Annie-Kim Déry floats above Russell Braun in Love From Afar, The Canadian Opera Company's new production starting Feb. 2.
Suspended from the ceiling by thin wires attached to a harness around
his torso, baritone Russell Braun's first thought wasn't “Yikes, get me
out of here.”
No, the opera singer says he looked at the acrobats twirling around him and thought, “We look like beautifully arranged angels.”
Braun is the only non-acrobat to fly in the Canadian Opera Company's production of
Love From Afar,
opening Thursday at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
Naturally he calls the experience “uplifting . . . I'm a kid at heart.
Most kids fantasize about being an acrobat, of being weightless.”
Braun's role involves being belted into a swing that is lifted, and he also flies with a body harness attached to wires.
The first stunt he tried was with the
swing and Braun admits he was hanging onto the ropes for dear life
until he told himself, “Technically, if I can sit on a swing in the
playground, I can do this.”
He points out he doesn't do any
tricks, just “sings and move my arms a little. I don't do a 360.” In
fact, his character is dead for two of the flights; not much movement
required.
The “real” flying is done by six
acrobats, four of them trained at Montreal's National Circus School,
whose specialties include hoops, silks, sideways walk, stilt walk and
tumbling.
The opera by composer Kaija Saariaho,
which was first performed in 2000, is the story of a love affair
between two people who never meet but communicate through messages
carried back and forth by a pilgrim.
Each of the three main characters is
shadowed by two acrobats who perform as the story unfolds. Braun's two
shadows are dancers Ted Sikstrom and Antoine Marc, who have both
appeared in previous productions of
Love From Afar.
Sikstrom, 37, is a gymnast and
classically trained ballet dancer who embarked on a new career half a
dozen years ago when he was asked at an audition if he could do any
“tricks.” He showed off his back flips and somersaults and has been an
acrobat ever since.
Performing in an opera has proven to be a wonderful challenge, he says.
“I like the mix of acting and
physicality we have to do in the show. Everyone can do technique. It is
much more interesting when you have to merge it with the story and find a
way to express what opera singers are singing: their emotions, dreams,
intentions, feelings.”
Marc, 28, is a hip-hop dancer from
Martinique who trained in France; he does some harness flight and
something called the sideways walk. He learned most of his acrobatic
skills while studying capoeira, the Brazilian martial art with a
dancelike aspect, but he says “being an acrobat enriched my horizon. I
always think of using my dancing skills in my acrobatics and vice
versa.”
There's never any complacency when
acrobats perform, he says, adding, “Double back flip is a funny one
because it doesn't matter how many times you do it, you're always a
little bit scared of not landing.”
Soprano Krisztina Szabo, who plays
the pilgrim, is shadowed by Sandrine Merette and Marieve Hemond. Merette
is an expert in bungee and, at only 27, she has been performing circus
stunts for 18 years, but it still feels like “a change from everyday
living. It's a little bit of a thrill, there's adrenalin.”
People don't believe Annie-Kim Déry, 28, when she says she is a circus performer.
“They say, ‘No, really. What do you do?' When I tell them it's true it gets . . . awkward.”
It's certainly a cool job, says
Evelyne Allard, 27, who specializes in a hoop routine: “It's a feeling
of freedom, liberty, defying gravity, all those exciting feelings.”
Allard and Déry are the shadows of the beautiful Clémence, played by Erin Wall. All of the women acrobats trained in Montreal.
Braun says he has been staggered by
the aerial skills (and relative lack of constraints) of the
acrobats.“I'm in awe. The effects are so beautiful,” he said of a stunt
with silks that unfolds below as he's flying.
It's the job of Flying by Foy, a U.S. company in the flying business since Mary Martin played
Peter Pan on Broadway in 1954, to lift this opera into the air.
Flying
director Tim Mackay, who created the flying scenes in the Toronto production of
Billy Elliot,
has been in Toronto overseeing the winches, wires, tracks and pulleys
used to guide the seven flyers during the opera. There are numerous crew
members involved with the equipment, and hooking the acrobats into
their rigging and working out the “traffic” was one of Mackay's tasks.
“The most important thing is the
safety of people,” he says, adding one rule for the opera singers is
“don't stand under an acrobat.”
Flying is becoming increasingly popular in entertainment, says Mackay, who has worked the trick in theatre, film and TV. (
Mary Poppins,
American Idiot and
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark — famously not always perfectly in the latter case — are recent theatrical productions to use flying.)
So Mackay has seen newbies before,
and he was there when Braun flew for the first time in rehearsal. He was
impressed. “He did great. We started slow and let him feel confident.
He was really professional. It's a pleasure to work with someone like
him.”
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