Cirque du Soleil dancer Karl Baumann loves creating new characters.He created the dancing lizard character in Cirque du Soleil's "Mystère." Now the Austrian plays a joyful, fairylike dancer in "Quidam."
"I always have trouble following other people's choreography, so it's perfect for me to create it myself," he says.
There are more than 500 artists who perform in Cirque's eight shows each year. But there are five traveling shows (under the Big Top). Performers typically spend six weeks in each new city. It can be difficult and lonely, as well as physically demanding. Baumann says it helps to have his wife and daughter traveling with him while performing a grueling 10 shows a week.
But a majority of the performers travel solo. Marie-Laure Mesnage, a French acrobat who performs feats of strength in the amazing "Vis Versa Statue," says she got the traveling bug early on when she and her siblings traveled extensively with their parents. Ms. Mesnage says she returns to Orlando, where she has family, during breaks. Performers are given one week off between cities (totally about seven weeks, plus two weeks of vacation each year).
Baumann says that the traveling performers are a tight-knit group.
"There is a star formation around the artistic tent where we warm up, or we meet in the kitchen, so it's much more of a community," he says. "It's like a small town where everybody knows each other."
The annual income varies for each performer, but the acrobats, contortionists, and dancers earn above-average circus pay and there are other perks to life on the road.
Under the Big Top, a nutritionist, top chefs, and physiotherapists are available to performers.
"Sometimes, you can get a massage before you go on stage," says Baumann, who studied engineering in Austria at his father's request before moving on to ballet. "It's really necessary to be treated that way, to get the good work done."
