[39] TOURNELLE DU SOLEIL • HOTEL, BROOKLYN • May 29, ARRIVAL (Patreon)

My anxiety and me walk out the front door of the hotel and turn left. It’s an absolutely gorgeous morning. The sidewalks are quiet. They’re also cleaner than I thought they’d be.

I shuffle through my Spotify songs, trying to find the right song to help calm me down as I cross the street and make my way under the Williamsburg bridge towards Broadway Ave. The train rattles overhead with a ferocious clatter, echoing off the dim, damp concrete around me.

A few more steps and the venue rises up before me: the Weylin.

It’s impressive: hundred-foot-high domes arc over a pristine facade of limestone and marble. The pillars, metalwork, and doors around the border of the building are covered with intricate carvings or mosaics. When it was built in 1875 it housed the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. Now, it’s a renovated event space.  

We were told to go to the side door on Driggs Avenue. It’s open, but there’s no one else here yet. There are no technicians available to start building the truss and stage today –it’s Memorial Day– so the cast will be rehearsing in the basement space all day.

I decide to sit outside a little longer. I park myself on a low step just to the side of the door. Close my eyes. Breathe in slowly through my nose. Let my chest fall, my shoulders relax a little in the warm bath of morning sunlight.  

Finally I stand, dust off the seat of my sweatpants, and push the heavy wooden door open.

Every detail of the interior is as stunning and impressive as the outside of the building. No detail has been left unattended–from the plates anchoring the door handles to the toilet paper roll holders, everything is elaborately machined with flowers, vines, leaves, geometric patterns.

A long narrow hallway with marble mosaic floors and rich golden wallpaper borders two large square rooms. The first is open floor space–probably where we’ll be running our choreo. The further one is set up more like a lounge. A gigantic refurbished bank vault door is fixed open so that the byzantine mechanics of its interior are visible when seated on one of the massive, tufted leather couches in the space.  

Everything about the place screams ‘old money’–which it literally is, I guess.  

The other artists begin to pour in. Coffees and breakfast sandwiches in hand, we find places to tuck our bags out of the way. Chat amongst ourselves. Introduce ourselves if we hadn’t run into one another the previous evening at the hotel.  

There’s Suren and Karyna: an aerial straps duo who’ve been working a residency in Miami. Fiona: a cyr wheel artist who just flew over from the UK. The trampwall trio: Luke, Thomas, and Sam. Four dancers–a trio of women (Femme Fatale) and a male breakdancer (Gyro). And Ron, a friendly, familiar face from the Montréal circus community: he’s doing flying pole on this contract.  

The costumers arrive: Mindy, Antoine, Genevieve. Racks after racks of clothing join them. Sewing machines are whisked away after the racks into a back room. I poke my head around the corner: it looks like a former kitchen, long steel tables swept clear of equipment, stoves and ovens hulking in far corners. This will be the costume department’s mobile headquarters, I guess.  

The higher-ups arrive next. Matthew sweeps into the room and the energy of the room crackles to life. He gives a brief speech overviewing how the week is going to go. We’ll be rehearsing the group stage choreography today and tomorrow in the basement; technical validations and a rehearsal upstairs on the stage on Wednesday; and then Thursday will have a dress rehearsal in the afternoon and the show itself in the evening. Then he hands the floor over to the dancers to lead us all in a warm-up.

I’m nervous about my leg. Self conscious about the brace even though Matthew said it's fine. Try to move well, I tell myself. Don't overdo it first thing in the day, though...

I’m nervous about the others seeing it and flagging it as a weak spot.  Or, worse: the higher-ups seeing it as something that might make me less hireable in future. All I can think of is that old 16x9 Cirque du Soleil documentary where Stacy Clark tells an athlete doing tumbling tests that it would be better to see him do his passes without the knee brace. The acrobatic in the documentary returned after a break without the brace. Dear brain, why are you choosing NOW to remember this random video.

We work hard all day. I have so many cues to remember. It passes in a blur.  

Tomorrow my knee has to do this all over again, except in the 8" high drag queen heels.    

I ice my knee and collapse into bed.  

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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