Cirque du Soleil Alegria
Never have I met so many people from so many different countries all in one place. The Cirque du Soleil made their first ever stop in Salt Lake City May 19-23. While they were in town, I was lucky enough to work as their on-site Massage Therapist.
For 3 days, I worked on over 20 performers with various skills ranging from Trampoline Track-Runners, Acrobats, Trapeze artists, Clowns, Russian Bar performers, Actors, Tumblers, Musicians and Contortionists. But with all of their many different mastered abilities came many different and specific injuries. I was hired to relieve pain from pre-existing injuries as well as alleviate tired and tight muscles in-between performances.
Working for the circus gave me a chance to meet so many people from so many cultures. I worked on performers hailing from Russia to Mongolia, Poland to Spain, and France to Canada. Getting a chance to meet people from all around the world was definitely the most intriguing part of this experience. And besides the language barrier which sometimes prevented me from getting to know the performers, I was able to learn much about how performing in a traveling circus is much more than a job; but a way of life.
Fortunately for me, on top of getting paid for my services, I was given 2 complimentary tickets to go and see the show for myself! I had never seen any of the Cirque du Soleil shows before, but had heard of their elaborate and amazing circus performances. I felt that this experience would be quite different for me than for the other people in the audience; but only because I wasn’t solely focused on the performances. During the entire show I was also trying to look past the thick make-up on the performer’s faces to pick out which ones had been on my massage table!
While I watched all of the extraordinary sequences, and heard the audience oooing and ahhhing, I felt that although it was very small, I did get to make some sort of significance in this show. It definitely wasn’t a show that I expected. They had clowns to make us laugh, very eccentric characters to tell a story, an incredible orchestra and singers, and athletes that had been training and traveling most of their lives to share unimaginable talents with audiences around the world.
One performer that I was particularly impressed with is displayed in the image on the right. (The one who is balancing herself with her arm) Bashka is from Mongolia and has been traveling as a Contortionist since the age of 7. I had the pleasure of working with her before one of her performances and she told me about the endless training of a contortionist. Every morning and night she does strenuous stretches to keep her body limber and her joints mobile. And even before each show she must stretch for at least 30 minutes to get her body to bend in these seemingly impossible positions.
Even though I worked for Cirque du Soleil for only 3 days, this was definitely the coolest experience I’ve had working as a Massage Therapist and hope to do much more work like it.
Working with different performers, specially with Acrobats is some thing that most therapist wants, you are really lucky that your have worked with all of the performers. I am thinking how much you had enjoyed working with them. best of luck for your future work.
This was such a wonderful article to read! What an experience!! I hope to someday get to work with such unique performers! And maybe get to see a show!!!
Sarah Lane Plummer