words stephanie wu

Cirque du Soleil’s new show in Macau isn’t just a flight into fancy

It’s hard not to notice the escapist aesthetic when wandering among the casinos in Macau. From the Venetian’s life-sized indoor re-creation of Saint Mark’s Square, to the Colosseum in the Fisherman’s Wharf, to the decked-out British beefeaters welcoming big spenders into the Grand Emperor, it seems clear that people travel to Macau only to pretend to leave it. So what keeps Zaia, Cirque du Soleil’s new permanent show at the Venetian Macao-Hotel-Resort, from being anything more than another surrender to escapism? It is, after all, a show about a girl who leaves earth entirely for outer space.

Talk to Neilson Vignola, Zaia’s director of creation, and Cirque du Soleil’s Asian adventure takes on a much more gritty substance. For one thing, rather than fleeing the dangers of real life, Cirque is taking some of its economic risks head on. Among the perils are a permanent show targeting an itinerant tourist audience and the fact that most tourists in Macau appear to spend their funds on gaming rather than anything else – approximately 57% of Macau’s GDP came from gaming receipts in the fourth quarter of 2007.

“To say that we’re not worried would be lying to you,” confesses Vignola. Nonetheless, he is confident the production will be a success. So confident, in fact, that Cirque is constructing its largest training gym outside of the Montreal headquarters in Macau. “We’ve been taking risks since we came into existence,” says Vignola. “And we do believe people will want something else besides gambling. Macau will become a destination for a lot of people,” and he refers especially to the families of dedicated gamers and to those interested in entertainment but who have never thought of visiting Macau before.

Cirque’s founding members were, 26 years ago, a group of 20 street performers without a box office, let alone a theatre. That group has since evolved into a big-name entertainment company with seven resident shows in the United States (including five in Las Vegas, catering to a 9,000-person audience nightly) and seven touring shows that entertain 200 countries in five continents. In the light of that, Vignola’s positive attitude about Zaia – which does have a theatre (a $1.17 billion one) – doesn’t seem overly ambitious. In fact, Zaia’s venture into Macau’s casino culture and attempt to reach a new audience is right on target with what Vignola lists as part of Cirque’s original vision: “to go somewhere else… all around the world, if we can, to bring joy into the hearts of everybody.”

In explaining how they accomplish that, Vignola uses a clever paradox that particularly indicates how Zaia, the creation of a Canadian group, could appeal in a small territory whose visitors are mainly from China or Hong Kong. “We don’t have words,” he says, “so we can talk to anyone.” As all who have taken in one of Cirque’s daring shows know, instead of through language, Zaia reaches its audience more viscerally – through the emotion of the singers, the grace of the dancers, the danger of the acrobatics. (Even the song lyrics are in a made-up dialect, commonly referred to by fans as ‘Cirquish’.) As a result, Vignola believes Cirque’s appeal is universal: “We’re not doing shows to please only separate people. We can suit the expectations of everyone around the planet.”

The immediacy of the emotional experience points to another reason Zaia is hardly pure escapism. One cannot doubt Cirque’s theatre designers want audiences to feel as though they have left earth as they step through a steel tunnel lit in purple – evocative of some sort of sci-fi space warp – into the dark red 1,852-seat theatre with its 88ft proscenium and 97ft deep stage. Yet Vignola says the outer-space adventure is symbolic: Zaia’s trip to the moon is, on a deeper level, a voyage into her and the audience’s inner worlds. “When she starts her trip, she’s actually going into the chasm of her mind…. It’s all planet Earth because it’s all done by human beings. All the beauties we pass – it’s all us, we don’t have to go to any other planet. It’s a big demand and mandate, but for us planet Earth is important because it’s our place and we have to take care of it. We present beauties and say it’s all happening here. It’s done by your neighbours, by human beings… We’re not doing our show as a version of Star Wars or Star Trek,” he explains.

Zaia was conceived by director Gilles Maheu after he found a postcard of a little girl playing on the moon, and the character was originally named Alice, as a nod to Lewis Carroll’s psychedelic Alice in Wonderland. As Vignola describes the forming of the show’s acts, however, it becomes apparent that the designers wouldn’t work around an image from the postcard or the book. Rather, Cirque’s talent scouts travelled the world watching acrobatic and dance performances, looking for acts that reminded them of Zaia’s story. These they brought back to Cirque’s choreographers who used them as the raw material for a Cirque incarnation: The show is the product not only of a few creative Canadians, but of a dialogue involving artists from around the planet.

And despite Vignola’s urging us not to, it is extremely easy to forget that despite the fantasy of the theatre’s appearance all the work is done by humans. How can it not slip your mind while watching acrobats swinging leisurely from a rope to the ceiling, framed by a deep red arched stage, momentarily eclipsed by a 25ft dangling sphere bathing the entire environment in soft celestial light? Especially as the moon-ball hangs within a panoply of ‘stars’ arranged exactly as the real constellations appear in Macau’s sky.

Nothing is a simple reminder of merely human efforts in this show. For instance, Vignola’s description of the final scene as “the opening of champagne bottles” refers to a heart-stopping explosiveness of sounds and sights. A look behind the spectacle, though, reveals an endeavour as superhuman as the show itself. Vignola tells how the impression of weightlessness beyond the earth’s gravity is created by trampoline/x-board acrobatics.

The x-board, a four-pronged seesaw that bounces performers among its prongs and a trampoline, is a Zaia original, referred to initially by its creators as “the killing machine”. The most serious injuries on the Zaia stage so far are legs broken on the x-board. Other dangers include an act that uses live fire – which had to be cleared by the Macau fire department and requires a team of people backstage nursing blankets, water, and fire extinguishers – and real swordplay, not to mention all the physics-defying aerials packed into the 90-minute show.
Performers will be training every day until Zaia’s July 26 soft opening. The creative team will treat the shows from then until the hard opening on August 28 as trials, meticulously observing audiences as a guide for slight improvements to the performance. “We’ll see the audience reactions. For instance, if we are expecting a certain reaction in a specific space [seating area] and we get no reaction, then we know something needs to change.” Vignola’s emphasis on the need to predict and observe specific seating regions is particularly revealing of Zaia’s complicated, multifaceted aesthetic, where each seat offers a unique experience.

Nor will the show, even though permanent, ever stop giving audiences fresh perspectives. With each act taking up to three years to perfect, Vignola explains that “the first show is not to the level that we, as Cirque people, will expect because we know we can go further”. As an isolated example, he fully expects a double salto (an aerial somersault) in one scene to evolve into a quadruple salto mortale in six months’ time – and that kind of progression cannot happen without the most intense concentration on brute physical reality.

Cirque du Soleil’s Zaia will be performed at the Venetian Macao-Hotel-Resort’s Zaia Theatre on an irregular schedule during the July 26-August 28 preview period; the regular schedule starts on August 28. Visit www.cirquedusoleil.com for specific times. Ticket prices range from $1,288 to $388 for adults, $1,288 to $266 for children. Book by phone at 6333 6660 or +853 2882 8818, online, or at the Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel box office.