Abu Dhabi is famous for being trailblazing. The glitzy Middle Eastern Emirate is home to the world’s biggest aquarium, the world’s fastest rollercoaster and even the world’s tallest indoor skydiving chamber. It sets a high barrier for touring shows to meet when they come to town but one is more than capable of making a leap for it.
Cirque du Soleil is far from your average circus troupe. Spectators won’t find sawdust strewn across the stage in a Cirque show. Nor will they find any animals on the state-of-the-art sets with their dramatically-colored lighting. Instead, the performances are a blend of rock music, world-class contortion and acrobatics which up the ante with every act. Just when you think they couldn’t get any more daring they do.
Since Cirque was founded by a group of Canadian street performers in 1984 it has played to more than 378 million people in 86 countries. They have come to expect death-defying stunts and near misses in Cirque’s shows so when it was deciding how to make a splash on a tour of Abu Dhabi it was no mean feat. Cirque needed to stage a show which had never visited the region before and was so outlandish that it had to be seen to be believed. It has done just that.
Last week, Cirque swung into the indoor Etihad Arena on the theme park hub of Yas Island which will be home to its CRYSTAL show until Sunday, May 5. From there it continues its tour of the Middle East as it heads to The Arena Kuwait for four days of performances from May 22.
Like other Cirque shows, CRYSTAL features juggling, balancing acts and avant-garde acrobatics. However, the difference is that its performers are all wearing ice skates as they are doing the stunts on a full-size ice rink in the blistering heat of the desert.
At the heart of the 100 minute show is a surreal story of a girl who falls through an icy pond into an imaginary world which is the opposite of her dull life. There she meets her antithesis, an adventurous acrobat accustomed to performing outlandish stunts. With her flowing ginger hair, fluttering red scarf and blue dress she looks like Anna, the princess from Disney’s smash hit Frozen, and the show plays out like a live action fantasy film.
Cirque’s selling point is that it creates its own acts rather than simply employing guest artists who bring their routines with them. This allows its schedule to remain consistent throughout the lifetime of a show rather than being at the mercy of travelling troupes. It also brings the added kudos that its acrobatic displays and stunts can’t be found elsewhere.
Jugglers sliding on the ice and a flash mob of skaters performing synchronized somersaults send shivers down your spine in CRYSTAL but soon seem mundane compared to what comes next.
An array of 28 projectors hidden in the rafters beam images onto the ice rink transforming it from the pond to a backyard reflecting the life that the protagonist left behind. Suddenly a group of performers surrounds her and launches her up with their bare hands onto a trapeze that dangles down from above. Then she balances on the bar and flips around it all whilst wearing ice skates. It’s a first in a Cirque show but it soon tops it.
Somehow snow falls down on the rink and billows around like a blizzard. Cutting through it are a double act of aerial contortionists who soar high above the ice by clinging onto a silky red strap. They too are wearing skates and as the strap descends they kick off on the ice giving them more speed to soar even higher.
Another scene involves a performer dressed in winter woollies constructing a precarious platform of chairs stacked to over 20-feet above the rock-hard rink. Reaching the top is just the start as he performs breathtaking balancing acts when he gets there.
The show’s centrepiece comes when projections turn the surface into a giant pinball machine-cum-ice hockey rink so that skaters can bounce from one side to the other and over mobile ramps performing mid-air stunts as they do it. Ramps are even built into a soaring set which resembles an iceberg and towers over the rink throughout the show.
Booths for music acts are carved into the set which is flanked by stylized cutouts of snowy trees. Lights glow from inside the iceberg-like structure and projections are beamed onto it. They range from surreal scenes of the protagonist’s life to snowflakes falling upwards as a reminder that the show is meant to be taking place under the ice. The projections culminate with eerily-lifelike cracks on the ice rink followed by a crash as the lights go down and the star is sent back to her homeworld.
None of this would be possible without having experts in the field. CRYSTAL’s creative team includes Kurt Browning, a four-time world champion Canadian figure skater and American Benjamin Agosto, four-time world medalist ice dancer.
However, the logistics of staging the show are just as daunting as many of its stunts. Like the jugglers who perform in it, the organizers can’t risk dropping the ball. The wizard keeping them all in the air is Michael Davis, CRYSTAL’s production manager.
“The biggest challenge we face on CRYSTAL is keeping the ice at the correct temperature,” says Davis. “When the surface temperature of the ice gets above 15 degrees fahrenheit it starts to sweat which makes the ice extremely slippery.”
It is a particular predicament in Abu Dhabi where the temperature surged above 100 degrees whilst the show was being set up. Ever the expert planners, Davis explains that Cirque came up with a way to stop its troupe tumbling.
“We use about 100 local laborers to put our show together and in hot climates they are not accustomed to walking on ice like they are in northern climates. This creates extra hazards for them slipping and falling on the ice and getting injured. We prevent this by adding extra chilling power into our portable ice floor system to work even in the hottest cities in the world.”
