Cirque city

If you amuse yourself by tracing the Latin roots of words, you’ll recognize how apt the word “circus” is to describe that form of entertainment. “Circus” means “circle” -- and describes the ring of townsfolk that would inevitably gather around any street performer who chose to juggle, swallow fire or leap through space without a net.

The French word for circus is “cirque” -- but the word seems to have taken on a meaning all its own since Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil entered the scene in 1984. Cirque du Soleil has evolved from a traveling show created by French Canadian street performers into a global entertainment conglomerate. At first, the Cirque du Soleil style was called “cirque nouveau,” or “new circus” -- but now all it takes is the word “cirque” to imply the type of glossy, animal-free gymnastic spectacle Cirque du Soleil presents.

Because Montreal is home to Cirque du Soleil as well as the prestigious National Circus School, founded in 1981, it’s a place where the circus is always in town, what one observer envisions as “a sort of Silicon Valley of the circus arts.”

At 19, Cirque du Soleil’s “cirque nouveau” style is old enough to vote, and the company has the enviable challenge of being a fat cat trying to maintain the quirky creativity that comes from staying lean and hungry. The same challenge faces Montreal’s defiantly individualistic population of circus folk as they move into an even newer wave of circus activity called “cirque contemporain,” or contemporary circus.

Advocates of cirque contemporain call it a more intimate, more human form of circus than Cirque. Some of the newer, smaller companies are headed by veterans of Cirque du Soleil or the National Circus School, hoping to preserve the “street” quality that may be lost in the Cirque “machine.”

A cosmopolitan city of 1.8 million, Montreal doesn’t have the masses of tourists needed to support a permanent Cirque show, but that should not interfere with its goal of becoming identified as a producer of circus arts the way Los Angeles is identified with the movies, says Helen Fotopolous, the city’s chief of culture.

Fotopolous says that this international city is already an arts center with its annual jazz festival and the Just for Laughs comedy festival and is willing to invest government dollars to see to it that the city becomes a circus center as well. “Not all our creative spirits can be commercial,” she says. “We want to be known as a city of culture and knowledge, and because we invest so much in all of these things, we want more bang for our buck.”

Tohu-bohu

Another word for your circus vocabulary: Tohu-bohu, a French expression that comes from Hebrew, means something akin to the cosmic chaos that must have ensued before the Big Bang.

And the first part of the word, TOHU, has been borrowed as the name of a massive new public-private development that should have a Big Bang effect on a depressed neighborhood of Montreal that project leaders plan to turn into a “circus city.”

The Saint-Michel area, a multicultural stewpot situated between a highway and the second-largest urban landfill in North America, is already home to Cirque du Soleil’s expansive international headquarters, a magic shop of more than 100,000 square feet including a training room whose ceiling rises more than 75 feet and another training area containing a pit filled with 25,000 plastic foam cubes in lieu of a safety net.

The company’s latest touring show, “Varekai,” is playing at Staples Center, and its latest permanent show, the R-rated “Zumanity,” opened Saturday in Las Vegas, joining “Mystere” and the water show “O.” And a new untitled show -- with a budget even higher than the $100 million spent on “O” -- is being developed for the MGM Grand.

The TOHU project -- a joint venture of Montreal’s National Circus School, Cirque du Soleil and En Piste, a national network of circus professionals founded by the National Circus School -- puts forth a grand mission statement: “To establish in one location one of the largest concentrations of circus activities in the world.”

With substantial government support from both the city and the province of Quebec, the new “Circus City” development will spend about $45 million -- in addition to the money already invested in building Cirque du Soleil’s $60-million headquarters -- to add a new home for the National Circus School, artists’ residences, a multidisciplinary performance hall called Le Chapiteau des Arts and a public park for outdoor performances and strolling artists.

Paulo Teixiera, a co-owner of the Portuguese grill Cantinho in Saint-Michel, says a new “circus city” can only improve business in the area -- even if the clientele is “a bunch of clowns.”

