Annette Bauer Cirque du Soleil Totem Interview

Cirque du Soleil is pleased to announce the long-awaited return of its trademark blue-and-yellow big top to Australia in October 2014 with an all-new, awe-inspiring production. Totem, a fascinating journey into the evolution of mankind, will open in Sydney on October 28th, 2014 and then tour to Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

Since its World Premiere in 2010, more than 3 million people across 25 cities worldwide have been mesmerized by the intimacy and beauty of Totem, winner of the 2013 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. Featuring a cast of 45 acrobats, actors, musicians and singers, Totem is an uplifting array of athleticism, comedy, heartfelt emotions and surprising visual effects.

Written and directed by multidisciplinary artist Robert Lepage, Totem traces the fascinating journey of the human species from its original amphibian state to its ultimate desire to fly. The characters evolve on a stage evoking a giant turtle, the symbol of origin for many ancient civilizations.

Inspired by many founding myths, Totem illustrates, through a visual and acrobatic language, the evolutionary progress of species. Somewhere between science and legend Totem explores the ties that bind Man to other species, his dreams and his infinite potential.

To watch Robert Lepage's official interview about the concept of Totem, visit http://cirk.me/1a6CBhz.

For more information, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com/totem

Cirque Du Soleil: Totem – 2014/2015 Australian Tour

Sydney: From October 28th, 2014, Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park
Melbourne: From January 21st, 2015, Flemington Racecourse
Brisbane: From April 10th, 2015, Northshore Hamilton
Adelaide: From June 11th, 2015, The Plateau in Tampawardli
Perth: From July 31st, 2015, Belmont Racecourse

Tickets for all cities on sale at cirquedusoleil.com/totem.

Interview with Annette Bauer

Annette Bauer, a native of Germany, studied medieval and renaissance music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, specializing on recorder techniques. She holds an MA in music from UC Santa Cruz (2004), and studied North Indian classical music on sarode, a stringed instrument, at the Ali Akbar College of Music in California.

As a recorder player, Annette performed with medieval ensemble Cançonièr, Baroque group Les grâces, Farallon recorder ensemble, and the modal crossover project The Lost Mode. She has appeared as guest artist with leading early music ensembles throughout the US, and is currently touring as a musician/vocalist with Cirque du Soleil's show TOTEM.

Annette has served on the recorder faculty for several of the San Francisco Early Music Society summer workshops and the Amherst Early Music Festival among others. Certified in Orff Schulwerk, she teached recorder pedagogy to music teachers at the San Francisco Orff Certification Course. Annette also played Brazilian percussion with Maracatu Luta, and is the co-founder of Magic Carpet, a duo dedicated to the art of improvisation.

Question: Can you tell us about your role in Cirque du Soleil Totem?

Annette Bauer: I am a member of the live band, one of 8 musicians. I perform as wind instrumentalist and singer, primarily playing different types of recorders in addition to some historical double reed and ethnic wind instruments. The musicians are mostly semi-hidden during the show, on a raised platform behind the stage - but in two scenes, I am also featured as a character on stage; one is as a Spanish flamenco lady, and the other a scientist assistant playing fluorescent test tube pan pipes during a juggling act.


Question: What originally inspired your love of music?

Annette Bauer: I grew up in Germany, where there is a strong public music education system. I started going to music classes at age five, and can only remember always loving it enthusiastically. My family supported me in my love and interest for music, so I was able to study recorder (my first instrument, which I started learning as a five-year-old, and which also stayed with me as the main emphasis in my professional career path as a musician), piano, sing in choirs, play bassoon in wind bands, and even experience some conducting growing up as a teenager. I graduated from high school with an emphasis in music, and then went on to specialize in historical performance practice on recorders, with a degree in medieval and Renaissance music from the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. There, I became involved with the tradition of classical Indian music, and moved to California to pursue my studies with my teacher Ali Akbar Khan on a beautiful 24-stringed instrument called sarode. Before joining Cirque du Soleil, I worked as a freelancer in the San Francisco Area, in the fields of early European and classical Indian music styles, and also studying and performing Brazilian percussion. It's pretty much still like that - I follow the music that I love, and have been so lucky in being exposed to many amazing music traditions and teachers on the way.


Question: How did you go about getting your role in Cirque du Soleil?

Annette Bauer: By chance, really, or maybe some people would call it destiny? I had already known the person who I replaced on the show for a number of years, after I had contacted her about one of her recordings, which I liked very much. When she decided to leave another Cirque show she had been working for in order to do the creation of TOTEM, I was included on her list of colleagues to get in touch with the casting department as a possible replacement for her. Even though that particular position was not a fit for me at the time, my initial contact to Cirque du Soleil was made, and I was invited to audition for the position on TOTEM when it opened up in early 2012. I had been a Cirque fan for many years, I enthusiastically went to see the productions that were traveling through the San Francisco Bay Area, where I lived at that point, and I have had a fascination with circus arts in general since my childhood. So, I jumped at having the opportunity to work as a musician in this particular environment of highly professional circus entertainment, and going on the road, 'running away with the circus".


