On January 9, 2007, Cirque du Soleil and Miami-based artist ROMERO BRITTO announced they would team to celebrate South Florida and Football in an unprecedented performance in the Superbowl XLI pregame show at Dolphin Stadium. Inspired by Brazilian street theater, 60 professional performers and hundreds of other participants participated in the pregame show which was a high-energy extravaganza of music, dance, gymnastics and circus arts linked by a multi-colored football theme. The Cirque du Soleil performers were a living, breathing canvas for Britto, whose signature pop-art defined the color and vibrancy of South Florida. Grammy Award Winner LOUIE VEGA supplied an original musical score and performed with his Elements of Life Orchestra featuring vocalist Anane while the Cirque du Soleil performance came to life.

Praying for Clement Weather

The production team based the show around the theme of sporting competition, the day’s main focus. While the circular stage is being set up, cartoon-like characters dressed in football uniforms will work the crowd, inviting them to join in a noise-making competition!

Among other things, the show will present a percussion fight of the kind we saw in DELIRIUM, while two teams, fitted out by Romero Britto in the colours of the Colts and the Bears, do battle. Other artists, most from Saltimbanco, will fly from Russian swings to simulate place kicks, soaring over goals of footballers’ heads, like the Lilliputian lady in Corteo. The show is a riot of colour!

All week the production team has been glued to the weather. Mother Nature's mood swings have had a significant impact on rehearsals and the logistics of this major challenge led by Fernand Rainville and the Special Events team. Strong winds can make Russian swings fly, but not in the way we want! Not to mention showers of rain which can make a natural turf football field very slippery for the artists conducting the "extreme cheerleading." But when the sun puts in an appearance, everything will be hunky-dory!

The field was swarming with people last Monday during a first "plenary" session. Fast track artists were having fun masquerading as bathers, while those on the Russian swings tried to cope with the whims of the wind - and find reference points for themselves in an utterly blue sky! While all this was going on, Fernand Rainville and Geneviève Dorion-Coupal were explaining the rudiments of group movements - to music and in harmony - to some very young-looking groups of extreme cheerleaders. "5-6-7-8 hup!" Keeping your concentration while dancing is far from easy!

A Super Challenge...

The field on which the Super Bowl will be contested on Sunday is practically a sacred place. One of the major concerns for Cirque is to make sure the natural turf is not damaged. Acrobatic equipment has had to be modified to ensure that weight is uniformly distributed on the ground. The artists' shoes, the stilts of the giant pink flamingos - all has had to be adapted to make sure that nothing will sink into the surface, to protect both the field and the artists' safety.

The "Birds" Get Sidetracked!

The Wednesday before, Patricial Ruel did an inventory check of the 350 costumes produced for the occasion and proceeded with fittings for the "Tropical Birds." Well, only nine artists were able to try out their costumes. The remaining ten had been sent to the Wildlife Department by agents at the Memphis sorting centre of our shipper, FedEx! When they saw the words "tropical birds" on the box, they were obliged to follow procedures to ensure that no birds were being mistreated. The costumes finally arrived safe and sound on Thursday.

Event Creators

     Jacques Méthé              Executive Producer
     Fernand Rainville          Director and Director of Creation
     Patricia Ruel              Set, Props and Costumes Designer
     Geneviève Dorion Coupal    Choreography design
     Daniel Cola                Acrobatic Coach
     Gabriel Pinkstone          Project Aassistant
     Linda Dupuis               Production Manager
     Marie-Josée Adam           Coordination
     Jocelyne Fortier           Cordination 
     Marie-Hélène Delage        Cordination
     Stéphane Lemay             Technical Director
     Jean-François Tremblay     Assistant to Technical Director
     Isabelle Girard            Accounting
	

A Few Facts

• The show celebrated football and southern Florida.
• The set and costumes are inspired by the work of local artist Romero Britto, one of the best-known pop artists of his generation.
• The team had only four minutes to set up and two minutes to tear down, all the time taking great care not to damage the field.
• The performance lasted nine minutes (one minute of commercials at the Super Bowl costs US $2.6 million).
• The theme used by the NFL this year was strongly represented in our show: in composing the original music that accompanied the performance, Louie Vega took his inspiration from the "One game… one dream…" theme.
• The show featured 350 artists, 278 of them volunteers.