Any minute now, Palisadians will once again behold the blue-and-yellow big top rising alongside the Santa Monica Pier, marking the return of Cirque du Soleil to the area. This is an anniversary of sorts for the Canadian entertainment phenomenon that debuted here a decade ago. Of special excitement to Cirque aficionados is the return of David Shiner, who is fondly remembered for his slapstick antics and forays into the audience. For ‘Kooza,’ opening October 16, Shiner has written a show that accentuates the type of clowning that is specific to him, says Gilles Ste-Croix, the organization’s senior vice president for creative content. ‘In this show, we’re really going back to clowning, where you recognize yourself. But, in addition, there will be death-defying acts where you believe death doesn’t exist because you survive. The only other medium like this is the Olympian push to run the fastest, jump the highest and be the strongest.’ Ste-Croix, whose circus credentials were established by the ingenious makeshift stilts he put together to ease his apple-picking chores, had been attracted to show business as a boy in rural Quebec. ’I come from a simple family, born on a farm,’ he tells the Palisadian-Post. ‘My father was a farmer, my mother a teacher, and I wanted to perform in the theater. That was not pleasing to my parents.’ So the obedient son studied architecture until he bailed for the hippie life. He moved to California, lived in a commune and audited drama classes. His entr’e into show business came in a roundabout way. Back in Quebec, he was living in a commune and picking apples to make money. One day, he figured out an easier way by attaching the ladder to his legs’voil’, his first set of stilts! In the late 1970s, Ste-Croix leaned about Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater, which based many of its performances on stilt walking. So, in 1980, he and several street artists founded the ‘chassiers (‘stilt-walkers’) de Baie’Saint-Paul and organized a festival, which would eventually lead to the founding of Cirque du Soleil with Guy Lalibert’ in 1984. For the past seven years, Ste-Croix has been working on creating new shows. ’I am stationed in Montreal, where I spend half the year, and the other half, I am traveling around the world to see performances, collecting ideas for developing a new show and meeting creators.’ There are currently 19 shows all over the world, in Australia, two in Japan, two in Europe and six in Las Vegas. Another is planned for next year in Dubai. ‘We have six traveling shows in big tops,’ Ste-Croix says, adding that the tent in Japan, which is white, is designed according to strict engineering standards to withstand a tsunami. Shows developed for the big top differ from the proscenium shows, or, as Ste. Croix explains, they are two different mediums. ‘The advantage of the big top is that the performers are practically on top of the audience,’ he explains. ‘In ‘Wheel of Death,’ which is a new act for ‘Kooza,’ the performer is spinning in the air, flying from one hoop to the other, like your doing it on the laps of the audience. On the other hand, the proscenium theater offers incredible opportunities for apparatus hanging out of view above the stage.’ A new skill joining the roster of performing artists is the pickpocket, Ste-Croix says: ‘This is one of those trades that are disappearing. These magic tricks are skills that David [Shiner] worked on when he was doing cabaret.’ ‘Kooza,’ which means ‘box’ or ‘treasure,’ was chosen because one of the underlying concepts of the production is the idea of a ‘circus in a box.’ The show starts with The Trickster bursting onto the stage, like a jack-in-the-box, in front of The Innocent. The Innocent’s journey brings him into contact with a parade of comic characters, including Pickpocket and Obnoxious Tourist and his Bad Dog. The antics are interspersed with such human performance skills as chair-balancing, contortions, high wire, juggling, teeterboard, solo trapeze, unicycle riding and the Wheel of Death. Cirque performers hail from all over the world, Ste-Croix says. ‘Often, we find artists from the same family, like the Dominguez brothers, a double high-wire act from Spain.’ For tickets, call 800-450-1480.
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