It does the trick as he adds that “when the ice is cold enough it is similar to walking on concrete.” This creates the ideal conditions for skating but is far from cushioning in the case of a fall. Cirque has thought of that too.
A massive 1,250 pieces of clothing are worn in every performance of the show and it travels with over 4,000 in total. They were designed to protect the performers and keep them warm without looking overly bulky. Performers who are there to catch falling acrobats wear special padding on their shoulders and gloves made of Kevlar equipped with polymer cuffs to absorb shock and protect their forearms from the razor-sharp ice skate blades. Gloves even contain a piece of Velcro across their palms so that a plastic plate with crampons can be attached to it to give them even more stability when needed.
The performers who are meant to slide on the ice haven’t been forgotten about as their costumes are made of water resistant, non-absorbent material to allow them to glide smoothly without getting water-logged.
In fact, the costumes are so specialised that some of the performers wear as many as six different suits per show tailored to the acts they star in. It means they need to be able to change quickly so each costume has full length zippers running from ankle to ankle along the inside seam enabling the performers to change without removing their skates. It brings the fastest costume change down to just 35 seconds.
The skates are even more specialised than the clothing and Cirque built more than 25 prototypes before settling on the final design. They were made at the company’s headquarters in Montreal where around 300 artisans create 16,000 items every year for Cirque’s shows. Perhaps the oddest object in CRYSTAL is a giant hockey stick which requires especially stable skates to control.
Although there are only 44 performers in CRYSTAL, the show brings 80 pairs of skates on tour and some artists wear up to four pairs per performance. Those used by figure skaters have toe picks for control and flatter blades while hockey skate blades are curved for increased maneuverability and speed. Cleverly, the acrobats’ shoes incorporate small metal spikes and crampons to help them walk, slide and run on ice without slipping.
Cirque’s designers needed a way to give the different types of skates a uniform look so that the audience wouldn’t realize which ones were being used for specific stunts. They pulled this off by creating zip-on covers and painting them to give them same look.
With so many outfits, the show generates a lot of laundry and Cirque says that CRYSTAL has to travel with its own washing machines in case local venues don’t have enough capacity. It’s no exaggeration as the wardrobe team does 48 loads of laundry to get ready for the week of shows and 10 to 12 loads every day when performances are taking place.
The washing machines are transported with approximately 500 individual set pieces including the iceberg structure which alone comprises 210 components. Davis says that the rink is provided by specialist snow entertainment supplier Ice-World and adds that the tour even brings its own snowball machine.
Cirque’s skilled senior publicist Roberto Larroude reveals the Cirque uses all the tricks in its spell book to streamline the production process. One of the most high-tech is the innovative Follow Spot system made by Canadian company BlackTrax which can pinpoint the precise position of performers through mini trackers on their costumes. This enables the spotlights to follow them automatically and ensures that they don’t interfere with the projections on the ice rink.
Larroude adds that it takes about 15 hours to set up the show and about four to five hours to dismantle. It all fits into 434 road cases, 160 racks and a few dozen other types of packing containers which are transported in 18 55-feet transport trailers from city to city.
“The tour travels with around 100 people,” says Davis adding that “we also hire 110 local workers to help with the set up and on different departments, such as wardrobe.”
It couldn’t get to the opening night without local promoter Sport & Entertainment Solutions (SES) which started life as a sports focused, sponsorship and events agency, previously known as Sport Solutions. The company was founded in Dubai in 2004 by Ali Haidary, an entrepreneur who cut his teeth in the FMCG sector and went on to become probably the leading event management, sports licensing and franchising manager in the Middle East.
Sport Solutions brought the beloved Masters Football concept to the Middle East and organized the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball’s first Beach Volleyball Tour in Dubai in 2008. It followed that up by helping the Dubai Sports Council to bring the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup to Dubai in 2009 with Haidary as its head of competitions.
His career got another bounce that year when he brokered one of the region’s most lucrative and groundbreaking sponsorship deals between local telecommunication giant Etisalat and storied soccer squad FC Barcelona. Haidary then made an even bigger name for himself by securing several regional brand endorsement deals for megastars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo but he didn’t stop there. His agency then expanded into family entertainment, hence the change of its name.
SES had a watershed moment in 2013 when it partnered with FELD Entertainment to become the promoter of Disney On Ice and Disney Live! events in the Middle East. As we have reported, there is tremendous demand for Disney attractions in the Middle East and SES has capitalized on it by expanding its portfolio to include Disney In Concert and Marvel Universe Live! as well as classic Broadway shows such as Cats and Les Misérables.
CRYSTAL opens up a whole new world for SES but leaves it with perhaps the biggest challenge of them all which is how to top it.