End of 2011

Hello! Well I have two more days left of training in Montreal and then it is holiday time for two weeks! We have our final internal presentation on Friday and then myself and two other boys Antonio and Krito have to race off to the airport to catch our planes! I am ridiculously excited to go to England, I have wanted to see London for years, and it will be super nice to see Richard after missing him for two months. Of course, I wish I could be with my family but unfortunately that couldn't happen this year, but next year I will be able to go back home :) The past five months working with Cirque du Soleil has been everything I have dreamed of and more. I left Australia as a very young and naive18 year old just out of school and still living at home. I had no idea what to expect of my new adventure, I was just excited and ready to tackle anything. I never could have expected any of what I have experienced at Cirque du Soleil though, all of the mental and artistic challenges and of course life lessons you only learn from stepping out and seeing this big world alone. I feel I have had a speedy passage to adulthood here, of course I am still very young and oblivious to a million and one things, but I have learnt a lot and been forced to grow up a lot. Of course living alone I learnt to do practical things like laundry, cooking and grocery shopping but the things that really got me was dealing with my problems such as home sickness alone. It was when I didn't have my Dad to hug when I felt down that I realised I am a grown up here and I have to deal with things like a big girl! And of course, working and going through the creation process for a new show has taught me so much as well. I have experienced so many different art forms I never would have tried before, and every one of them has taught me so much and nurtured my growth as an artist. I feel so honoured to be a part of this creation, I didn't realise before coming to Montreal but not everybody that gets hired for Cirque gets a contract. Many get put into general formation, where they do three months of training and then get contracts or get sent home, discovering this made me appreciate my position even more. Also, very few artists get to be part of a creation of a show from the very beginning, many get placed into acts when the show has already kicked off. Our cast is very lucky to be building this beautiful show together, we own these acts and have built them from the get go. Once our two week holiday is over staging officially begins and 2012 will be kicked off with a very intense schedule until the premier in April. Staging is meant to be a rather tiring process with long hours, endless rehearsals and   late nights however I shall let everyone know how it goes when I have experienced it myself. Until then Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hello hello!

This week confronted our group with tiredness, big sugar cravings and annoying emotions, slowly but surely our 'all girls show' is syncing us to share what all girls get at the same time each month. It is rather inconvenient of course but at the same time amusing as we can share our strife together, rather then alone at seperate times each month. I am not sure why I am sharing this but I think to me it was a sign of how close everyone is getting, we are becoming a tight knit family and it makes me very happy, we really need this as homesickness really takes its toll. This weekend our 'big family' got together to celebrate American Thanksgiving. Stacy organised this a few weeks back as we were all feeling very homesick, so she thought celebrating something together would make us feel better... it really did. What an amusing night it was... Renee set her pita bread on fire, thus setting Stacy's oven on fire! Luckily no one was hurt and Stacy's kitchen wasn't effected thanks to Columbia who fire extinguished the fire out! Unfortunately Summer's sweet potatoe dish and my apple pie were fire extinguished in the process, so there were some hefty sacrifices... It was very funny though, possibly the highlight of the night! A MASSIVE highlight this week for me was my first time seeing snow! It was amazing, I was skyping Richard at the time, and he told me to look out the window, and when I did I was greeted with Montreal's first snowfall of the year! I was so excited! It has melted away now but hopefully next week more snow will come.

Training this week was pretty good, however our usually productive sessions were somewhat interrupted by the need for a random presentation on Friday. We were presenting to the director of the show but we really didn't have anything solid put together so it was a bit of a kerfuffle. We began our strength and cardio programme this week which we have to do in our own time now. We also began specific character work in acting. This was really really helpful for our act, as we were able to put the images in our heads into practice without having to worry about acrobatic skills at the same time.

Creation is really beginning

It is the beginning of November at it really feels like the creation of this amazing show has started. The studio is bursting with talented people who are training hard and trying to perfect their incredible acts. Everyone is very friendly and the diversity of the cast is amazing, our newest member who arrived yesterday is Veera from Finland. There are going to be a lot of flags outside our big top spanning from Japan to France and of course Australia. I am very happy that there are 5 Australians in our show! The second formal presentation to Guy, the owner of Cirque was on Friday and it was really touching and inspiring to watch. The proposed music for the show is beautiful. While watching the performances I felt very proud to be apart of such an amazing production. Our act did not present as everyone is happy with our progress and did not feel the need but we were a little disappointed as a lot of the girls in the act like me really enjoy performing. The last few weeks were rather intense as we worked hard with the choreographer to piece our act together. Many would agree she appears to live on a different planet from the rest of the human population, but it seems this aloofness only nurtures her talent for being a very good choreographer. Her ideas come out of nowhere, and are often very random. However, she is great at her job, she knows what she is doing and man she challenges me and everyone else, which is a very good thing. Like so many of the other teachers she pushes me out of my comfort zone and urges me to discover new things about myself which I am then able to put on show and bring to our act. I really feel like I am growing as a person by learning, making many, many mistakes and discovering so many new things about performing and being an artist. The introduction of make up and costume sessions into our schedule also brings the 'creation' vibe. It is really exciting to see all of the costume designers, hat makers and make up artists at work. At times it is a little intimidating when standing in the costume with 5 people analysing your appearance closely and discussing it in French, but nevertheless I quite like the process, doing all of this is something I have always dreamed of. Lately I have been having many 'wow I am really here moments' when I doing things like getting my make-up done or seeing the show come together on our stage.

