And it seems that the carnival is over
Jul. 3rd, 2020 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12It's no secret that the pandemic has had a devastating effect on the arts/entertainment sectors. I've been seeing wave after wave of distressing mass redundancies of workers in these sectors in recent days.
The one that really hit me the hardest was Cirque du Soleil, which made 3500 workers redundant this week in order to avoid bankruptcy. (Allegedly they are going to rehire them at some later date, but that's not exactly helpful to those workers right now.)
Before you start in on me about how blandly corporate Cirque has become in recent years, or point to the fact that the company at present is not run by the original artists who started it in the '80s, or that its output has been getting weaker and weaker (I mean, a musical about Lionel Messi? What the hell?): I know, and I don't care. I've been watching Cirque shows since I was a three-year-old child and saw Le Cirque Réinventé with my parents when we went back to New York to visit the friends they'd made when they lived there. My sister, mother and I watched every show that toured Australia. I had a gymnastics floor routine set to the music from the diabolo act from Quidam. My sister and I wore out video tapes of recordings of Quidam and Dralion recorded from free-to-air TV, and spent endless summers creating adagio routines to the music from the Saltimbanco show, which we had on CD. I even worked for the Cirque show Varekai at one point when it toured Australia. When Dralion finally made its way to an Australian tour I was so overcome with emotion that I basically cried through the entire show. My sister and I hatched various elaborate plans to go to Las Vegas solely to watch the show O, which was permanently based there. (Eventually I think she gave up on the idea of going with me, as for various reasons I am basically too scared to go to the US, and she and our mother went on their own. I'm envious, but even the prospect of seeing O is not enough to convince me to go the the US.)
It mattered to me that this was a circus that did not have animals. It mattered to me that it was international, that its performers came from everywhere (and this is one thing that really disturbs me about the mass redundancies: a substantial number of those performers would have had work visas based on the fact they were touring — i.e. doing work — outside their countries of origin. Now they face being trapped overseas, with invalid or expired visas, often in places where international travel is really difficult due to the pandemic, with no money). It mattered to me, as a gymnast, in various ways that I find hard to articulate. I'm devastated for all those incredible human beings who are cast adrift by this terrible situation.
I'll let me favourite Cirque act of all time, the unnerving, violent, post-apocalyptic, luminous banquine performance from Quidam, speak for me.
The one that really hit me the hardest was Cirque du Soleil, which made 3500 workers redundant this week in order to avoid bankruptcy. (Allegedly they are going to rehire them at some later date, but that's not exactly helpful to those workers right now.)
Before you start in on me about how blandly corporate Cirque has become in recent years, or point to the fact that the company at present is not run by the original artists who started it in the '80s, or that its output has been getting weaker and weaker (I mean, a musical about Lionel Messi? What the hell?): I know, and I don't care. I've been watching Cirque shows since I was a three-year-old child and saw Le Cirque Réinventé with my parents when we went back to New York to visit the friends they'd made when they lived there. My sister, mother and I watched every show that toured Australia. I had a gymnastics floor routine set to the music from the diabolo act from Quidam. My sister and I wore out video tapes of recordings of Quidam and Dralion recorded from free-to-air TV, and spent endless summers creating adagio routines to the music from the Saltimbanco show, which we had on CD. I even worked for the Cirque show Varekai at one point when it toured Australia. When Dralion finally made its way to an Australian tour I was so overcome with emotion that I basically cried through the entire show. My sister and I hatched various elaborate plans to go to Las Vegas solely to watch the show O, which was permanently based there. (Eventually I think she gave up on the idea of going with me, as for various reasons I am basically too scared to go to the US, and she and our mother went on their own. I'm envious, but even the prospect of seeing O is not enough to convince me to go the the US.)
It mattered to me that this was a circus that did not have animals. It mattered to me that it was international, that its performers came from everywhere (and this is one thing that really disturbs me about the mass redundancies: a substantial number of those performers would have had work visas based on the fact they were touring — i.e. doing work — outside their countries of origin. Now they face being trapped overseas, with invalid or expired visas, often in places where international travel is really difficult due to the pandemic, with no money). It mattered to me, as a gymnast, in various ways that I find hard to articulate. I'm devastated for all those incredible human beings who are cast adrift by this terrible situation.
I'll let me favourite Cirque act of all time, the unnerving, violent, post-apocalyptic, luminous banquine performance from Quidam, speak for me.