More than just a show, Cirque du Soleil is a place where the world's finest competitors showcase their talent.
By DAVE SCHEIBER, Times Staff Writer
Published December 13, 2005
[Times photo: Lara Cerri]
Triple trapeze artists run through their routine during a dress rehearsal for Varekai, the touring production from Cirque du Soleil at Tropicana Field on Nov. 30.
[Times photos: Dirk Shadd]
Cirque athletes go through much detail-oriented preparation before each performance, including carefully applying finishing touches to stage makeup.
Irina Naumenko, a contortionist from Russia, stretches during practice before an evening performance.
Triple trapeze artist Zoey Tedstill is treated by head trainer Tracy Guy. "The training I do here is very similar to what I did with the football players," Guy said. "They're absolutely top-level champions in all sorts of disciplines."
Identical twins Andrew, left, and Kevin Atherton competed in six World Championships as gymnasts in Britain before choosing to join Cirque in lieu of trying out for the 2000 Olympic team. They've not missed a single performance in more than 1,300 shows.
This month, some of the world's most amazing athletes are linked not only by dreams of Olympic glory in the Winter Games of Turin 2006 or the Summer Games of Beijing 2008.
They are connected by 90 miles of asphalt stretching from St. Petersburg to the edge of Orlando - and a passion for performing in the circus.
Of course, we are not talking just any circus.
This is Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian-born extravaganza of eye-popping aerial and acrobatic acts, driven by a street theater sensibility and all manner of quirky, colorful characters under the big top.
The athletes beneath the makeup and catchy costumes represent some 40 nationalities in Cirque's six touring and five resident shows. And they make for a stunning montage of muscle definition, speed, balance, flexibility and fearlessness - both of heights and hamming it up before sellout crowds.
The group has been quietly scouted all over the globe - from world-class gymnastics, tumbling and trampoline events, to synchronized swimming meets, to traveling circuses overseas. And only those who possess the rare blend of elite-level physical skill - and a little acting potential - can make the cut and become what Cirque calls artists.
But by any name, they are athletes of distinction.
"If a high-jumper is an athlete, well, how about someone who jumps high and then does three flips in the air before he lands?" says veteran Cirque coach, Matthew Sparks. "Certainly the guy who's jumping high and doing three flips better be an athlete, too."
You can find more than a hundred of them in Florida at the moment - from the road production of Varekai playing through Dec. 31 in the parking lot of Tropicana Field to the permanent home of La Nouba in Downtown Disney.
There's Chen Bo, a two-time world champion tumbler from China, sprinting down the trampoline runway during a recent morning run-through at Disney, doing dazzling flips and landings under the watchful eye of Sparks.
There are brawny identical twins Andrew and Kevin Atherton - dominant gymnasts from Britain in the 1990s - soaring overhead on aerial straps during an afternoon practice in St. Petersburg.
And there are dozens of others around them, many with stories of athletic excellence that put them on a lively new path beyond the competition.
* * *
Beside Varekai's towering main tent, Le Grand Chapiteau as they call it, a smaller backstage tent fills with performers five hours before a recent showtime.
In a far corner, head trainer Tracy Guy massages injured triple trapeze artist Zoey Tedstill's hip. Guy was a physiotherapist for 15 years in her native Australia, including four working on players with professional Australian Rules Football clubs.
"The training I do here is very similar to what I did with the football players," says Guy, 37. "They all have a very low percentage of body fat, since they're always training and performing. They're absolutely top-level champions in all sorts of disciplines."
Only a few yards away, the Athertons pump iron by the stacks of free weights that accompany Varekai from town to town. Their 5-foot-7, 145-pound frames ripple with muscle.
After a round of stretching, the 30-year-old twins walk through an opening to the main tent. They grasp a strap with one hand as two riggers pull them high above the stage, where they twirl and zigzag with artful mid-air choreography - all without a net.
Since joining Varekai in 2002, the brothers have become its iron men, not missing a single performance in more than 1,320 shows.
"We had to add more muscle when we joined Cirque," Andrew says. "Gymnasts still need retain a large degree of flexible shoulders. If you have too much muscle mass, that restricts it. But we're performing this act 10 times a week, so we really need the strong shoulders."
They took up the sport at 7 in the small, northwestern England town of Wiggin. Their first coach was so impressed that he told their parents they needed to enroll the boys in an advanced program. By 11, they made Britain's junior national team, training with the country's top gymnasts.
