Varekai, the latest touring spectacle from Cirque du Soleil, opens September 12 at Staples Center. Andrew Watson is the show’s director of creation, and Violaine Corradi composed the music. (Watson is also director of creation of the Cirque’s latest show, Zumanity, which premiered in Las Vegas last month and received some notoriety for its explicit eroticism.) Watson started his career as a trapeze artist in 1984 Britain in traditional circuses, before touring with Cirque du Soleil when it first came to L.A. in 1987.
Born in Italy into a family of composers and musicians, at the age of 4, Corradi arrived in Montreal, where she studied drama and music. She has composed film scores and accompaniments to leading Quebec poets, compiled in the audio series “Poésie/Musique.”
Watson and Corradi spoke to the Weekly at the Figueroa Hotel downtown.
L.A. WEEKLY: So, you’re back downtown. Has it changed since you were here in 1984?
ANDREW WATSON: Back then we performed in Little Tokyo, opposite the Atomic Café. It was pretty funky back then — artists’ lofts, people moving in — the start of what’s happening in downtown now. But I’m sure those same people can’t afford to live here now.
Is this the first time you’ve worked as a creative director at Cirque?
A.W.: Yes. I’ve worked as an artist, a training director and artistic director with various shows on the road — Alegria, Quiddam, Saltimbanco. This show took about 26 months to do. We started in October 2000.
I understand Cirque shows can typically start with music and develop from there. How about this one?
VIOLAINE CORRADI: [Varekai’s director] Dominic Champagne came up with this proposal of this universe where he wanted the spirit of the show to be. Then we pinpointed the microcosms of this universe, to determine the persona and identity of every number. We worked for a year before meeting with any acrobats at all.
A.W.: That makes the shows unique because everything has a reason to be there. There are no random choices. From a central inspiration or thought or word or picture or bit of music. The people on the creative team are inspired to research their own universes within a single one.
That sounds wonderful but rather complicated. What are the challenges artistically and practically in building a show like that?
V.C.: To me it’s always a little miracle that it all works out, that we find a symbiosis with the music and costumes and all. It’s more than finding a consensus, it’s merging together.
It sounds fairly democratic . . .
A.W.: No. It’s a pyramid, not a democracy. Everybody brings their ingredients to the table, but there’s one person who cooks them.
Varekai takes as its universe the Greek myth of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun and lost his wings. Any particular reason for that?
A.W.: It’s something very human. We all fall down in life in many different ways, and hopefully we have the courage to pick ourselves up. Very often that comes with the help of the people around us, in different ways — a kick in the butt, a demonstration of love. Though a kick in the butt can be love also. But the show is not necessarily about Icarus, it’s about having to face life again after you’ve fallen.
V.C.: We’ve all been through it, whether it’s a death or a loss, and the images we create here remind us of the beauty of brotherhood. One of the themes of Varekai is how the power of love can help a person transform or transmute. We provoke, we propose, we don’t impose. As creative directors we use an invented language, so you don’t understand what we say but you feel the sentiment.
A.W.: It’s a choice not to have words. [Cirque du Soleil] doesn’t normally have dialogue, because the moment you have dialogue, it tells the story, and you can’t evoke the right imagination inside of that.
V.C.: What we do have is poetry. We have poems being recited, in real language — Romanian and Spanish. They were translated for the show.
A.W.: Poetry evokes imagination as opposed to telling a story. I have so many albums at home from all over the world in which I have absolutely no idea what people are saying, and I’m sure it’s better I don’t know. I have my own feelings about what the song is.
What makes Varekai different from the eight other Cirque shows?
A.W.: For starters, it’s a different color. All the other posters for the other shows were black. This one’s in color. When [Cirque du Soleil president] Guy Laliberte asked me to go find a director and a team and make a show, I wanted to make a show with its own identity.
Reviews of Varekai have been mostly good, though critics have said it’s bolder and brasher and therefore less mystical than its predecessors . . .
