[24] Tournelle du Soleil (Patreon)

It takes 50 minutes to drive from Verdun up to Cirque International Headquarters in morning rush hour traffic. During off-hours, this is only a 20 minute zip up the highway. 

The first things I have today is a makeup test; then a second costume fitting; and after lunch, another research session by myself inside the tower. I’ll need to finalize what material I’ve been able to scrape together and synthesize them into concrete sequences so that I’m prepared for the rest of the tower sessions this week. The director of the show is scheduled to join me for those. I want to be as ready as I can be.

I park my car under the shade of a large maple tree in front of the IHQ. Grab my backpack and access card. Walk towards the Employee Entrance with light steps and a buoyant feeling in my chest. 

It might be a hard day but you’re still here, I tell myself. You’re going in the Employees’ Entrance. You’re working here this week. You’re working for Cirque. This is your job right now. And you’re going to do your absolute best. And it’s going to be good enough.

Karine meets me at the front door again to walk me to the room where I’ll be doing my makeup test.

Cirque IHQ has a dedicated makeup room – it’s next to the secondary (but equally giant) studio, with chair after chair in front of vanity mirror lighting. A whole teams of artists can be in there at once learning how to transform themselves into the characters Cirque has built for them under the watchful eyes of the makeup artist teacher. But this isn’t where we go. Instead, we hang a left and head up a broad flight of stairs that travels up next to a huge art installation of painted, treated fabrics that look like birds, like seaweed, from the floor all the way up to the top of the incredibly high ceiling.

The room we turn into is a general purpose room that’s been taken over by the makeup team for this special event: there’s enormous rolling travel kits of endless sliding plates of Ben Nye and MAC cosmetics; they come up as high as my chin. 

A small table is set up with bright makeup lighting, and palettes, palette knives, brushes, powders, compacts, sprays, tiny pots of powders and creams are spread across the table in a mosaic of carefully organized chaos. 

8”x 11” printouts of five or six different makeup designs are taped to the well-lit mirror above the table: blues and pinks and holographic elements run through all the designs. 

Wonder which one of those is mine.

While most Cirque du Soleil artists have to do ‘makeup school’ and learn how to apply the makeup looks designed for them, this contract is so brief that the production team has opted to have a team of makeup artists working now during this prep week and come with us all to New York at the end of the month. All I have to do this morning is sip my coffee, be a good, moisturized little canvas for them and enjoy an easy start to my day.

The makeup artist in charge of my makeup –Vanessa– is warm and sweet and excited about our session today. We chat in French and English and she builds up the layers of makeup on my face: a base of primer; heavy white highlight on my brow, my cheeks, my chin, my jaw. I learn that they mostly use cream based products for their makeup looks, and then set everything with enough powder to coat a small cake.

There are more colours and formulas of glowy, holographic powders being applied to my face than I knew existed.  My brows are darkened and my upper and lower waterlines are outlined in a deep, glimmering blue. Finally, using tiny tweezers, small swarovski crystals and tiny little holographic-silver appliques are peeled off their laser-cut backings and delicately applied around my eyes with careful dots and swipes of lash glue.

It’s some of the most incredible makeup I’ve ever worn. 

Vanessa –and the other makeup artists who’ve been poking their heads in and out of the room as she’s been working on me for the last ninety minutes– seem pretty excited, too. 

They take photos from every angle and then set my face with a heavy-duty Kryolan spray so that I can see how the makeup survives my afternoon training. We need to know if it transfers to the inside of the tower; how much I sweat in there and if it’s enough to make the makeup budge; how it looks with the internal lights of the tower and if it reads boldly enough to be effective.

Next up: costume fittings revisited. 

Today I have to make sure I talk to this costume team about the contortion act costume, I tell myself firmly. It’s going to be fine. Be confident. Be professional. It’ll be fine. You'll find the right time.

Today, the head costume designer will be there – the one Anton had mentioned to me yesterday. Mindy.  I know that she's a drag queen. I saw her all made up with incredible makeup, hair, dress, everything on one of the director's Instagram stories the week before.

Will that make it easier? Or worse, somehow? 

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Your next instalment of Tournelle du Soleil arrives tomorrow at 7am EST / 1pm CEST. Until then, stay strange and wonderful - XO, ess