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>>Sergey Brin: Hey, everybody. I'm super excited to do the intro here today.
As you know, we have Cirque doing a performance for us. We're going to have, apparently, the
Balance Goddess. I'm tempted to try my stab at it first here. I was told very explicitly
that I'm not to touch any of the -- back here, but it's very tempting, I have to confess.
I'm going to have to resist as best I can. So we have Lili Chao. She is the Balance Goddess.
And we have Jamie Reilly, the manager of Cirque, here who will come up and talk afterward.
So without further ado, please welcome the Balance Goddess up to the stage.
[ Cheers and Applause ] >>Sergey Brin: You don't have to take those
away. I'll put it up again. [ Laughter ]
Sorry about that slip-up at the end. Anyway, how about another big round of applause
for the Balance Goddess. [ Applause ]
And Jamie Reilly is going to come up and tell us more about Cirque.
Come on up. >>Jamie Reilly: Thank you very much.
Wow, so how about that, huh? The Balance Goddess of Amaluna. It's really a phenomenal act,
really. I've been with the show since its creation,
so I've had the chance and the opportunity to see the Balance Goddess, as we like to
call her in our world, hundreds of times, really. And I can tell you, I never get tired
of seeing it, and I am enthralled every single time I watch it.
When people come to the show or when I talk about Amaluna -- which ironically, enough,
I'm not going to do a lot of today, but just a side note, when people come and ask me what
we have in the show and so on, I usually try not to talk too much about the Balance Goddess
because I like to try to keep the "wow" factor and the surprise effect that comes with this
amazing act. And I always make one promise, and the promise that I make is that at the
end of the act, in the Big Top which holds 2600 people, nobody will be breathing. And
I can make that promise because I'm sure none of you were breathing by the time she finished.
And I know that I'll be right and I'm very confident when I make that promise.
And to be able to have one artist on stage that can capture 2600 people night after night,
we do 300-some-odd shows a year, is phenomenal in itself.
So, well, a few notes on Lili Chao and the Balance Goddess.
To start off, I guess I'm just going to come out and say it. I was very excited to be working
on a presentation that I was going to come and talk to you about. I'm also a bit nervous,
to be very honest with you, because I admire a lot what you guys do. So I'm going to come
out and say it. I love Google. [ Laughter ]
[ Applause ] Yes.
I'm a very frequent user of Google. Google plays as much of a role in my life as does
a fork and a knife, a pencil or a toothbrush. For me, Google is really a tool for life.
I believe that your site is the best, and really the only place to access information
of whatever kind I need. No matter what I'm looking for, you will make
it easy for me to locate, you will make it relevant for me -- you will ensure that it's
relevant for me; sorry. You are my one-stop-info-shop. You have changed the way I live, the way I
work, the way I learn, converse, even the way I think.
But when I recently visited your campus a few weeks ago, I began to learn that there
are other sides of Google which I find profoundly exciting. Your ever-increasing interest in
the latest technologies, robotics, neural networking, social prediction, wearable technology.
Which by the way, I got the opportunity of wearing the Google Glass at lunch today. Very,
very cool. Self-driving car, gene sequencing and so on. You guys know the list much better
than I do. You could say if it's weird and out there, Google wants a piece.
I, too, have the great fortune to work for a company which I believe to be the most innovative
in its field, Cirque du Soleil. Perhaps we could say that Cirque du Soleil does for the
circus arts what Google does for the search engine. Both companies started from a simple
idea and grew to define the parameters of their industry, carving an indelible place
for themselves, becoming the companies that are often imitated, but never equaled.
Google is most definitely a courageous company. You are not at all afraid to take a leap into
the unknown, to risk and sometimes to fail. In fact, it seems to me that you are not at
all afraid of failure; that you simply see it as a necessary step on the road to success.
This fact really stuck with me and really got me to thinking. In the circus world, nothing
is achieved without first failing time and time again. No juggler ever juggled with six
balls without dropping them thousands of times. No flying acrobat ever did a triple back somersault
without missing his catcher over and over again. And I can tell you that even with a
net, it really sucks to fall from 30 meters. [ Laughter ]
It's true. So I began to see that Google and the circus
world have a lot in common. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Google and the performing
arts not only share a fair bit of DNA but are also deeply connected.
At first glance our two industries could not seem further apart. The performing arts and
technology. The performing arts are all about human expression,
the mapping and communication of emotion, story-telling, the planting of a seed in the
audience evoking the desired response from them.
When the curtain comes down on "Romeo and Juliet," the director hopes that there are
tears in the eyes of the audience. When the symphony fades, the composer hopes to have
touched the audience in some way. When the ballet ends, the dancer hopes that
his or her story -- or dance, body, sorry, has told a story that will stay with the audience
forever. So what is technology?