Tightrope 101

Marc LALONDE, 43, general manager of the National Circus School, rolls his eyes when he notes that he was recently interviewed by an Australian PhD candidate writing her doctoral thesis on why Montreal is becoming a North American hub for circus activity. “A lot of people are now studying why it started here,” he says.

It is nothing more than a coincidence that Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte and his colleagues happened to live and work in the Montreal area. But Lalonde believes that in the late 1970s and early 1980s Montreal represented unusually fertile ground for circus performers, and for street comedian Guy Caron and gymnast Pierre Leclerc, to found the National Circus School (Caron is now the creative director for Cirque du Soleil’s top-secret show for the MGM Grand).

“It had a resonance at the time; in the late ‘70s, the city was attracting actors at the time who suddenly wanted to explore movement, acrobatics and physical theater,” Lalonde observes in a conversation at the school’s high-ceilinged headquarters in a former train station in picturesque Old Montreal. The school, which offers a three-year diploma program in circus arts, will move to the TOHU campus in November.

Paul Vachon, director of Cirque du Soleil’s international youth program, Cirque du Monde, also came of age as a street performer during that heady era.

“We woke up,” recalls Vachon, a perpetually surprised-looking 52-year-old whose silver hair is moussed into a curlicue at his forehead like the tip of a Dairy Queen cone. “In 1974, there was nothing but clowns on the street, flutists, guys on unicycles. Between 1974 and 1984, there was a big boom.”

The circus school’s Lalonde also points out that, unlike the United States -- and most of the rest of Canada -- the province of Quebec is quicker to accept circus performance as art rather than a purely commercial entertainment venture. This is not true across the board: San Francisco’s nonprofit Circus Center, founded in 1984 as a project of that city’s Pickle Family Circus, has routinely received government arts dollars. But in general, Lalonde says, the word “circus” in the United States means Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, not funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Joseph Pinzon, 23, holds a bachelor’s in psychology from UCLA. The document was important to both the Los Angeles native and his parents. “I come from a very conservative background, my father’s a doctor, and I come from an Asian background as well, very traditional,” says Pinzon, whose parents emigrated from the Philippines.

“They didn’t quite understand it at first, but I assured them that I know that I’m doing it the right way. And they’re like, ‘We trust you, we believe in you.’ ”

Pinzon was vaguely aware of the nearby San Francisco Circus Center, but the Montreal school was the one he saw advertised on the back of the program when he worked as an usher for Cirque du Soleil when the company set up its Grand Chapiteau (Big Top) at Santa Monica Pier.

“I love being here because Montreal is a very respected city in terms of its knowledge of the circus arts,” Pinzon says on the first day of the new school year. “I hope that in the States they will start to recognize it as an art form. That’s the misconception that many people have, a lot of my friends are like: ‘Oh, you’re going to go to clown college?’ This isn’t clown college. We work hard.”

Pinzon had been involved in extracurricular gymnastics at UCLA but had no circus experience when he entered the circus school. Its three-year advanced program, in which Pinzon is beginning his second year, accepts only about 20 new students each year through rigorous auditions, held annually in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

At the auditions, hopefuls are expected to display that they have developed their physical capacities through preparatory training in dance, circus arts, gymnastics or other related arts. Students not only have the opportunity to perfect such circus acts as trapeze, teeterboard, hand balancing and tightrope but are required to study literature, writing, circus history, acting and dance.

The program results in a Diploma of Collegial Studies for Canadian students, whose education is subsidized by the government. For an American student like Pinzon, annual tuition is about $3,000.

His own specialties are contortion and “tissue” -- aerial acrobatics employing billowing strips of fabric -- but in today’s circus world, having an “act” is not enough. Pinzon knows that the circus world is still one that does not require a degree -- in Russia, China and some parts of Europe, multigenerational circus families still exist, handing down their skills. But Pinzon believes the coursework will prepare him for contemporary circus companies that demand well-rounded performers to cast in their increasingly theatrical productions.

“When I first came to the school, I wanted to work for Cirque du Soleil because they are the most widely recognized,” Pinzon says. “But then I realized they’re not the only one. I don’t even know what I want yet. But with all of these different options, I feel better.”

