Enter a realm fantastic

Cirque de Soleil has been a long time coming to our stages, but it has finally happened. It is the Canadian company’s maiden tour to our continent. Fifty artists – including South African Daniel Buckland – will perform Saltimbanco, Cirque’s longest-running touring show, at GrandWest’s Grand Arena from Wednesday until April 3. The production includes a five-piece band and two singers.

To keep their shows fresh, Cirque continually scouts for new talent and innovative acts that take traditional circus high wizardry to new heights. Buckland and his father, mime and physical theatre legend Andrew Buckland, were nabbed on one of these scouting missions.

Father and son worked together in Las Vegas on Cirque’s show Love – a tribute to the Beatles.

Daniel has toured extensively with Cirque and for the South African tour, he will take one of the major roles as the Dreamer – a character who is pivotal to the piece. The show opens as the Dreamer dreams up a surreal landscape in which he is a participant.

The ringmaster of the show is key to how the celebration unfurls. He is a bit of a buffoon; mocked by the characters behind his back. This is in contrast to the conventional ringmaster who struts around and holds power over everyone, explains Canadian James Clowney (his real name) who has played the role of the ringmaster for 12 years. He reflects on the theme of Saltimbanco, explaining that it is a landscape where larger-than-life characters may dream.

“It is big and grand as we want. It is a celebration of our humanity.”

Despite his long tenure and the gruelling touring schedule (six weeks on with a two-week break), he loves what he is doing. It gives him the opportunity to travel and see the world and he is ecstatic that Cirque is finally going to make it to Africa.

Clowney praises Buckland for his acting, physical skills and timing. They have worked together in five cities and are very much in synch – or out of synch when called for. “We do a parody of a hand-balancing act. It all goes a bit wrong.” The mirth lies in the comedy of errors.

Why has it taken so long to get to our neck of the woods? Up to three years ago, Cirque carted its big top around and it wasn’t financially viable to pitch tents in places like South Africa, where the show would be on for relatively short seasons.

To expand their markets, they adapted certain aspects of shows like Saltimbanco for arena venues and have been jetting to new territories ever since.

Clowney says they now have to cart along “only” 15 trucks. With a big top, they have to schlep 50-60 trucks. For the arena shows, in addition to the company of 50 artists, they travel with about 50 production crew.

l Tickets at Computicket on 083 915 8000.