By Nadia Bailey
Cirque du Soleil’s enduring appeal is that it offers a break from reality: inside the tent, the world is brighter, more beautiful, more beguilingly surreal. So it’s perhaps surprising that one of the astonishing moments at Luzia, the company’s current show, is provided by something utterly ordinary: a sudden downpour of rain.
The moment occurs during a set piece involving three performers, two of whom nimbly traverse the stage on Cyr wheels – a kind of oversized metal hoop – and one who performs a fluid airborne sequence on a fixed point trapeze.
Cirque du Soleil performer Sarah Togni at a rehearsal for Luzia.Credit: Simon Schluter
The three work in tandem, their movements oscillating between lyrical ease and astonishing virtuosity. When the rain comes down, the audience is held in a moment of disbelief: is the rain real? Or is it a clever illusion?
But no, droplets of water splash about the stage, the air feels suddenly cooler. The performers move in mercurial patterns in and out of the rain curtain, their movements as effortless as they are joyous. They leave the stage utterly drenched.
Enya White, who performs in the water sequence on the trapeze, enrolled in circus school when she was nine years old; at 12, she began training as an aerialist. She was drawn to the discipline because it gave her a sense of flight and freedom: “I loved the feeling of being able to dance in the air without touching the ground,” she says.
Cirque du Soleil’s Enya White enrolled in circus school when she was nine years old.Credit: Simon Schluter
Not long after joining Cirque du Soleil in 2015, White began working on Luzia, a show inspired by the culture, landscape and folklore of Mexico. She remembers the moment she found out she would perform her act immersed in rainfall. “At first, I didn’t really believe it,” she recalls. It was only when they started training that the reality of the situation clicked.
The first thing the performers practiced was how to walk on a wet stage without slipping. Having established a baseline, they built up their skills from there. It was a slow, careful process, that put their safety at top of mind.
The Cirque also introduced specialist equipment, designed for the performers to use in a wet environment. The Cyr wheels, which are made from aluminium, are swapped out for custom versions wrapped in bicycle tread. This provides much needed friction for the performers to grasp onto while they perform their dizzying sequences within the hoops, while also ensuring they can be rolled across the stage without slipping.
Similarly, White’s trapeze, which normally consists of a metal bar wrapped in tape, is instead enclosed in ipê wood, sourced from a tree native to South America. Ipê wood, White explains, is naturally water-resistant: “When it gets wet, it’s actually grippier,” she says.
The beauty of Luzia’s waterworks is that it feels as natural and spontaneous as a spring shower. But behind the scenes, a dedicated team of technicians is required to pull off this elaborate piece of stagecraft. As Ethan Westland, assistant head of aquatics, explains, it’s unique to Cirque du Soleil.
Sarah Togni rehearses ahead of the Melbourne premiere of Luzia.Credit: Simon Schluter
“As far as I’m aware, there isn’t anything else out there that travels like this,” he explains. “I’ve seen plenty of rain curtains before, but they’re always fixed. To bring something like this on the road is a pretty complex thing to do.”
Westland hails from Tasmania, where he originally did his apprenticeship as a plumber. His job saw him relocate to Perth, and eventually to Canada. It was there he made the industry contacts that led him to join the Cirque during its London season of Luzia.
“I knew that world existed, but it’s not something everyone gets exposure to,” he says of his journey from Australia’s southernmost state to a life among carnival workers. “It wasn’t until I saw this show that I thought it could be a possibility.”
Westland’s primary role is managing the 10,000 litres of water that is used in achieving the show’s aquatic effects, as well as its complex storage and delivery system which includes an enormous water container, a six-metre rain truss suspended above the stage, and countless pipes and pumps connecting the two. He’s quick to point out that once the company is set up for its season in any given city, the water used in each performance is recycled.
Cirque du Soleil’s enduring appeal is that it offers a break from reality. Sarah Togni (left) and Shena TschofenCredit: Simon Schluter
“There are almost 100,000 little holes in the stage, which allow water to pass through onto catchment trays,” he explains. “From the catchment trays, it passes back into the pool, and is then pumped back to the water container. It’s filtered, heated and sanitised, then sent back [up to the rain truss to be used again].” Other than what’s lost to evaporation, none of it is wasted.
Elsewhere in the show, artists perform in and around a pool that recalls a cenote – a kind of naturally occurring freshwater sinkhole found in Mexico – and dreamlike images appear in the rain curtain. These are not projections but rather are created by controlling the flow of water via a system of 174 solenoid valves (Westland likens this effect to the way a printer creates images on a sheet of paper one line at a time).
For Westland, the show is an opportunity to use his technical skills in a new way. “I’ve grown quite fond of the water system,” he says. “When you see how excited people are by what’s happening in front of them, it’s pretty rewarding.”
It’s a similar situation for White. “I never thought in my whole career I would have to do trapeze underwater,” she says. “Now I can’t imagine myself doing it without it.”
Luzia is on at Flemington Racecourse from March 24 to May 26.
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