In the premises of Cirque du Soleil’s headquarters, in the Saint-Michel district of Montreal — where there was once a quarry, then a dump — nearly 1,000 employees work every day. This is where all the new shows that the Cirque launches around the world are tested. This is also where all the costumes for these shows are made and all the makeup is designed.
Despite the pandemic, the company’s near-bankruptcy and its last-minute buyout by creditors grouped around Catalyst Capital, the Cirque’s sun does not seem ready to go out. Most recently, the teams of Songblazersa country music-themed show launching this week in Nashville, and The Circusa tribute to Rock et Belles Oreilles presented this summer in Trois-Rivières, trained here for 22 weeks. If the pace of new creations has slowed since the pandemic, if the Cirque now presents five shows in Las Vegas instead of seven, this giant of the entertainment world is regaining strength.
“In the summer of 2022, more than 30 Cirque du Soleil shows returned to the road, the sea or their residences all over the planet. By 2023, the multinational had regained its momentum, it had managed to repatriate several of its employees and to restructure itself,” writes specialist Louis Patrick Leroux, in a chapter devoted to the circus in the book Culture in Quebec during the pandemicwhich has just been published by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
But he also writes: “The community, which felt mistreated and neglected during the financial negotiations, has lost a certain amount of confidence in this institution. The gap has widened between the large transnational industrial producer and the circus community, which has taken advantage of the pandemic to further free itself, artistically and financially. The coming years will determine what role, beyond that of economic lung, Cirque du Soleil will play in the field of Quebec circus.”
Freed disciples
This trend has been underway for several years. Although Cirque Éloize and Les 7 Doigts, two other flagship companies of the Quebec circus, were born within the Cirque du Soleil umbrella, they have long claimed to be part of another, more intimate circus.
“What’s interesting is that Éloize and Les 7 Doigts say: ‘We don’t do things like Cirque du Soleil, we do something more contemporary, more authentic, more intimate.’ And today, there are new companies that want to stand out from Cirque Éloize or Les 7 Doigts,” explains Mathilde Perahia, director of training and professional development for the En piste group.
“There are fans of the performing arts who go to the theater, who go to see contemporary dance and circus, and who will never set foot in the Cirque du Soleil because it is seen as something very commercial, big entertainment. But for people who know little about the circus, Cirque du Soleil remains the reference,” she adds.
At Cirque du Soleil, where public relations exercises great control over image, they prefer to put forward figures rather than words: the Cirque today employs around 4,000 people, including 1,200 artists throughout the world. In the documentary Cirque du Soleil. Without a netwhich is due out at the end of July, it is noted that 215 million people from 70 countries have seen a Cirque du Soleil show in their lifetime.
A hive of costumes
In the huge premises of the head office, there is a team of recruiters and an office of interpreters for artists of foreign culture. In this Tower of Babel, artists of 80 nationalities are welcomed.
The costume workshop is spread over three floors. “All the costumes, for all the shows, with a few exceptions, are made here,” says the guide on this tour. On the first floor, devoted to textiles, the fabrics, mainly Lycra, arrive completely white, before being dyed on site. A chemist runs a full-time laboratory there to ensure that costumes for shows like Mysterywhich has been running for over 30 years, have kept the same color over the years. Some prints are made by machine, others are designed by hand, with stencils, on large tables where the fabrics are unfolded.
The second floor is the assembly floor. This is also where the artists’ wigs and shoes are made. Each artist hired by the Circus gives his or her exact measurements, so that a costume can be made for him or her on the spot, if he or she needs one. Until recently, the Circus also made a mold of each of its artists’ heads, so that they could make appropriate hats and masks for them. On this floor, a woman is working on the wig of the new artist who will play the “floating woman” in the show. Bazzar. She grafts pink hair and a forehead line to a commercial blonde wig to the artist’s dimensions. Further away, a man sews the training shoes of the acrobats, while on a shelf are stored the clown boots, the tiny shoes and other shoes used on stage. It must be said that circus costumes do not have a long life. They have to be made and remade and remade over the years.
In makeup, artists taking on a role for the first time will undergo detailed training to learn how to do their own makeup once the show has started, even if it means redoing it several times a day.
In a corridor, new this year, the golden shoes of the Cirque’s longest-serving employees are on display. Among them is the shoe of Magalie Drolet, a Quebecer now 55 years old, who bungee jumps in Mystery since its creation in 1993.
Everything here indicates a guaranteed resumption of Cirque du Soleil activities, even if the community component, through which the Cirque reached young people in the street at each stage of its tours, is currently on hold.
And since the crisis, the owners of Cirque du Soleil “are no longer creative entrepreneurs, they are professionals in company recovery,” notes Louis Patrick Leroux, rector of Saint Paul University in Ottawa and a researcher in contemporary circus. So, we are in a different logic. What they have done well is essentially to promote old shows. Bring them up to date, make them tour, explore new markets.”
But the renewal of the Circus will have to go through the designers, notes circus specialist Pascal Jacob, who believes that the circus of tomorrow will have to be philosophical and political. “Knowing a little the designers employed by the Cirque du Soleil, I think that there is this quest in any case. Without upsetting the lines of force that led them to where they are.”
If the Cirque du Soleil headquarters remain in Montreal, with the jobs that it generates, it is possible that, since the Cirque no longer belongs to Quebecers, the Quebec bill for shows will be diluted a little. “It can hire the most efficient people in the world for everything,” notes Louis Patrick Leroux. For a long time, we were among the best, but we can’t be the best in all disciplines.” And it is over the entire world that the sun continues to rise every day.