Another “open” event. Talent Scout Marceline Goldstein will be running that audition. If your gymnast has amazing acrobatic talent, or multiple talents, I’d recommend they give it a go.
Here’s Marceline (Facebook) at the recent audition in Osaka.
In Japan, the Cirque du Soleil Casting partner is former Stanford coach Sadao Hamada (Facebook). Here he is at the Tokyo audition.
Another amazing video from Japan has over 100,000 hits.
Cirque du Soleil has a men’s Rhythmic troupe in the new Los Angeles show IRIS … actually it’s in the new Michael Jackson THE IMMORTAL World Tour. Thanks Stacy.
The arena show—which is very similar to a rock concert—begins its tour October 2, 2011. After touring North America for about two years, it will continue on to Europe and the rest of the world. …
Gianinni interviews acrobats on the MJ Immortal World Tour about their experience and what MJ means to them as acrobats. …
Disappointed that none of the Japanese teams performed at Gymnaestrada 2011, I was extremely happy to see this performance before the awards of the Junior Japan International, September 24th in Yokohama
Tokyo – October 18
Location: Tsukahara Gymnastics Center
5-18-12 Kita Karasuyama Setagayaku, Tokyo
Osaka – October 22
Location: Nanba Gymnastics Club
1-3-19 Nihonbashi Nishi Naniwaku
Be prepared to showcase your best skills: fast track, tumbling, high bar, parallel bars, rings, uneven bars, trampoline, rhythmic gymnastics, twirling, skipping or unicycle.
Qualifications
All candidates must be 18 years of age or older;
Please bring a photo, a resumé and a demo video of your act or skills;
Appropriate attire required – bring your grips;
For more information, please contact: Sadao Hamada
Cirque du Soleil Casting Partner
090-3229-7375
On my Recreation Gymnastics blog I make the argument that Montreal should be the first North American host of the World Gymnaestrada:
• a bilingual city with easy, inexpensive access for Europeans
• Cirque du Soleil might partner
• Gymnaestrada in Europe is not growing
• the event needs to modernize, North America would help
• Canada has a strong and growing Gymnastraeda base
• Gymnastics Canada strongly supports the event
Lausanne, Switzerland 2011
Click through for the details … especially the part on why it won’t happen any time soon.
Many in the gymnastics community attended the Calgary premiere of OVO this week. I was going to write a review … but Heath McCoy in the Calgary Herald pretty much nailed it:
… as in most Cirque shows, the storytelling plays a distant second to the spectacle, and, happily, the latter aspect of OVO is grand.
The staging, with its vibrant ecosystem, complete with giant-sized webs, cocoons and a monolithic egg (a thematic symbol of the bugs’ life cycle, ovo means egg in Portuguese) is spectacular.
The dazzling costumes — an inspired hybrid of superhero spandex and historical suits of armour — are suitably outlandish.
And the stunts — played out to the Brazilian electro-pop sounds of a cockroach band, which run the gamut between romantic and sizzling — are nothing short of stunning. …
At intermission we chatted with gracious Head Coach Eric Heppel. He informed that slack wire solo performer is by far the best in the world. He shows handstand, handstand walking and 1-arm handstand on a pendulum. Rock solid. No balance adjustments.
I never get tired of Tramp wall. OVO is another superb variation.
Overall … the highlight of this show are the costumes. (That caterpillar is enough to give you nightmares.)
The weakest element, as usual, are the clowns. … Though I somewhat liked Flippo. He grew on me as the show progressed.
Disclosure – As a Casting consultant, Cirque gave me 4 tickets. Merci. … I took a former gymnast who wants to audition.
I had her watch the House Troupe performers, rather than those specialists in the spotlight.
This is the most detailed road map I’ve yet seen on Cirque’s plans.
Cathy Yang in Hong Kong:
… Cirque du Soleil plans to use its current ZAIA showcase in Macau as a “springboard” to further its Asian ambitions, president and CEO Daniel Lamarre told Reuters.
… Cirque is currently touring in more than 350 cities around the world, including (Kooza) Osaka in Japan, and will be coming to Shanghai by the end of September But Macau is as key to its Asian strategy as Las Vegas is in North America. …
… expects it to follow the Vegas model where he says gambling has lost its dominance of the city’s attractions and entertainment is huge. …
“We hope to have three permanent shows in Macau one day and I see a day where we can have a permanent show in big Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing and who knows,” Lamarre said.
But first Lamarre said the Cirque plans to begin regularly touring key cities in China in the next 18 months with a view to establishing permanent shows within four years and spreading out across Asia. …
One reason the major BC event of the year is so consistently good and popular is that they bring in new speakers. The line-up this year was excellent. Here are photos of just a few:
Greg Jackson
Steve Arkell
Steve stayed on to coach at a Training camp hosted by Flicka.
Here’s the only review — mixed — I’ve yet seen on the NEW innovative competition hosted in Bethlehem, PA.
Paul Reinhard, Special to The Morning Call:
“We know we have a good product, but can we get some sponsors to go along with us?” meet executive director Brent Klaus said. “This was a huge loss for us, but we knew that coming in — bringing in all these athletes, taking care of them for a week, the staging, the lights, the production. But now we have something to show people.”
Klaus promised he’d have some WWE-type entertainment, and he delivered with music that was way too loud, a couple of announcers who could be every bit as abrasive as former WWE head Vince McMahon and some controversy that seemed to be trumped up.
At 3 hours and 55 minutes, it was much too long. Klaus said earlier in the week it would probably last 21/2, which would have been about right. …
… For the record, the “winner” of the team competition was Team Ice, led by 2008 Olympian Jonathan Horton and Steve Legendre. …
Fruit of the loom commercial
(by The Richards Group)
featuring rhythmic gymnast: Stella Angelova & Emilly Levingson
Director: Gerard de Thame
music group : Wojan Brothers
This was a very large casting call that lasted almost 2 months. People flew in from over seas to attend this call. Every performer was hired individually and the choreography was put together over 2 days of shooting in Los Angeles. From the thousands they saw, in the end they hired 6 dancers, 3 trapeze performers, 1 contortionist gymnast & 2 rhythmic gymnast. None of us are Cirque du Soleil performers.
