UKC

The arty Canadian circus company has filed for bankruptcy and made 3500 redundancies.  I hope they'll survive, I don't think there's anything else quite like them anywhere in the world.  Can't imagine how quickly the sort of skills and fitness their performers bring to work every day must fade while they're not able to train & practice full time (if at all).

I just discovered they've been releasing a lot of videos online while their live shows are all shut down, so you can watch big chunks of their previous shows for free.  (They're not quite releasing entire shows, but sort of smooshing edited highlights of various different ones together into hour-long films.)

https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/cirqueconnect

They started the UK run of their first ice show in Sheffield back in March (and that's as far as they got, Aberdeen was due to be next but they never got there).  Ice shows are usually pretty cheesy so I wasn't expecting much - wrongly as it turned out, it was stunning.  The bit that most impressed me doesn't seem to have made the cut, but check this out:
youtube.com/watch?v=Sf-N_OroVbs&t=790
(The bit I'm on about specifically starts at 13m10s, in case the time index thingy doesn't work.)

Have been watching their recent YouTube stuff, it's brilliant. The giant double hamster wheel thing is just insane to watch!

I hadn't seen that one.  Holy crap, that's incredible!
youtube.com/watch?v=VL0TG_nCqzE&t=1484

I went to one of their live shows once - phenomenonal! Having learnt a bit of trapeze and silks for a while, I had a huge appreciation of how hard it all is and they make it look so simple and elegant. Brilliant performers!

Really sad to hear that. I guess we are going to see a lot of redundancies and fallout in the arts. 

Seen them twice live and they were brilliant. 

I'd pay to watch live streamed performance but it probably doesn't pay enough when there is so much free stuff available. Shame

Jesus! Incredible!

Holy shit!!!! 😨

I don't know what they get paid but whatever their FX, stage and lighting designer earn it's not enough!

I've been to 2 of their live shows in London and they are incredible.

Can't remember the first, which was in a big top somewhere, the second was Quidam, in the RAH.

Not virtue signalling here at all, really (hopefully) quite the opposite ...I have paid several times to engage in live streamed music performances since “lockdown”, always sceptical about how “involved” I might feel, and always happily surprised to have felt that connection. If you don’t think it pays “enough” then you usually have the option of paying more than their ticket price or whatever 

I've seen them 3 times live and a few times on TV, always well worth the ticket price. Terrible news.

I do wonder about the business side of big entertainment and what government is doing that such an international flagship is as vulnerable as this. If I were running a country I would buy them as a state investment.. much better odds of future profit than RBS.

The idea that the arts will die is ridiculous. The issue is big viable businesses in the arts need more help. Even the prospect of no more Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals doesn't give me a silver lining, as others really enjoy them and it makes a big contribution to the UK economy.

In reply to elliott92:

I think that would be very difficult to achieve though, as all the things that make their touring shows so classy are also rather expensive.  The touring company usually consists of over a hundred people, roughly 50/50 performers to crew/wardrobe/catering/etc.. 

The most obvious ways I can see that they might cut costs would be to lose most of the musicians and singers and use more pre-recorded stuff, have more generic set and costume designs allowing them to re-use more from one production to the next, find ways to push the merch a bit more aggressively..  You get the picture.  Before you know it, C-d-S 'Crystal' has turned into Disney on Ice!  (Which is still not a cheap ticket, btw, but I think they have healthier margins.)

I'm being slightly facetious there, but funnily enough the Disney ice shows (and now the equally cheesy "Marvel Universe" shows) share a bit of a common culture with C-d-S.  They're not produced by Disney themselves but by a company called Feld Entertainment Inc. who have their roots in traditional American circus.  From the point of view of the staff in the kind of venues they play, who are much more used to live music, some of their attitudes and the way they do certain things seems slightly weird.  They use a lot of the same technology and techniques, but the culture is a bit different.