Work du Soleil

[February 27th, 2008]

In the next five weeks, some 90,000 Portlanders will spend in the general vicinity of $5.5 million to see Corteo, the latest touring production from Montreal-based entertainment empire Cirque du Soleil. Cirque has been visiting Portland every year or so since 2000, and if you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering why you should care. It’s true the nonsense-spewing acrobatic clown shtick has gotten tired (and $5 mil is a lot of cash to hand over to the Canadians), but there are still a few reasons to look forward to the Corteo 65-truck caravan’s arrival in the South Waterfront—even if you couldn’t be bribed to see the show.

Corteo, which premiered in 2005, takes place in the imagination of a dying clown who fantasizes about his own colorful funeral procession. Although a tad morbid, it’s as good an excuse as any for a parade of dazzlingly costumed acrobats bouncing on beds, riding flying bicycles and dangling from enormous helium balloons. A few of them even speak English, though most of the show is still in the company’s signature nonlingual babble.

Cirque itself is anything but moribund: The company employs 3,800 and runs eight touring shows and 10 resident productions around the world, with annual revenues exceeding $600 million. Recent endeavors include Love, a flashy homage to the Beatles; Delirium, a thumping “live music experience” produced in cooperation with Live Nation; and the Cirque du Soleil Collection, a women’s fashion line. Rumors of upcoming projects, from an Elvis-inspired Las Vegas show to a theme park in Spain, abound. Given Cirque’s recent explosive growth, most of them are probably true.

Critics from The New York Times and London Guardian have all but announced that Cirque jumped the shark the minute its production budgets passed the $100 million mark. It’s a fair judgment (an Elvis show? Really?), but the fans, hungry for spectacle, keep coming—nearly 10 million of them in 2007 alone.

They’ve made Cirque’s founder and 95-percent owner, Guy Laliberté, extraordinarily wealthy: He’s the world’s richest theatrical producer, worth an estimated $1.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine. That’s about twice the net worth of Cameron Mackintosh, the prolific producer behind Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Laliberté is about as rich as Oprah.

The money doesn’t all flow one way, though. The company needs a lot of help to raise that “grand chapiteau” under the Marquam Bridge, and Cirque is hiring 175 local temporary laborers to help build and run the company’s mobile city for its six-week residency in Portland. According to the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s economic-impact calculator, Portland-area restaurants can expect to do about $1 million in extra business while the circus is in town, and hotels will get another $250,000 from out-of-town attendees.

One major beneficiary of Cirque’s biennial roll through town is Oregon Health & Science University, which owns the 15-acre plot where the company has set up shop for every tour since its first Portland visit in 2000. According to OHSU spokesman Harry Lenhart, the Canadians pay $130,000 to rent the land for two months. Not bad for 15 acres of otherwise unused brown field.

But what effect does a steamroller production like Cirque (although, really, there’s no enterprise quite like Cirque) have on Portland’s performing-arts community? Do cash-strapped theatergoers ditch homegrown shows for the flashy big top?

According to Trisha Pancio, president of the Portland Area Theatre Alliance, the answer is no: Cirque du Soleil is “in town for so long, that there is usually no conflict—[there’s] plenty of opportunity to do both,” she says. “Cirque helps local live events over the long term because for many people, especially young people and non-city-dwellers, it is the first live theatrical event they’ve seen in their lives.” And if they have a good time, they’re likely to seek out similar experiences in their own communities.

Noah Mickens, known to Portland audiences as William Batty, the emcee of local circus act Batty’s Hippodrome, is equally effusive: “The renaissance in circus arts that’s swept the United States during the past 10 years has everything to do with the Cirque. People fall in love with their shows live or on television, and come looking for that same magic in their hometowns. And we’ve got it, sugar.”

Mickens has good reason to be excited. His circus-focused venue, also called the Hippodrome, has hosted a dozen troupes since it opened in November, and he expects Corteo’s run will be good for business. “I’ll be dispatching a full regiment of brightly dressed zanies to their parking lot, armed with enough fliers to assure that not one hand goes unbilled,” he says.

Still, it’s hard not to turn a little green at the prospect of all that cash leaving town. After all, $5.5 million could pay for, say, most of a season at Portland Center Stage. PCS’s artistic director, Chris Coleman, says local theaters have a lot to learn from Cirque’s success: “I am always amazed by the seamlessness of their work. The way the music, visuals and athletics weave together thematically.” Oh, and the funding from the Canadian government that supported the company through its first few years? That wouldn’t hurt, either.