Question: What's the best thing about travelling with Cirque du Soleil?
Annette Bauer: For me, personally, I thrive by living and working in a close-knit community as we have on tour. I would describe myself as a social person, and I am fascinated by and interested in the life stories and backgrounds of all of my colleagues. That gives me a lot of joy and energy, working and spending time off with such a diverse group of people. I also love getting to explore different parts of the world by being on tour. The first couple of years after I joined were spent in the US and Canada, and I got to 'test-live" in many amazing cities for a while, and got a sense for the city cultures of Miami, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, among many others, and some of the cities in the Pacific Northwest, Portland and Vancouver. Having lived and worked in the US for over a decade before going on tour, it was also a great opportunity for me to connect with and visit friends and colleagues outside of Cirque. Now, that we are in New Zealand and Australia, the focus has shifted a bit for me, and I am really excited getting to explore the nature, the environment, and of course also city life of the places where we are working.


Question: What are you looking forward to most about your time in Australia?

Annette Bauer: I am very excited about living in Sydney and Melbourne for a few weeks each, and definitely look forward to exploring some of the national parks, and the coasts! I am very much hoping to see some of the wildlife that is native to Australia. I also have some friends who live in Sydney and Melbourne who I am excited to connect with, and learn a bit about their daily lives here on this continent.


Question: What do you find difficult about working with Cirque du Soleil?

Annette Bauer: As a freelancer, I always had a great diversity of musical projects I was working on. Being a musician in this kind of entertainment industry comes with a lot greater securities in many aspects, but also a lot more repetition. I have now, two and a half years after joining the show, performed the music for TOTEM over 700 times, 8-10 times a week during city runs. By contrast, the most repetition I ever played the same program before coming to TOTEM was 12 times. So, the challenge is to keep the music we perform night after night fresh and new and interesting for ourselves, and to refuel our creative spirits by projects and studies that are happening outside of the show, but will hopefully channel back into our nightly performance, and support us in maintaining and stoking our own artistic fire and integrity, despite of the repetition that is built into our jobs as performers.


Question: What's a typical day like for you during the performing season?

Annette Bauer: It depends on if we have one or two shows that day. One-show days often have quite a bit of down-time during the day for me, time to rest, take a yoga class, catch up with emails or chores, go grocery shopping, explore the city, etc. I need to be on site for show-call, the latest by 6.30pm for an 8pm show. I often arrive quite a bit earlier than that, though, to have time to do my warm-ups, do make-up, have time to eat dinner in the kitchen on site long enough before the show, sometimes also do a weekly Pilates class or get a massage on site. On some days we have rehearsals or stagings scheduled before show-call, or voluntary Cirque-related events, like social outreach events, special workshops or trainings. At 6.30pm we have half an hour of soundcheck, and then another hour to prepare for show-time. The show is two hours long, plus an intermission. Usually we are on the shuttle bus home half an hour after the show has ended, which means we get home around 11pm or a little later. Then it is time to wind down, and make sure to get enough time for sleep for the next day. The schedule is relentless, and I find it's unforgiving if I stay up too late too many nights in a row! This is even more true when we have two shows a day, which is usually on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On those two-show days I like to pace myself, be well-rested, concentrate on the shows, but also try to get a bit of exercise in before or between shows, or a nice walk before going to work, just to have some motion in my body and fresh air in my system before spending long hours in the tent.


Question: Had you always hoped to be able to perform in Cirque du Soleil?

Annette Bauer: I have been a Cirque fan for a good long while, and it was a vague dream for a long time to be involved in some way with a production. I wouldn't have been able to dream up the exact way it happened for me to be working as a musician for a touring big top show. That's the beauty of chance and luck in life!

Question: How much work goes into learning the performances for a Cirque du Soleil show?

Annette Bauer: There is an incredible amount of layers of preparation, on all levels, that need to take place before one steps on the Cirque du Soleil stage for the first time in front of an audience. For me, as someone who came into an existing show as a replacement for an 'original" musician, it took 4 weeks of full-time training at the Cirque du Soleil headquarters in Montreal, where I was scheduled for multiple costume-fitting sessions, to learning how to do my own make-up, to daily vocal training, sessions on stage presence and dramatic character work, instrumental practice sessions to learn the music, and further complimentary sessions to prepare me for life on tour, and make me familiar with the various company policies and practices. Once I arrived on tour, I went through an integration period of another 2 weeks approximately, during which I was slowly getting familiar with the show in real life, my colleagues, the tour rhythm, and entering into my musical and character roles song by song, act by act. It was a beautifully choreographed, and amazing experience to go through, and one that was accompanied and overseen by many different departments within the artistic team on tour. Once I was 'in", i.e. fully integrated in my role, another type of work starts, the one of growing deeper into the role, into becoming more and more familiar with the nuances and shades of what my work is, both as a musician and a character on stage, into keeping my contributions fresh and new, and finding ways to play with small variations night after night. It is a work of eternal refinement and minute play within a very fixed, intricately coordinated framework of many artistic and technical layers running all at the same time.


Question: What advice would you give someone hoping to join the Cirque du Soleil community, one day?

Annette Bauer: Be firmly rooted in your art and skills. Cirque is an amazing community to be a part of - and for most people it is also a temporary one of a number of years. The more rooting and perspective one brings into this adventure, the more wonderful the ways of relating to it, and the deeper the appreciation for all the amazing opportunities it offers.


Interview by Brooke Hunter