Fall...

Fall

The weather is steadily getting colder here, and snow is deemed a possibility next saturday! It is the first time I have experienced fall and I think it is beautiful. The track I have been running on has become one of my favourite places, the trees and the sunset together show off some very beautiful colours. I am enjoying the crisp weather, I just don't like it when it rains allll day. Richard left on Thursday so this has been the first weekend without him for a while. myself, and the rest of the girls have been rather lazy for the past couple of weekends as training is really catching up on us. We are getting very tired but thankfully next week is somewhat lighter. The acts for our show are looking fantastic, and the new music for our act is amazing, exactly what we had hoped for and more. The artistic classes have remained the same, but I am still loving them, especially acting where I am finding it easier and easier to open up and have fun whilst learning so much about myself. I have been a good girl and continued my running which I am becoming more and more fond of as it gets slightly easier. This week I fac the challenge of having to cook for myself... while Rich was here I was very spoilt with amazing meals each night but now I have ot fend for myself. This is good though because I need to learn to cook and shop for each week. I find grocery shopping for dinners especially challenging but I will work it out! Christmas break has been a widely talked about thing within our cast these past few weeks. Everyone is really looking forward to going home and seeing there families. I found this hard to cope with as I am unable to visit home until next year, but going to England will still be great and I am very excited about it. Sensing our growing home sickness our coach Stacey has been planning a big thanksgiving feast for us in a couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to this. I am missing everyone at home so much, and I am also really missing Perth in general, especially as the weather there is warming up.

A sunny day!

Last weekend brought me the coldest weather I have ever experienced and it is only fall! On Saturday and Sunday the weather remained around 7 degrees which no Winter in Australia could have prepared me for. Of course, it can drop lower in Perth but the winds here make it feel freezing... and the sad thing is... Winter hasn't even started! However, today the first day of the Thanksgiving long weekend brought sunny weather so Richard and myself went to China town to make the most of it. We had a big dim sum lunch which was really nice. Training this week and last week has been very good, but a long weekend could not have come at a better time, we all needed a little rest. The creation period has officially taken off and dances, acrobatics, costumes and acts are slowly but surely taking shape. The C2012 cast is made up of many beautiful people, who are mostly older and more experienced with circus so I have lots to learn. I didn't update my blog last weekend but I have some cool things I wanted to share. Firstly, Cirque artists and employees were given free tickets to the Michael Jackson Immortal Tour premier. The show was by no means a traditional Cirque du Soleil show, it was more like a concert minus the main star. I found it difficult to appreciate just how talented the dancers were as there was so much else going on, with all the lighting and video footage. However it was a spectacle and it was very entertaining, but traditional Cirque shows are definitely better in my opinion. Some of us also went to the World Press Photo Exhibition in Old Montreal. I really enjoyed this exhibition and I was happy to catch it the day it closed. It was a collection of the 'best of' photo journalism projects from around the world. Many of the photos were shocking but very,very interesting at the same time. Here are some photos...

Apologies

Well I am terribly sorry I haven't updated my blog for a while, I don't have any excuses I just haven't got around to it! This week is an exciting week as 15 performers from our show arrive and on Thursday we have our check point for the owner of Cirque, Guy Liberte. The past couple of weeks have been hard work but very progressive, we are beginning to tie parts of our act together, making it look like an artistic act rather then a gymnastics routine. Our Kung Fu and Haka classes are being utilised within our act as well, and the classes in themselves are really fun! One major change these past couple of weeks has been my diet and exercise regime, which I had to improve to help my endurance in training. Richard and myself have been eating lots of fresh fruit and veg, and I have been a good girl steering away from too much junk food. In order to increase my stamina Richard has been helping me with jogging and exercises on the athletics track. It is ridiculously hard work, nothing like what I am used to, but I feel very healthy, happy and satisfied from pushing myself. But honestly, I couldn't do it without Richards assistance, it is nice having somebody guiding me and motivating me when I want to stop! It has also been nice to get some of the other girls involved in running too, as cardio on the bike or stepper gets rather boring.

This week my schedule changes as we begin to work with the rest of the C2012 cast. I have stopped acting, kung fu and the haka and I start new artistic classes. This week I have three different styles of dance. The first is contact dance which I must admit is not my favourite... rolling around the floor sucks. The second style is Philipino stick dancing and the third is a mystery as of yet. To be honest, I have no idea what the stick dancing is going to be like, but I have a three hour work shop for it on Wednesday so I think I will have a pretty good idea after that! The weather in Montreal is still beautiful, we have been very lucky.