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Up through the air with the Greatest Trapeze

Cirque du Soleil comes to East Lansing for weekend of shows

May 23, 2012
An acrobat performs in Cirque Du Soleil's "Quidam" Wednesday evening at Breslin Center. The Show will be at MSU until May 27th. Samantha Radecki/The State News
An acrobat performs in Cirque Du Soleil's "Quidam" Wednesday evening at Breslin Center. The Show will be at MSU until May 27th. Samantha Radecki/The State News —
Photo by Samantha Radecki | and Samantha Radecki The State News

East Lansing resident Nathan Vaneps and his wife Esther Vaneps sat in their front-row seats in excitement as they eagerly awaited the start of the breathtaking show they were about to witness.

The pair, who never had seen a live Cirque du Soleil performance before — but have watched one on TV — said they could not wait to see the extraordinary, circuslike stunts up close and personal.

“We’re very excited,” Nathan Vaneps said. “It’s a very unique way of showing a circus without having the animals. We’d rather see humans doing the unique stuff.”

More than 50 performers representing 18 different countries took the stage on Wednesday as Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam” opened at Breslin Center.

The show, which will run from May 23-27, follows the story of a young girl named Zoé, who steps into the imaginary world of Quidam in order to escape from her mundane life.

Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam” combines aerial stunts, balancing acts, juggling and displays of extreme human strength and flexibility. Jessica Leboeuf, a publicist for the show, said “Quidam” also is layered with numerous stories and hidden messages, which are up to the viewer to interpret however they want.

“We don’t force-feed our audience the story,” she said. “We give you some loose story lines and characters, and you can either just sit here and enjoy the amazing aerials and acrobatics that happen before you or you can go a little bit deeper and think about the messages.”

Wednesday was the third time Cirque du Soleil has visited the area, but it was the first presentation of “Quidam.” Although many East Lansing residents might already have seen a Cirque du Soleil show on one of its earlier visits, Leboeuf guarantees “Quidam” will be a brand new production.

“Every time we come, we’re bringing a completely different show,” she said. “It’s like bringing you to a different universe. Every show brings a different world — a different unique experience.”

Crafting a cast
Whenever Anna Ostapenko takes the stage to perform her part in “Quidam,” she takes charge, just as the character she portrays does with her own life.

Ostapenko, a Ukrainian hand balancer, performs a piece in which she does handstands on numerous poles with wooden blocks on top of them.

When performing, Ostapenko said she tries to tell her audience a story about a strong woman who is in control of her life.

“The girl who is doing this number, she’s kind of in charge of the stage; of the situation,” she said.
But Ostapenko said she likes to leave her performance up to interpretation as many of the show’s performers do.

“It doesn’t matter if they understand exactly my idea of the story,” she said. “They can see their own story as long as they see something.”

Ostapenko joined Cirque du Soleil’s crew about three years ago, and she has been performing in “Quidam” for more than a year.

In order to prepare herself to be a part of the show, Ostapenko said she trained for about three-and-a-half months with a very skilled coach. Although she already was skilled in performing handstands, Ostapenko said she still had much to learn in order to perfect her performance.
“I’ve been trying to do hand balancing and make myself better at it,” she said. “They were really harsh trainings.”

But all the hard work is worthwhile, Ostapenko said, and it’s the audience members’ enjoyment of her work that keeps her motivated.

“I’m kind of addicted to it now, and I would miss it very much if I (had to stop),” she said. “You feed off their energy, (and) off their applause.”

An awe-struck audience
For Lisa Twenter, Wednesday night’s show wasn’t just one she could sit back and watch.

The Lansing resident also was able to be a part of the performance when a cast member brought her on stage to participate in an act with him in which the pair went on a date.

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“It was very exhilarating,” she said. “There was a lot of adrenaline because I’ve never done that before.”

Although Twenter admitted she was nervous at first, she said the chance to get up on stage added to her overall Cirque du Soleil experience.

“Now I can kind of say I was a part of it, which is really cool,” she said.

Premedical junior Kristin Lawson and biomedical laboratory science senior Colleen Blake have been waiting to see Cirque du Soleil since middle school.

“It came to (Michigan) State, so we got tickets as soon as we could,” Blake said.

Between the dancing numbers and the aerial stunts, both girls said the show kept them entertained and on the edge of their seats.

“We’re creative people so we like to see that kind of stuff,” Lawson said. “We like dance, and we like creativity, so this really stuck out to us.”

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