The artists spend 20 hours a week for the first three weeks immersed in the techniques of acting, music, dance, percussion, and clowning. It quickly becomes apparent that the Cirque way of doing things isn’t just different, it’s the polar opposite of everything they know. For a few it’s immediately liberating, but for the majority it is disorienting and stressful as they leave their old selves behind and struggle toward discovering who they can be.

Madeleine Hallé explains that the early stages of artistic training are designed to encourage the artists to get over their fear of making fools of themselves. If anything, Cirque wants them to make fools of themselves, to lose any sense of self-importance and false dignity that they’ve brought with them from the world of sports. And although some find this tremendously difficult, no one has ever walked away; their desire to be part of Cirque is stronger than their fear of ridicule.

Creating Characters
For the first time in their lives, the former athletes find themselves participating in the process of creating a new identity. The writer or director of the show may come up with a character sketch, but it’s up to the artist to supply the flesh and blood of the person he or she is portraying. To do that, the artist has to generate specific emotions, which is hard if the character is unlike the real-life performer: It’s tough to play an extrovert if you’re an introvert, and vice versa.

As they progress toward that goal, the artists’ vocabulary evolves. At the start of training they concentrate on physical aspects, but after a few weeks they are exploring their lives and memories in depth and drawing upon personal experiences to expand their repertoire of gestures and facial expressions.

Hallé points out that while the Cirque regimen imposes many new demands, it also hands out new rewards. “If they miss a trick or a movement in training, for the first time in their careers there are no serious consequences – they won’t be cut from the team,” she says. “However they will have to work at it until they’ve got it. But if they should occasionally miss in performance, that’s not the end of the world either. The public will recognize their capacity to do it and will support them. The other major reward is this: they receive the applause of 2,000 people at the end of every single performance. And that’s something they didn’t ever get in their athletic career or in their training.”