Both became junior British champions. "We were always kind of rivals," says Kevin. "I won the championship when I was 13 and Andrew was a close second; the next year it went the other way."
They competed in six World Championships and hoped to reach the Olympics, but missed out on making the team in '96. In 2000, they were set to compete for the same spot on England's two-man squad. But before that happened, they received an invitation to try out for Cirque.
The company's scouts had been keeping tabs on the Athertons, who passed their audition in Montreal with flying colors. "It's not that we didn't want to compete against each other for the Olympic team," says Kevin. "We just didn't want to turn down this opportunity. We knew we would regret it if we did."
So the Athertons joined the circus and have enjoyed it to the hilt, earning acclaim in the 2002 Emmy-winning TV documentary series about life with the company, Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within .
They stick to strict diets and workouts; heavy weights three days a week, light weights three more. Like other Cirque artists, they get Mondays off and a week free between tour stops. But they can never afford to lose focus.
"The hardest part of my job is to keep them motivated," said Varekai head coach Johanne Gelinas. "Because obviously it's not a competition. It's not a two- or three-time-a-year meet trying to learn to do this the perfect way. They need to do it the perfect way every night."
* * *
The Athertons have their counterparts at Disney, fraternal twin brothers Stacey and Bruce Bilodeau, stars of La Nouba 's German Wheel act.
They are busy stretching on a mat in the large training room, preparing for another round of twice-a-night shows, five days per week (even working out in between shows).
To perform the German Wheel, the brothers, 35, extend their lean 6-foot, 175-pound bodies across two giant, upright wheels and roll themselves - facing each other in a mirror image - all over the stage. It requires pinpoint accuracy and balance, so they don't run into each other or anyone else.
The only injury of note lately was incurred by Stacey, a shooting pain in one arm. Turns out, it was from playing too much NHL hockey on PlayStation. "I was the Canadiens and I played for a week straight - it was the dumbest thing," he says with a laugh.
The Bilodeaus are huge hockey fans, having spent their early childhood in Massachusetts and grown up in Montreal. They're avid members of a fantasy NHL league with other La Nouba -ites.
"I don't think hockey players would consider us pro athletes," says Stacey, "but what we do takes a lot of discipline and focus."
They learned that by training in gymnastics, then acrobatics in Montreal throughout their teens. They excelled at power tumbling, representing Quebec in national competition. At 18, they were seen by Cirque scouts. In their audition, the brothers displayed a natural chemistry and ease that earned them an offer.
They attended college in Montreal by day and trained into the night, joining the cast of Nouvelle Experience in 1990. Stacey took time off in the mid '90s to work as a stuntman in Las Vegas. They have been with La Nouba since it opened in 1997.
"Bruce and I aren't top-level world performers," says Stacey. "But everybody here was once a champion or very good at what they did. We're compared to Olympic athletes because we always have to be finely tuned. You need to have a passion to do what it takes - working out constantly, stretching, discipline. The ones who don't have it get weeded out. And what you're left with are the champions."
Such as Chen Bo, 32, who, in addition to his two World tumbling titles, earned five career silvers and competed in the 1996 Olympics with China's gymnastics team. He turned down offers to coach in China, preferring life as a power track tumbler with La Nouba . "I still want to perform," he says.
In La Nouba , that also means dancing. Ditto for Chrissy Van Fleet, 27, a power track and trampoline artist and the show's lone Orlando native. She started gymnastics at 6, competed for 13 years, and became an All-American at the University of Florida.
Her colleague, Kristy Lee Wilson, 25, was part of the Australian national gymnastics team until 1994, finishing second in the 1993 national championships. An injury in '94 sidelined her for two years, but she took up tumbling and trampoline and became Australia's national champion from 1998-2000.
Wilson went into stunt work (she was a double for Sarah Michelle Gellar in Scooby-Doo ), and applied to Cirque on a whim. In 2001, she beat out a candidate from Russia for a job in La Nouba and joined the cast in 2002. "There are thousands of people who apply to Cirque every year," she says, "so I feel very lucky."
When the athletes arrive, they not only have to master new stunts; they need to be molded by an artistic director. Here, that is Ann-Marie Corbeil.
"We have to make them forget they're athletes because they've done that, most of them, for almost 20 years," she says. "I don't have to show them how to do a triple. But most have never been on a stage, so it's Theater 101, developing their artistic side.
"It's a great feeling when you see someone who could do a triple but had absolutely no emotion; and then three or four months later, they improvise and you're like, "Oh, my God, that's amazing."'
A word that certainly fits the athletes of Cirque.
