of, 'I don't care how much it hurts, I have to do it,"' Claassen says. "The hard part is to convince (someone who's injured) that it is going to take 10 days to heal."

They want to be back on the hoops, the ropes, the lengths of scarlet fabric 30 feet in the air. To tell their tale. Without a net.

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