dying on stage
I remember very well the day I fell in the hole of the stage. The stage in the Zumanity theatre was very big and technically very complicated. The work of the stage manager calling the show was very hard. Because the big companies tend to cut corners in the big production believe it or not, and the cirque is one of them, most of the mechanical stuff used in the theatre was second hand brought from an old show at the MGM hotel. They used the machinery in our show and it was not up the standards of the show we were trying to do so there were always troubles.
There was a revolving stage and in the middle of it there was a small lift that would go down about five feet. Very Vegas, a small lift that make artists to come up by surprise.
In the middle of our best number, the Pom-Pom routine, I got pushed forward by Stephan. Everyday I will get pushed and I will roll on the floor and then I will go to pick up the pom-poms that were already in the audience. But that day the lift was not up and the last turn of my rolling happened while I was falling in the hole of the lift. I did not know what was happening, I tried to stand up and I could so I knew I was fine. I tried to carry on with the show as if nothing had happened and I do not think that the audience knew what had happened.
When we left the stage Stephan was white in his face thinking that he could have killed me and I had brushes all over my body.
I remember the day Queen Latifa, her sister and her mum came to see Zumanity. We thought that it would be really cheeky to go and greet all the famous people with our pom-poms costume, naked. That would mean that the famous people would pay more attention to us. Well when they came to say hello, Queen Latifa and her family did a picture with us and they would not stop taking advantage of the situation. I felt like a proper Chippendales. It was quite funny because it had never happened to me before, I am sure it had happened to the other people in the cast, they were all georgeous.
Another thing I remember is the time when the owner of the cirque, Guy la Liberté, gave a party. The cirque was really concerned with the posibility that we will get hurt with our cars after the party or that the police will stop us while driving a little bit drunk. So they came to pick us up in a taxi or something and then they will take us back home after the party.
So we went to this party and it was great. It was in a big house that Guy has in Las Vegas. A taxi came to pick me up and took me to the party. We all got really drunk, we swam in his swiming pool, we ate great food and we had a fantastic time and when the time to go back home arrived we spoke to the organiser and he told us that there was a limousine waiting for us to take us home. Petra, Lucy and me look at each others and went back into the party to grab a bottle of champagne and went into the car.
Once in the car we open the bottle and helped ourselves to some fancy glasses in the car. Lucy our set designer opened the top window in the limousine and while drinking the end of her glass threw the glass out of the window. Then she sat back down in the car and said she always wanted to do this. The window of the driver was open and we look at the driver waiting for a word of reproval and the only thing he said was that your boss would pay for everything. That made us very happy.
I remember going to buy costumes to LA, we were looking for clothes from the Fifties. So someone working at the cirque gave us a list of places that they have contacts with, and they were waiting for us in LA. We were staying in Sunset Boulevard and Petra kept calling it ‘Sunset Bouvelard'. We all traveled there in a big car, Cal, Lucy and the four of us. We had five days to buy all the costumes that we needed for the show. So we spend five days shopping from ten to four thirty and we went to the beach to rest.
But I remember this shop of vintage clothes that looked like a bank and felt like a bank. We went in to try to find a Chanel suit for one of Petra's characters. It was amazing and very expensive. The costumes they had there were all getting ready to go to an exhibition at the V&A in London of fashion of the Twentieth Century.
Petra tried an amazing suit and we tried to make pictures, but the lady told us no pictures - people will copy the designs.
