So long to Soleil

Circus life can be rough, tough and lonely. Photo / Herald on Sunday

When the crew of Cirque du Soleil finally rolls up the Grand Chapiteau this month, it will be the 429th time the yellow-and-blue striped Big Top has been packed away and shipped overseas.

Thousands of Kiwis have formed a love affair with the animal-free circus in its fifth visit to our shores, stunning us once again with the ancient-Chinese-theatre-meets-avant-garde-extravaganza that is Dralion.

When the curtain flaps drop for the last time on August 23, the dedicated crew will spend five hours pulling down the stage, packing up 74 trailers and lugging 900 tonnes of equipment out of Alexandra Park. And then they will ship all 140 cast members of 17 different nationalities to Mexico, where they will begin again.

It's an exhausting process - and a seemingly never-ending world tour - but New Zealand will be a pit stop sorely missed by the crew.

Walking into the "artistic tent", a backstage gym where the acrobats warm up and dissolve their nerves, it's evident we Kiwis have made an impact. "How do you say it? Is it Kee-ah-oor-ah?" says trampolinist Alejandro Cuenca Perez, before he nimbly flips himself on to the backstage trampoline.

He's keen to learn our native phrases, but 33-year-old Perez hasn't had much of a chance to venture out of the circus village. He's too busy.

His days are filled with training, eating properly, sleeping and preparing for the show, where he has to warm up, apply his own make-up and squeeze himself into a glittering red-and-black sequinned leotard.

A Cirque baby, it's taken Perez 22 years to reach the death-defying heights of the trampoline act, in which the Spaniard and four other acrobats fly up to 7m in the air and seemingly walk up the walls of the set.

After competing for 18 years in the national Spanish trampoline team, and winning the double trampoline event in the 2002 European Championships, the circus is a whole new, fantastical world for Perez.

"My first premiere was in Australia before we came here, and it was amazing," he says. "I loved doing my act and standing on top of the huge wall and looking down at the audience, to see them looking back up at me - that's real butterflies."

Celine Alwyn, the San Francisco-born dancer who represents the theme of water with her character Oceane, agrees it's the adrenalin of being on stage, and the looks on the faces of the audience, that excite her.

A professional dancer for the past seven years, Alwyn has no trouble with her impeccably polished choreography, floating around the stage during and between acts.

The four dancers in the show all represent a different element - water, fire, earth and air - but Alwyn always knew which one she wanted to be.

"You're surrounded by fabric and displaying a spectrum of emotions on-stage," Alwyn says. "It's fantastic."

Both performers live a nomadic lifestyle, jumping from one country to another, rarely having time to experience much of the places they visit.

Perez now trains for just one hour a day, but in the lead-up to the show he spent close to one year at the Cirque's headquarters in Montreal, learning the ropes of his difficult performance.

He took a break part-way through, heading back to Spain to spend two weeks with his family, but isn't sure when he'll get his next holiday.

"It can be tough, you know, not seeing family, but when you're on stage and you feel like you're doing a good thing - a fun thing - it's worth it," he says, before admitting, "but my mum misses me."

In two weeks most performers will be even further from home in Mexico, bringing their 65 artists, three physical therapists, five chefs, one teacher and a multitude of office staff with them.

"It's a crazy life, but a good one," says Perez.

* Dralion facts and figures

The songs and music are performed live, and the language of the songs is called "Gibberish".

Backstage, performers have a TV monitor to watch the show, and use a recording of each show to improve their following performance.

All the artists have their own dressing rooms, adorned with posters, photos and accessories. They also apply their own make-up, after learning how in a professional course in Montreal.

Costumes are washed every night and extra care is taken for glitter costumes, which tend to fall apart more easily.

A total of 15,000 leotards, shoes and hats are on tour, plus 2000 back-up costumes.

The Cirque du Soleil site is fully self-sufficient. Three generators supply 1500KW of power, enough to sustain a village of 500 people.