[1] Tournelle du Soleil: the Beginning (Patreon)

[May 14, 2023]

It’s a perfect May morning and an unbroken grey ribbon of highway stretches out hour after hour in front of me.

I leave the sprawling low industrial buildings and dense, five-lane highways on the margins of my home city behind after the first hour or two of driving. Then, it’s all beautiful, pastoral boredom. It’s a long, flat road from Toronto Montréal. Regular commuters will tell you that you can make the drive in five, five-and-a-half hours.

Filthy lies, I say.

The best I’ve ever managed is six-and-a-half.
That’s if I don’t stop to stretch my body at every other rest stop.
That’s if none of the terrifying 18-wheelers that careen up and down the 401 have jackknifed and caused a several-hour detour through the tiny two-lane country roads and farmland that lays to either side of the highway.

I decide to stop at all the rest stops.
I need every bit of help I can get in the flexibility department in the coming days:

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by casting for the Special Events branch of Cirque du Soleil to perform my VACUUM act in a one-off show in NYC this June. I would need to be available for some rehearsals and costume fittings in Montréal, a few days of rehearsals and installation in NYC, and the show day itself.

I said: ‘yes’.

They said: ‘great!’

My immediate reaction, however, was:

Oh, they’re making a mistake.

- - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - -

My VACUUM act is something I consider to be one of the best, and worst, ideas I’ve ever had. It’s a contortion act choreographed inside the confines of a custom-built, specially modified vacuum tower: a five-foot tall prism of PVC tubing with a one-metre-square footprint, enveloped in a sleeve of natural, undyed latex. I enter through a small opening at the back. My technician seals me in. Two vacuums are hooked up to the tower. When they’re turned on, they suck all the air out of the volume and draw the latex tightly around me, trapping me in place; once turned off, my technician vents the tower to release me from the grip of the latex.

The act is a carefully choreographed symphony of movements on the part of both myself and my technician. She vents and re-seals the tower, over and over, as I move through increasingly challenging contortion tricks and hand-balancing positions. Precision is paramount, and the risks that must be managed are multitudinous:

When it’s at maximum suction I’m completely fixed in place. These moments often coincide with a deep backbend or a handstand. And the pressure from the suctioned latex is significant – like someone tightly gripping your hand. If I don’t resist the heavy squeeze of the rubber pressing in on me from every direction my back can be badly injured. If I miscalculate my position and don’t get a hand or a limb in the right position, the latex can press hard enough against my outstretched neck to cause blackout. For a few unbelievably long seconds at the peak of each suction, I’m unable to see, to speak, or to breathe. My life is in the hands of my technician until she vents the tower, air re-enters the volume, and the latex relaxes slightly. I change positions, and the act goes on.

It’s been a challenge to program. It’s a unique act, with unique requirements. More than once, a producer has seen it, loved it, and then for one reason or another the contract offer goes cold or communication trails off.

Sometimes it’s because of the fact that it’s a duo, not a solo (and I’m unwilling to put my life in the hands of a stage technician that I’ve just met that week).

Other times it’s because the act is built to the front, made for theater stages and not in-the-round viewing.

Still other times it’s the structure of the act itself: it’s a slow, meditative piece. It doesn’t have the sudden little surprises or thrills that can make a number-length act engaging in the context of a cabaret or varieté show. The air can only be cycled in and out of the volume so quickly: the quicker you want air removed, the bigger and more powerful the vacuum needs to be, which generates also more noise and more heat. I also have to adjust my ears as the air is drawn in and out – just like diving deep down underwater, if it’s too rapid my ears can pop. It is what it is.

The calculated risk and specificity involved in pulling off VACUUM has always meant that I’m never tempted to cut corners or budge on what it needs in order to be staged. I knew that VACUUM would eventually find its right moment under spotlights; but I’m also not immune to the little whispers of doubt that navigating these experiences has created.

All through the month of April, treacherous little twists of thought raced after me, and I outran them as best I could:

It’s only a matter of time before they realise that it’s not that good*
(*this one is particularly illogical, as VACUUM is one of the few things I’ve made in my circus career that I feel a clear, quiet sense of pride about. Nonetheless, it persists: I started late in circus; I didn't dance or do gymnastics growing up; I didn't go to a prestigious circus school; I've been far from immune to all the nasty little doubts that plague live performers whose bodies are under microscopes; and so on)

More treacherous worries follow, a yipping pack of doubts chasing me down the highway to Montréal.
They’re going to see that I’m not as flexible as I used to be and wish they hadn’t contracted me.

They’re going to see the act itself in the full video I sent in to the Team and realise that they liked the little YouTube trailer of it better than the actual act itself.

They’re going to back out once I go back and really, REALLY make sure they understand that it’s actually a duo act.

Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip–

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

But none of those things happened.

Instead, in the weeks leading up to this rehearsal week at the Cirque du Soleil HQ in Montréal, QC, the director tells me how much he’d loved VACUUM the first time he’d ever seen it; that he thinks it’s one of the most interesting pieces of circus that he’s seen. I’d blinked a few times at that last one.

Was I having a break from reality?

I used to do that, you see.

Bad habit in my early twenties.

Even though it’s been a good decade since then, I habitually do my little checks. Automatic. Run my mind over all the sensory details around me for hints of surreality that I’m not actually experiencing the thing I think I am. I feel like I can never quite trust my brain – not in the thoughts that it spits up, and not in the details that it takes in.

But no – the shadows from my plant collection had all been pointing in the same direction in my sunny little office that day. The walls weren’t shivering in threatening little ripples. My skin wasn’t shifting around an odd way; it was just quietly being skin. This time, anyways,I guess this really is happening, I thought to myself discomfitedly.

What I was left with was a weird couple weeks where I felt like I was in a suspended animation, waiting for reality to come crashing back down in all the ways my doubts told me that it was about to.  Until one night – staring at the ceiling while trying to tell my brain it needed to shut off and stop thinking – I had a small, rude epiphany:

Do you really think that Cirque du Soleil –a circus company that has reached international recognition for its dozens of shows that consistently entertained audiences for literal decades and is synonymous with the highest standards of production value– makes mistakes like you’re thinking to yourself they’ve made when it comes to casting their artists?

Well, I mean, sure, said the Cynic in my head.

But –interrupted the Pragmatist– not so many times that the average audience member loses faith in that franchise to deliver.

Cirque du Soleil hadn’t batted an eye at any of the weird technical specifications required to stage VACUUM. And they hadn’t cared that it was a duo act. I’d just provided the technical specifications to the acrobatic designer. Handed over the right administrative details. And waited for the weeks to pass by until it was time to make my way to Montréal for rehearsals, makeup tests, and costume fittings.

The machine churned on.
Nobody was making any indication of wanting to turn back.
This is happening.

And then it all went sideways.

- - - - - - - - - - -  - - - -

Stay tuned for your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil.  It'll be landing in your inboxes tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST. Until then, stay strange and wonderful – XO, ess