Behind The Scenes With The Artists from the Cirque du Soleil Show KURIOS

For me it was a big dream to do a tent

show

at Sir du Soleil. I wanted to celebrate the tent. I spent a lot of time around the chapito looking at it and it appeared to me that it is like a steel antenna that commands the energy of the invisible and that energy enters the stage. and it manifests itself in the bodies of the characters, the elements of the setting and stuff, so I started dreaming about the curiosities story thinking about "okay, there's a scientific man who has invented a machine like that." That's why you have what we call the portal.

He is using electrical energy to go through the portal to another dimension, where all the dreams that are waiting until someone dreams them on planet Earth, the mysterious energy for this machine would be electricity, so I started investigating. I discovered electricity was invented in the 19th century. I fell in love with that time because many things were invented to bring people together and connect them. It is similar to our era with the Internet and the mobile phone. Stefano, this designer said why not. We're not going with steampunk, but as usual at C du Soleil we invent our own things, so our steampunk is unlike any other steampunk in the world.

This is the signature. I think we don't make documentaries. It has to be wilder. Must be. freer the costume is a big part of our

show

most of them are like the old sewing they are made by hand you don't see many machines and you can feel I like to say that every day at some du

soleil

is like fashion week and it Same with makeup, it takes two hours to apply makeup, it's a transformation, it's almost a meditation, each of the parts of these accessories come with their own story. Generally, we have an accessory and we have a shopping center and we have to make sure that for 15 years we can reproduce the accessory exactly as it is, in this case we wanted to have something authentic, so this is built with existing things that are recycled curiosities, it has more accessories than any Cigarro Soleil traveling show in all of history, oh how nice.

So this is something I've never seen because Bruno prepares plan B if someone is sick, what happens? Now he's working with Gabrielle, a juggler in a backup act, we don't sit back and say, "Oh, we've got a good show." I love our program and we want to keep it alive. Gabrielle, she knew she would be a great fit for the show and the show benefits a lot from her talent. He is beyond juggling. I have auditioned jugglers for years and I have never seen someone who could act like that and is a real artist this show is very joyful I am like the audience members I am excited and we wanted to do a show we are very optimistic that it would cheer up the audience I see the attachment that people have The audience is sick and I say that with a little emotion because we have the privilege of working here to create in this environment to continue this relationship with the audience.

There is something magical about that, goodbye, the costume is a big part of our show, I think there are 3,000 pieces that travel and we are autonomous. If a new artist comes, of course, he'll go to Montreal before he gets to the tour and they'll try on his costume there and stuff, but we do have something to fix. To organize it, it is done here, we have good technologies, like body scanning, now so we can generate the measurements of the artist, like we are very good at that technology, but there are still many things that are done only with a machine like that or at hand. and you can feel that it is not made in a factory the microcosm costume is a huge piece of that character one part is glued to my back and the other part is removable so we can hold antonina inside the costume it is like being 50 pounds pregnant Baby , sometimes he tries to tickle me, hits my leg and says: "Hey, should I go out or not?", then there is movement.

I know exactly when she's trying to open the light and she has little pockets inside the costume because it's too big for her, maybe it's not too big. comfortable the makeup as you can see there are a lot of lines we are going to make my face look much more elastic even if you are 50 feet away you can see when I am happy sad angry the first time I did it after Two and a half hours I didn't finish the makeup, but now normally every day I would say 45 minutes. This is the most difficult part of this makeup.

The eyes. Now I know my face, so I know that one eye is smaller than the other. I know where to draw lines to try to look symmetrical. You discover a lot about yourself when you put on makeup. You need to look in the mirror for about an hour for this powder to make the makeup adhere to your face. That's why we can run and jump. on the net I sweat like crazy the makeup doesn't move now the secret touch there are like little screws to fix each part of the skin if you look here so I moved a little and everything went crazy it's time to get ready five minutes before I We have to go, let's do this very well, keep your head neutral with your torso, we have the artist going through a preventative circuit here, so we have eight stations, 45 seconds of work with 15 seconds of rest, okay, we change it and we all do it. happen twice, it is a good workout for the lumbar and frontal abdominals.

Well done. I am one of the performance medicine therapists. We are two. We are responsible for all the medical well-being of the 46

artists

. I'm with one of our

artists

. gabrielle, we're doing a preventative release on your lateral hip muscles just to try to get them nice and loose so that when you're juggling and doing any activity, your hips feel free so you can move around on stage and do what you do. The best thing is that we always try to be available to do a lot of prevention work to try to get these artists something before it becomes a problem.

