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Friday, January 14, 2022
What Cirque du Soleil's Daniel Lamarre Learned About Creativity From Working With the Beatles
www.newsweek.com: As the audience settles in the darkened theater, acrobats playing Liverpool sailors climb ropes dangling from the ceiling. The lush a cappella harmonies of Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison fill the air.
4 comments:
Monica Tran
said...
The article kind of read as a love letter to Cirque, The Beatles, and the process of managing creativity into a show. It was really sweet and cheesy and I really liked the last line in the end quoting the song, but I'm also a cheeseball soo. It was nice to read about how they all just wanted to make art for art's sake and committing to putting their heart into it, otherwise they wouldn't have made it. I guess it's also because they had the means and the money to have such a huge passion project that would ultimately make them so much money back from the cult following. I looked up the show's production pictures and to find out that it's actually called LOVE, like come on how "on the nose" could they get? But with all the bright colors and the costumes with dope make up and the LOVE BUS, it looked like an amazing show.
There is something profoundly beautiful about artistic collaboration, especially in such a performative nature as Cirque du Soleil. The way that Lamarre discusses the lack of traditional business power dynamics in the formation of the show is inspiring. This casual “no-pitch” attitude was able to facilitate incredible authentic expression. He describes emotions being crucial to the success of the momentum of the project, and that to me is a lesson we should all take into our work no matter what field you are in. It is always inspiring as well as motivating to see a project that encaptures the idealistic intentions behind its production. It is very difficult to convey that sense of love and passion that The Beatles were so fond of, and especially through a solely movement based piece such as Cirque du Soleil. However, because of the beautiful design and teamwork they were able to encapture those feelings in a way that connected to the audience and that is why the production is such a masterpiece.
I really love Cirque du Soleil’s productions; the way they fuse performative and technical elements to create so many unique and magical productions is truly remarkable. I’ve never seen Cirque’s The Beatles LOVE show but just reading through how it came about in this article leaves me with no doubt that it is just as impressive and breathtaking as all its other shows. It was somewhat sentimental and heart warming to find out that this show brought the band together for the first time since John Lennon’s death. And the part where it was explained that it was agreed between both parties that Cirque would be in charge of all the visual components of the show while the Beatles would handle all the audio and musical elements made a lot of sense too; both coming together creatively while still having control over their areas of extreme expertise seemed very fitting and efficient.
I love every show and production from this company. I think it is truly one of the more creative companies out there in terms of providing entertainment in that scale. I love this article because it really shows the emphasis on collaboration and having no boundaries essentially in the creative process, which I think is really valuable as an artist and as a culture moving forward. I have seen a lot of their productions in the past and I have to say that for such a large scale, mass marketed live entertainment feature, they do such a good job of not limiting the creativity of their artists and taking risks. And I really appreciate how these collaborations work, especially when both collaborators are so highly, and specifically skilled. Because I know that when your skill gets to that level it can be hard to sort of make compromises and relay the information that you need to relay, which are all really important to an effective collaboration. But the fact that they were able to make it work so well and have the outcome come out so good consistently, is a work of art in and of itself.
4 comments:
The article kind of read as a love letter to Cirque, The Beatles, and the process of managing creativity into a show. It was really sweet and cheesy and I really liked the last line in the end quoting the song, but I'm also a cheeseball soo. It was nice to read about how they all just wanted to make art for art's sake and committing to putting their heart into it, otherwise they wouldn't have made it. I guess it's also because they had the means and the money to have such a huge passion project that would ultimately make them so much money back from the cult following. I looked up the show's production pictures and to find out that it's actually called LOVE, like come on how "on the nose" could they get? But with all the bright colors and the costumes with dope make up and the LOVE BUS, it looked like an amazing show.
There is something profoundly beautiful about artistic collaboration, especially in such a performative nature as Cirque du Soleil. The way that Lamarre discusses the lack of traditional business power dynamics in the formation of the show is inspiring. This casual “no-pitch” attitude was able to facilitate incredible authentic expression. He describes emotions being crucial to the success of the momentum of the project, and that to me is a lesson we should all take into our work no matter what field you are in. It is always inspiring as well as motivating to see a project that encaptures the idealistic intentions behind its production. It is very difficult to convey that sense of love and passion that The Beatles were so fond of, and especially through a solely movement based piece such as Cirque du Soleil. However, because of the beautiful design and teamwork they were able to encapture those feelings in a way that connected to the audience and that is why the production is such a masterpiece.
I really love Cirque du Soleil’s productions; the way they fuse performative and technical elements to create so many unique and magical productions is truly remarkable. I’ve never seen Cirque’s The Beatles LOVE show but just reading through how it came about in this article leaves me with no doubt that it is just as impressive and breathtaking as all its other shows. It was somewhat sentimental and heart warming to find out that this show brought the band together for the first time since John Lennon’s death. And the part where it was explained that it was agreed between both parties that Cirque would be in charge of all the visual components of the show while the Beatles would handle all the audio and musical elements made a lot of sense too; both coming together creatively while still having control over their areas of extreme expertise seemed very fitting and efficient.
I love every show and production from this company. I think it is truly one of the more creative companies out there in terms of providing entertainment in that scale. I love this article because it really shows the emphasis on collaboration and having no boundaries essentially in the creative process, which I think is really valuable as an artist and as a culture moving forward. I have seen a lot of their productions in the past and I have to say that for such a large scale, mass marketed live entertainment feature, they do such a good job of not limiting the creativity of their artists and taking risks. And I really appreciate how these collaborations work, especially when both collaborators are so highly, and specifically skilled. Because I know that when your skill gets to that level it can be hard to sort of make compromises and relay the information that you need to relay, which are all really important to an effective collaboration. But the fact that they were able to make it work so well and have the outcome come out so good consistently, is a work of art in and of itself.
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