Running off to join the circus has been the dream of ambitious children for centuries. The allure of travelling the world, of living within the exaggerated, grease-painted magic of the Big Top, standing astride galloping costumed horses, somersaulting high in the air… hell, Istillwant to run away and join the circus. But it takes more than ambition. As artistic director of Cirque du Soleil’sTotem, Neelanthi Vadivel knows first-hand the dedication, work, and inspiration necessary to keep these shows enthralling.
“Cirque has always been very innovative, in that they present traditional circus acts in a very experimental format,” Vadivel says. She has a wonderfully expressive voice and her speech is swift, words tumbling over each other. “They create these beautiful themes and ideas so that you can inhabit this amazing space and present these incredible feats of acrobatics within that bubble, that world. Each show is generally created around two years in advance, when discussions first start.
Composers, choreographers, directors, acrobatic designers – all these very innovative people brainstorm for a few months until they hatch out a kind of skeleton of what they’d like to do. And then they hire the actual people who will be creating the sets, the music, the costumes and the writing, and from there they bring it all together to premiere two years later. But again, during their lifetime each show will evolve as they’re touring, and that’s my job; to make sure the artists continue to be inspired and keep the show relevant.”
Remarkably, there are 18 different Cirque du Soleil shows running at once – eight resident shows in Las Vegas, and ten shows touring the globe either in stadiums or under the Big Top. The drive to present more and more amazing productions has been a staple of circus performance since the very beginning, and though the safety record of Cirque du Soleil is unsurpassed, in 2013 acrobat Sarah Guyard-Guillot fell to her death in the midst of Ka.
“When Cirque began 30 years ago, there wasn’t as much competition,” Vadivel explains. “Now, more and more, there are other productions that can offer a similar experience to what we do, so of course there is more competition and there is more of a technical push within the circus community, but this has traditionally always been the case – performers always try to outdo each other, it’s in their nature. At the same time, for every technical advance that we make in pushing an artist to a higher risk, we add more and more safety precautions. We’re quite conservative in how we approach any new elements, and it’s very unfortunate what happened on Ka.
It was really one of those perfect storm situations. Despite the many precautions that were in place, something happened that came out of our control. But Cirque’s track record is excellent – far beyond any other circus in regards to safety. There is of course a drive to constantly evolve your technique, but we always push to make that the safest way possible.”
While you won’t find any dancing bears or performing elephants at a Cirque show, the history of circus and vaudeville is ever-present in productions like Totem. It’s all part of a tradition that has been dazzling audiences since Philip Astley and P.T. Barnum, and Vadivel is very conscious of Cirque du Soleil’s role in history.
“There’s a huge level of respect for what has come before, and what exists today. Cirque made a conscious decision at the very start not to involve animals, because their mandate would be to represent what the human body could accomplish, rather than what animals could do acrobatically. But there are traditional circus acts within Cirque du Soleil, there are many traditional artists within our cast, and those performers bring a huge amount of experience and circus lore; information to us that wouldn’t be available otherwise. It’s really quite an interesting and important part of our history.”
Totemis playing atThe Showring, Entertainment Quarter until Sunday January 4, tickets online.
