East meets West in Cirque du Soleil's Dralion. Joanna Hunkin visited the troupe on tour in Melbourne
It's a bright, sunny afternoon at Melbourne's Docklands, but the lights are low inside Cirque du Soleil's Grand Chapiteau. A hushed silence falls on the empty big top, as red spotlights illuminate a towering copper wall.
Stuck to the wall, like naughty geckos caught in the act, are five limber trampolinists.
"Left" calls one, breaking the concentrated silence, before throwing herself off the wall, face down on to the tramp. "Right," calls another before dropping on to a second trampoline.
Up and down they go, switching tramps, diving and flipping, running up walls and catapulting off the two-storey rig. A cold sweat tickles the palms as childhood memories of trampolining catastrophes flood the mind. And this is just the rehearsal.
Come showtime, the act is even more death-defying, more adrenalin-soaked; a fast and furious explosion of flying colours.
"It's a great number," laughs senior artistic director Michael Smith, on the phone from Montreal. "For the longest time when I first arrived on the show, I couldn't sit through more than 30 minutes next to the trampoline.
"I couldn't stand it. It freaked me out. It's so fast. And the fact they're walking on the wall upside down!"
The act, performed by a troupe of world champion trampolinists, has been part of Dralion for four years now. But the performers still train every other day, often with a physio on site to observe any spills.
Erin Fitzgerald is one of three full-time physiotherapists who tour with the troupe and is watching from the grandstand the day we visit.
"We watch them train so if they come off, we can see how they fall," she explains. "We can know if it's a head injury, a spinal injury or something else that needs immediate attention."
Despite the cautious approach, there hasn't been an accident for some time now ("touch wood!"she cries) although in the beginning, it was a bit of a disaster zone.
"When the act started, they were coming off a lot and there were a lot of injuries," recalls Fitzgerald. "But now the worst one for us, by far, are the three dralions on the big ball."
The namesake of the show, the dralion, is a cross between a dragon and a lion. Six men double up to form three serpentine creatures and, based on the traditional Chinese dragon dance, the creatures perform all manner of gravity-defying tricks, including balancing on a giant wooden ball.
"That's just ridiculously hard," says Fitzgerald. "And when they fall, they're all hooked in together so it's just a big pile of fur."
The act is performed by the house troupe, recruited from a circus school in China, that is responsible for four of Dralion's 12 acts.
A fusion of East-meets-West, Dralion debuted in 1999 and is based largely on traditional Chinese acrobats, interspersed with Western circus acts like aerial pas de deux and double trapeze.
The exact line-up changes each night, as performers can be sidelined due to injury or illness. Two hours before each show, the artistic director, the musical director and a physiotherapist meet to determine who's in and who's out. It's then up to the musicians, lighting and effects team to reorganise their run schedule to fit the night's show.
"Every day we cut people, which is what makes it amazing from a production point of view," says Fitzgerald. "If one person's out, it changes the whole show structure. Every department has to preset the show in different ways. It's forever changing."
But the biggest change in the show's history was the addition of the trampoline act, which was designed to revamp the show and add a hard-hitting European act to the mix.
"It's part of the philosophy of the company; even when a show has opened, we believe that it's always a work in progress.
"We never stop working on them," explains Smith, whose job entails casting new performers and regularly visiting the troupe on tour to suggest improvements and adjustments.
With a cast of 65 performers, there are always roles to be filled as people grow tired of the circus lifestyle, or move on to one of Cirque's 18 other shows.
But finding athletes and acrobats who can entertain is not always easy.
"What we're looking for is a potential in somebody. It's about, you know, are they so inhibited and so hung up on being a gymnast that they cannot explore their own emotions?
"Magic happens on stage when there's communication between a performer and the audience."
To search for that magic, Cirque du Soleil scouts have devised an unusual set of tests in which hopeful applicants climb up a rope, sing a song and perform an improvised sketch.
If successful, they are then required to do a six-month Cirque boot camp in Montreal, during which they must take acting, dance and singing classes every day - regardless of their specific field.
"Our biggest challenge is to turn athletes into artists," says Smith. "It's not easy."
LOWDOWN
What: Cirque du Soleil presents Dralion
When: from July 9
Where: Alexandra Park Raceway
