Cirque du Soleil (R) The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All

Chapter One

Through the White Doors

If You Have No Idea What You’re Looking For . . .

When people ask where my remarkable journey began, I tell them it was somewhere between the first and seventh doors. At least, that’s where I found myself after I left behind the cacophony of the casino, with its blinking lights, rolling dice, and excite­ment around every corner. As fascinated as I was with the land of chance, I needed to give my senses a brief respite from the spinning wheels of fortune.

I was searching for something, though for what, I didn’t know. Something extraordinary. Something beyond the mundane world of marketing and money that had brought me to Las Vegas in the first place. Something beyond the grind that had become my life. Of course, if you have no idea what you’re looking for, it’s pretty hard to find it.

I was about to escape to my hotel room for a moment of tranquillity, when I saw two men dressed in black work outfits walking away from the slot machines toward a qui­eter part of the casino. It was in an almost dreamlike state that I followed them. They disappeared through a plain white door–perhaps the only portal in the casino that didn’t seem to announce what was on the other side. Intrigued, I pushed on it, and it opened, leading me into a completely silent, perfectly white corridor, lit so well it almost glowed with energy. A few feet in front of me was another door, just as pristine, every bit as beckoning. I opened it, though more tentatively than the first, for while I could surely pass off wandering through one wrong door as a mistake, opening the second seemed a more serious offense.

Behind the second white door was a third. Who were those men and where were they going? And what would I do when I found them? What kind of Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole adventure was I getting myself into? As I passed through the next door, I noticed a security camera above and a security desk to my left, and I felt my shoulders tense up. What were they trying to protect here? But there was not a soul in sight, so I kept going. By the time I reached the sixth door, I had accepted that I had no idea where the corridor was leading me–but I had the unmistakable sense that, as each door closed behind me, I was one step closer to what I was searching for.

As I pushed through the seventh door, I realized I had reached the end of the corridor and the beginning of my journey. The final door opened into a vast theatre. Rows of plush blue seats arced to my left. The ceiling soared a hun­dred feet above me, and I resisted the urge to call out and hear the sound of my voice echoing, if only to prove to myself that I wasn’t dreaming.

To my right was the strangest stage I’d ever encoun­tered. I watched as a mysterious monolithic structure, maybe forty by eighty feet, moved left and right, forward and back, and finally stood straight up and down, as if defying gravity. I couldn’t determine its purpose–surely it wasn’t part of the stage? You’d have to be Spiderman to scale such a precipice!

On the other side of the theatre, I could see the men who’d unwittingly led me through the doors. They were tinkering with equipment on the revolving column, which was perched precariously behind a stage floor that opened into a seemingly bottomless abyss. Though they were a good twenty yards away, I could hear their voices; the acoustics of the theatre were that crisp. I could detect several distinct accents among the half-dozen people around the stage–Scottish, Russian, Texan, and French Canadian.

They were so focused on their work that no one seemed to notice I was there. My curiosity was aroused in a way it hadn’t been since college, when every experience was a new adventure and I didn’t have to worry about the consequences of my actions the way I did now; my mind seemed alive to the possibilities my surroundings presented. I sat down in one of the theatre seats, in the middle of everything, and took it all in.

The enormous theatre was less a stage than a cavernous aviary, framed by huge catwalks constructed of aged wooden planks and copper railing, an intriguing contrast to the ultramodern style of the MGM Grand Hotel. It pos­sessed a timeless quality, as if I’d stepped foot in an edifice that had been built long before Las Vegas existed.

I might have sat there for ten or twenty minutes, just watching and listening.

Eventually, someone noticed me: a friendly-looking woman who seemed to appear out of nowhere–slender, middle-aged, with short, dark red hair and a stylish suede jacket. She made her way along a row of seats toward me. While I was no doubt somewhere I shouldn’t be, she seemed more curious about my presence than upset.

Normally, I would have apologized profusely for trespass­ing, and jumped up to leave. But something held me back.

“Hello, there,” she said when she was only a couple of rows away.

“Hello,” I said with a small nod. I assumed I was going to get kicked out; I didn’t see any point in attempting to fight it. But instead of asking me to leave, the woman offered her hand.

“I’m Diane,” she said.

“And I’m Frank,” I responded. She settled in a couple seats to my right, taking in the scene before us. Had she fallen into this alternative universe the same way I had?

“Pretty breathtaking, isn’t it?” she asked, gesturing out­ward with her hand.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” I said.

“I like to think of it as a theatre of unfulfilled dreams and great expectations.”

“I didn’t know quite how to respond to that. “It’s so quiet, despite its size.”

“Hmm,” she agreed. “It can be such a soothing, tranquil place during the day. But there’s a latent electricity in the air, too, don’t you think? Before the shows begin, I often feel a kinetic energy in the theatre, as if it were on the verge of exploding.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than a fireball exploded above the pit in the middle of the stage; the smoke hovered for a few seconds before dissipating into the air.

“Just testing, Diane!” one of the men in black called out.

“What is this?” I asked. By this time I realized she belonged here, and I had certainly given myself away as an interloper. But my social graces had deserted me, leaving behind simply a sincere desire to learn more.

She laughed. “How did you get in here?”

I smiled, as I traced my steps back in my mind. This was no dream, I realized. I was undeniably, completely awake. “I was looking to escape a convention seminar,” I explained, “and started wandering through the casino. I saw those guys,” I pointed toward the riggers, “and I thought they seemed to know more about where they were going than I did, so I followed them.”

“Well, I admire your sense of adventure,” Diane said. “What kind of work do you do that brings you to Las Vegas?”

“I’m a sports agent,” I said, somewhat apologetically.

“You don’t sound overly thrilled about that.”

“At first I loved it. Working with the athletes–the tal­ent, as we call them–was exciting. I was jetting off to cities all over the country, searching for the next NBA all-star, NFL quarterback, baseball Hall of Famer.” I paused, then confessed, “But somewhere along the line, my work started feeling less like a calling and more like a plain old job.”

I was surprised at my candor. Why was I so willing to reveal my feelings to a stranger? I wondered. It was so unlike me–a man who made his living playing his cards close to his chest.

Diane nodded sympathetically. “Not many people seem excited by their jobs, do they?”

“No, I suppose not,” I said. Off the top of my head, I really couldn’t think of anyone I knew who was passionate about their work.

“What was your seminar about?”

“‘Marketing Creatively,’” I said, reciting the title. “But it really wasn’t about creativity. It was just about finding even more ways to make money through endorsements.” When had I become so cynical about my job? “So, what is the show you’re rehearsing? This theatre looks like a set for an Indiana Jones movie.”

“You’re serious?” Diane asked. “You really don’t know what the show is?”

I shook my head. Instead of appearing insulted, how­ever, Diane smiled, amused. I’m sure she was wondering who this stranger was who managed to slip through security and plop down in the middle of their theatre in the middle of the day. She shifted her shoulders toward me before speaking. “It’s a show called KÀ. Have you heard of Cirque du Soleil?”

“Of course!” I said, feeling the fuzzy grasp of my sur­roundings finally coming into focus. “I’ve seen your bill­boards all over Las Vegas. But I’ll be honest: I’m not really sure what you do.”

“Well,” Diane said, warming to the challenge of educat­ing me, fishing for an introductory speech she probably hadn’t had to give in years, “we’re a creative entertainment company; we develop shows built around the dreams, tal­ents, and passions of our artists and creators. Cirque was formed in Quebec in 1984, and we now have eleven shows around the world, four right here in Las Vegas.”

“Well, if this theatre is any indication of what you do on stage, I can only imagine wha...