Seven Fingers

You can’t help but check his muscular hands for extra digits as Samuel Tetreault, artistic director of the 1 1/2-year-old circus company Les 7 Doigts de la Main (The Seven Fingers of the Hand), contorts his body, while balancing on those hands -- on dangerously small circles of wood atop “canes,” or poles, set up in one corner of his home-studio loft.

Tetreault, 28, represents a sort of third generation of circus performers, descended from Cirque du Soleil. After studying at the National Circus School, Tetreault spent four years performing in Cirque’s touring show “Alegria,” then moved on to the second generation spawned by Cirque by joining Cirque Eloize, founded in 1993 by Cirque du Soleil veteran Jeannot Painchaud.

Cirque Eloize, which performs onstage rather than in a tent, is a survivor in Montreal’s high-turnover circus world. Financial difficulties caused another 4-year-old touring company based in the city, Cirque Eos, to fold last year -- observers say because it tried to grow too fast and too much resembled Cirque du Soleil.

7 Doigts, which will make its U.S. debut in San Francisco in December, is a drama that unfolds in a loft; audience members enter through a refrigerator door to catch the l seven company members by surprise. “We are all in our underwear. . We offer them coffee. It’s a little bit destabilizing,” Tetreault says.

“With Cirque, you see something really magical, it’s not human, you see creatures with hair coming out of their ears and makeup and purple wigs, and you don’t have the feeling you are meeting human beings,” Tetreault adds. “We are regular human beings, with fears and desires.”

Tetreault acknowledges that Montreal’s burgeoning “cirque contemporain” scene is tiny compared to what’s happening in France, Australia, Sweden and other areas of the world where the circus tradition goes back hundreds of years. Still, he believes that Montreal has something unique to add to the circus world. “European contemporary circus is much further ahead than we are, but they are going their own way,” he says. “They do some dark shows, some heavy shows, and I think that’s great. But to me, the essence of the circus should be something that makes you feel good by the end but that you have seen something amazing.”

A circle in the street

For much of the year, Montreal lies shrouded in snow; summer is sweeter here because it is short. While the weather is good, you’ll find street performer Steven Moore outside seven days a week, marking out his performance space with tape on the pavement in the middle of touristy Place Jacques-Cartier in Old Montreal.

During the day, Moore, 42, a family man with two kids, drives a garbage truck and works as a janitor. Around dinner time, he comes to Place Jacques-Cartier, rides his unicycle, juggles pins, eats fire and keeps up an easy, jokey bilingual patter with an appreciative crowd that all too often forgets how much it has enjoyed the show when it comes time to pass the hat.

In winter 1982, Moore and a performing partner began studying at the National Circus School. They quit in less than a year. For Moore, the street is where the circus is.

“It’s really hard, all the coaching and the training from A to Zed; if you don’t listen, you’re gone,” Moore says of the circus school. “Most of us in the streets, we are going to do what we want and go as far as we want.”

And then there’s the talking with people. “That’s the fun part that doesn’t happen with Cirque,” he adds. “Street performers, we are really shy persons. Here, if I don’t get that crowd, I don’t get no money. In the circus, they perform with music, and you only have two minutes. It’s like competition with no medals, really hard work.”

Moore has performed all over the world, including Venice Beach, where he remembers watching dumbstruck as a performer on the boardwalk juggled chain saws and bowling balls. “I just got pins and fire, you know?” he says with a laugh.

In August, the tourist season is winding down, but Moore will be back in the streets again next summer. It’s where circus started and where Moore believes it must return. “It’s going to blow up, it’s going to get to the point where there’s nothing to do but the same bloody material,” he observes.

“They’ve shown you the pool, they’ve shown you the gymnastics, they’ve shown you the fire, the acrobatics, people hanging from the ceiling with big scarves. It’s going to get to the point where they can’t show you anything else because they have no more things to show you,” Moore says. “Here, it’s all improvised.”

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‘Varekai’

Where: Staples Center, Parking Lot 2

When: Tuesdays to Thursdays, 8 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1 and 5 p.m.

Ends: Nov. 16

Price: $42-$80; parking $20

Contact: (800) 678-5440