Gabrielle and I talked where we took a video of him juggling to see what kind of muscles he uses the most. than the other, my biggest concern for these artists is that they are focused because when you have that repetitiveness and you've been doing it for so long and they're so good at it, they have the ability to just have their minds wander because their muscles and their bodies they're attuned to doing exactly the same thing every day has to be the best performance, so the chances of being conservative aren't always, you know, just take two weeks off, that's not always our reality, so we have than trying to find things that we can make work so that the artist improves and the show is also supported we are in Denver for our crossfit session that you are doing it's like three times a week, it's not just an activity that we do outside of work you know , breaking the routine, uh, every day is a good kind of teamwork, we just have fun together and joke around and it gives us something to talk about and compare notes when I'm also on site.

I'm trying not to do too much exercise like traditional, just pushing white weight because I was doing this for a long time. I was getting a little tired. What I like about CrossFit is that every day is something different. My name is Paula Miller. I'm curious about being a kitchen manager. The main task is to provide food and good service to the entire cast and crew. It's an amazing setup for a kitchen that packs and packs all the time. It usually takes two days on this tour. They are very good, they are very fast when it comes to preparing it until we can prepare our kitchen.

We cook on a barbecue, so it is more difficult to have to be creative to be able to serve different meals that all come from the barbecue and as soon as the kitchen is ready. People can come and eat two, three, four meals a day. We have all kinds of different nationalities and different diets, so you have to combine a different type of food with a variation of how healthy or how heavy it is, so it's really your concern. It's just to make this happen in the best way possible, we try to focus on what the city or state has available, what is local, what is in season, what would be good with the weather and what is actually available and cheaper At that time, we also went to the farmers.

At the market we have some local fruits and vegetables whenever we can get local cheeses and breads we do too so today we are making very very popular tortilla soup very large quantities every time we make it I use the biggest pot I have in home. So Ming will be my assistant today is the first time he has come to make Mexican food with me, which is funny, a Brazilian and an Asian making Mexican food, it will be delicious. I'm sure this is the first time he's come to cook with me, so I. I'm excited about onions, sometimes they let me learn a little about what my day job is.

I'm a rigger and I stir it up a little bit and once we start to smell the spices, it's time to add the liquid. I smell it. a little more I feel like a witch oh something is burning paula we are like a big family so it is very different from a service in a restaurant or in a hotel that you don't really have that contact with the client here we are we are all a big family, so it is very special when we arrive in each city, we need the first ones to settle, we will settle here about five days, we have two thousand tons of equipment to install, not only the permanent team is building the site, but we also have the support of our 150 technicians who are hired locally to help us basically here we have three tents held down by twelve hundred stakes the week before we arrive we have marking teams that come and mark everything, they mark all the tents, so first.

The day we build the art tent, after that we put up a big top mask, we will raise the mast the next morning, we are ready to raise it, we take out the tarp, oh the ring is going up five, seven, one and eight, so this is the last step to put up the tarp, since all these years we keep pushing all those poles by hand. It's really impressive when you have all those guys lined up and you're just yelling for the 2-3 push. It is really surprising. It takes between five and ten minutes. and it's all in the last section guys, our backyard barbecue, it's like a big thank you to all the technicians and all the spotters and the air stewards who came and set this up for us.

My name is very impressive. We bring the big tent. to a city for about two months, seven to ten weeks, and my job is to make sure that people in this city know that we're there, so you'll always see that part of the traditional marketing of our strategy is obviously having our posters on billboards. uh in the malls we will also try to come up with ideas that are a little bit out of the ordinary and that means, for example, when we did in Montreal uh screenings, so guerrilla advertising, as we call it, created a lot of enthusiasm, people He was wondering what that is. was one of the milestones, obviously the big tent up, the media is coming, we're basically on the second day of our setup, there's basically nothing on site and we're putting up the tent, alright guys ready, another thing that's really amazing is behind the

scenes

before our opening night so the artists are back, they are training, they are preparing for our opening night and we invite the media to come and take a look behind the

scenes

and meet them before we actually see the show.

Alright girls, you're ready, you're opening the doors. Opening night is obviously the most important night for the marketing manager and for me, the publicist. We are inviting people from all over the world. 2,600 people are invited, so we're inviting media celebrities, social media influencers, CEOs. vip people who will talk about the show and who will spread the word of mouth that really marks our time in this city because we are here for a very long period of time compared to rock and roll bands or shows that are only there for a time. On some days we have to keep things focused and make sure people know we are still here, for example we will take artists outside the tent in costume and makeup and create events where they make appearances and interact with people. public or we can also do a photo session where we take our artists to the main iconic buildings of that city.

I would say the best part of my job is that I'm working on an amazing show everywhere we go, we've had great reviews. People love curiosity, so it makes my job a lot easier. I see these artists working so hard and accomplishing a lifetime's work on stage that it pushes me to work hard as well to promote the show as much as possible.