Cirque du Soleil's colorful 'Saltimbanco' comes to the suburbs

Cirque du Soleil's "Saltimbanco" opened in April 1992 in Montreal and toured the world for almost 15 years before the show closed in December 2006. What could this show, considered by many the signature Cirque du Soleil piece, possibly do for an encore?

Carmen Ruest, longtime member of the Cirque du Soleil family and director of creation for "Saltimbanco," knows but she doesn't want to go into details.

That would spoil the surprise for those planning to catch the new version - opening Wednesday, Jan. 21, at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates. Ruest promises that even those who have seen "Saltimbanco" before will be delighted with a show that, like the original, is designed to thrill with eye-popping circus acts even as it spins out a surreal urban landscape populated by myriad colorful inhabitants - a comical, pompous civic leader, a mother and daughter in a colorful city park, and other beings that are more like the mythic creatures that slip in and out of our dreams.

In typical Cirque du Soleil fashion, the point of the playful, family-friendly show is not to tell a single, coherent story, but to supply the audience with wave after wave of gorgeous scenes, amazing images and awe-inspiring performances. Everyone gets a vague idea of what the story is, but the spectacle is what matters.

And the folks at Cirque du Soleil are masters at spectacle.

When pressed, Ruest will say that the team of Cirque du Soleil imagineers have taken a show originally conceived to play under Cirque du Soleil's charmingly intimate circus tent, which seats 2,500, and "adapted and restaged it" to fit in a larger arena space ­- the better to tour the show to areas not served by Cirque du Soleil's illustrious tent shows.

"This 'Saltimbanco' is smaller than the original," Ruest says, "but not that much smaller."

A look at the statistics for the show bears this out. The show's acrobatic grid is 30 feet long. It looms 45 feet above the stage. To haul the show's 270 tons of equipment, it reportedly takes 12 53-foot trailers.

Ruest calls the dreamlike show "a little bowl of joy."

When it comes to fitting Cirque du Soleil's trademark vision - a heady mix of circus arts, music, dance and gorgeous costumes - into an arena space, Ruest knows what she is doing. She was one of the guiding lights behind the Cirque's first work created for city arenas, "Delirium," a wild hybrid rock video circus still touring the country. She is also one of a handful of people in the organization who were around at the creation of Cirque du Soleil. Actually, she was there before the creation, working and dancing in Montreal in the early '70s. One day, while she was working at her "straight job," taken to help finance her life as a struggling dancer, she heard this music and then saw a small street band walking along.

"They were playing music, like in a Fellini film," Ruest says. "I met them. They became my friends."

She also began to perform with them, doing dance-like acrobatics while they played.

Through these street performers she met Gilles Ste-Croix and joined his small troupe of acrobatic stilt walkers, fittingly called the Club des Talon Haut (the High Heels Club). This group would later morph into Cirque du Soleil under the direction of another Quebec-based street performer, Guy Laliberte.

Ruest worked with them, sometimes performing as a stilt walker in shows, sometimes assisting in art direction.

"I was working free lance at that time," Ruest says, "because my daughter was born the same year 'Saltimbanco' was born."

Later Ruest worked as stilt-walking coach for two Cirque shows, "Alegria" and "Mystere," and as the casting director during Cirque du Soleil's explosive growth from a small Montreal-based gem into an international phenomenon.

In 2005, she moved into the job of director of creation for "Delirium."

"The challenge with 'Delirium'" Ruest says, "(was) to merge two worlds into one: circus arts and arena productions."

Ruest faced a similar challenge in tackling "Saltimbanco." But then challenge and adaptation to change are part of the DNA for "Saltimbanco."

Earlier in the "Saltimbanco" tour, Ruest was quoted as saying, "We created "Saltimbanco" to reassure people that if you decide to change, and do something new, you can do it with joy. The message is: Don't be afraid. Change can happen and be positive."

By the numbers

Cirque du Soleil's "Saltimbanco" is a celebration of life and diversity. Its name comes from an Italian phrase that means "to jump on a bench." The show itself explores the urban experience, offering a testament of optimism and joy. But while the end result is colorful and explosive, it takes a lot of work behind the scenes to reach that point.

Performers

• "Saltimbanco" features 49 artists, who come from Canada and 20 other countries. Fifteen performers were part of the show's original big-top tour, which premiered in 1992.

• Upon being hired, performers must attend weeks or months of artistic and acrobatic training in Montreal.

• Performers come from various backgrounds, including artistic gymnastics, tumbling, acrosport, swimming, diving, singing and dancing.

• The average age of a Cirque du Soleil employee is 35.

Costumes

• Most artists have three to five costumes, which can include up to 12 individual pieces.

• The show features more than 250 pairs of custom-made shoes. Shoes in the Chinese pole act are repainted before each performance.

• More than 1,200 costume items travel in 50 road cases in one van.

• The entire costume department can be packed and ready to move on in less than an hour.

Makeup

• It takes about 90 minutes for performers to apply their makeup.

• Performers follow directions from a makeup book that contains detailed steps and photos.

Set design

• The stage is 110 feet long by 65 feet wide and composed of lightweight material like aluminum.

• More than 600 feet of trussing holds the acrobatic grid, rigging and lighting elements above the stage.

• The poles used in the Chinese poles act are 24 feet long.

• The tour equipment totals 360,000 pounds.

• An estimated 140 people are hired in each city to set and load up shows.

Source: Cirque du Soleil

<p class="factboxheadblack">"Saltimbanco"</p> <p class="News">Wednesday, Jan. 21, through Sunday, Feb. 1</p> <p class="News">Sears Centre, 5333 Prairie Stone Parkway, Hoffman Estates</p> <p class="News">Tickets at <a href="http://www.cirquedusoleil.com" target="new">cirquedusoleil.com</a> or (312) 559-1212 </p>