Case study: Cirque du Soleil

The story
In 1983 Guy Laliberté, a street performer in Europe and his native Canada, won a grant from the Quebec government to put on a different kind of show. Staged as part of the 1984 celebrations to mark the 450th anniversary of the discovery of Canada, Cirque du Soleil, which mixed street entertainers with circus acrobats, and athleticism with fantasy and theatre, was a huge success.

Today, Mr Laliberté is chief executive of an internationally renowned performance arts company, responsible for 22 different shows around the world – some touring, some permanent – backed by a “supporting cast” of 4,000 employees.

Many years in the making, and subject to stringent safety and artistic controls, each show costs millions of dollars to develop and produce.

The challenges.
High production costs and values mean high ticket prices. To justify the cost to the audience, Cirque must do two things: continue to come up with spectacular ideas; and continue to find, recruit and train enough of the right people. Both are tough. The market for Cirque is maturing. An estimated 90m people have seen a performance. How do you leave them wanting more?

Performers tend to have short careers: the attrition rate is about 20 per cent a year, whether through injury or simply deciding it is time to retire. How do you renew the talent pool?

The solution.
Thirty talent scouts are listed on the Cirque website, and many of them are specialists in specific skills, such as singing or gymnastics and acrobatics. Sources of recruits include the Olympic Games, the Mongolian State Circus and world championship athletics competitions.

Auditions, described by Cirque a “treasure hunting”, are demanding and can last up to two days. After initial screening, potential recruits must demonstrate not just technical proficiency but range. After a long audition, dancers must then show their acting, improvisation and singing skills.

Once identified as “Cirque people”, performers’ names are added to the Cirque database to await a suitable role. Then the hard work really starts: they are drilled in their new craft at “boot camps” for up to four months before their first performance.

Nevertheless, the Cirque “immersion programme” aims to bring out the best in an individual. Key to the transformation process are mentors – veterans who guide new artists and get to know them. Cirque describes itself as a “family”, a “band of brothers”.

Reinvention is a constant theme. Having redefined the traditional “big top” circus in the 1980s, Mr Laliberté keeps audiences loyal and attracts new ones by always offering something different. In the 2006 show Love, Cirque du Soleil performs to the music of The Beatles. A collaboration between Cirque, producer George Martin – “the fifth Beatle” – and his son Giles, Love is still running at The Mirage in Las Vegas.

A new production is nearly always under way. Each show looks for a new theme, so the repertoire ranges from aquatics (O) to The Beatles (Love) to martial arts (Ká).

The lessons.
Managers must plan ahead. Hence, scouts are always sourcing new recruits in order to fill anticipated skills gaps.

New techniques are developed constantly. Revealingly, acrobat mentor André Simard, whose innovations include a new safety line for aerial acrobatics, is not called creative director but research and development specialist.

The focus is also on constantly devising new content in the form of new themes and concepts. For instance, for Ká, Mr Laliberté asked Robert Lepage, the playwright, director and actor, to craft a show around martial arts.

The company develops new products (shows) all the time. Because a show takes so long to create – recruiting performers, devising music, costumes and infrastructure – it looks ahead to develop tomorrow’s performers and staging today.
- Financial Times, 16 March 2011