This was a tough question for me so I turned to my friend Google and I began my research.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines technology as the use of science to solve problems. Now,
when I look at what you guys do, I found this definition to be very narrow, too utilitarian.
I think we need to look further afield to have a better grasp of understanding of the
phenomenon of technology. So I thought of looking at what the philosophers thought.
Aristotle described technology as completing or enhancing what nature was unable to finish.
Wow! He really thought of you guys; right? Technology takes on a noble purpose, enhancing
and completing the work of Mother Nature. Suddenly, writing computer code begins to
take on an almost God-like dimension. The philosopher John Dewey said that technology
looks for solutions to problems by questioning the nature of the problem itself. Now, I like
this definition. This different understanding of technology brings us closer to the ancient
Greek root of the world. The -logy part comes from the Greek word logia, meaning study,
such as psychology is the study of the psyche. The tech part of the word also comes from
the Greek, technia, meaning art or skill. It can also be understood to mean the way
something is done. So this brings us to a whole different understanding
and definition of technology and one that I find a lot more interesting: The study of
the art, the skill, the way something is done. I like this definition. Instead of looking
at it purely from a scientific point of view, we can begin to see technology as having a
seat at the table of the humanities, alongside language, literature, philosophy, and of course
our old friend, the performing arts. It is no longer simply a branch of science
at the disposal of industry to find ways to make things more quickly and more cheaply.
We begin to see technology as a human expression born from our curiosity and the wish to improve
ourselves, addressing that burning desire to understand -- to advance our understanding,
creating something that never existed simplicity because we can.
However you choose to describe them, the arts and technology have always gone hand in hand.
The oldest art form so far discovered is a painting of a disk and a hand on the wall
of a cave in Castillo, Spain. It is at least 40,800 years old and this very work was made
possible by a technological advancement, the discovery of paint. The chisel was the most
advanced technology of its time and allowed sculptors to sculpt, Da Vinci to create his
David. Munch's "Scream" would never have been painted if the paintbrush hadn't been invented.
It goes without saying that film and technology have long gone hand in hand. The earliest
special effects -- stop motion, time lapse, dissolve -- were all technological advances.
From there to Avatar, film and technology have been inseparable. In our industry, in
the circus world, technology also plays a key role. This is in obvious ways like advances
in lighting, sound, projection and set design. But there are less obvious ways in which Cirque
du Soleil and the world of technology are deeply connected. In order to make hats and
wigs for our artists, we need to have a model of their head. In the past, this has involved
long and strenuous process for our artists because we did a plaster model of their head,
basically. They had Vaseline in their eyes and straws up their nose. The advent and the
arrival of 3D printing technology made our artists' lives a lot easier and Cirque's processes
a lot more efficient. We use the latest medical technology to ensure
our artists get the best possible medical care and treatment for their injuries. We
also tap into the latest trends in athletic performance assessment to optimize our artists'
physical conditioning. Each year, we develop new acrobatic figures and acts as advances
in technology allow the human body to go further, to do more, and to reach higher.
30 years ago, a group of young street artists in a small town near Quebec had a simple idea.
They wanted to reinvent the circus. 30 years later, I think we can all agree that that's
exactly what they did. To understand the contemporary circus, it's
important to have an understanding of the history of the traditional circus.
Circus as we know it today, performed in the round, in a tent or an reason in a, displays
feats of human and animal skills, amazement of the audience through defying the laws of
gravity, jugglers, acrobats, clowns and so on, has been around since the 1700s. The heyday
of the circus industry lasted from the end of the 19th century well into the middle of
the 20th century. The traveling circus brought entertainment
to the cities and towns of the world. It showcased wild and exotic animals. It left audiences
in wonder with its incredible acts it presented. For many decades, the circus was the only
form of entertainment to which people had access. The arrival of film and then television
was a death sentence to the circus world. Suddenly, amazement was available every Saturday
afternoon for the price of a movie ticket. By the 1960s, circus audiences were falling,
and the once great circuses of North America and Europe were slipping into decay. Only
few would survive. In the 1980s, a new kind of circus began to
take shape in a few places around the world. It was no longer in tents but on street corners.
Young jugglers, fire breathers and stilt walkers were taking over the cities. Montreal was
no exception. A group of young street artists called themselves Le Club des Talons Hauts,
which means the High Heels Club, because they were all stilt-walkers. They were dedicated
to the circus arts and believed that circus could live again and gain a new place among
the performing arts. All that was needed was a new way of looking at it.
Two members of the group, Guy Laliberte and Daniel Gauthier, decided to take a next scary
step. They decided to put together a full circus show. And in 1984, the first production
of Cirque du Soleil was born. To show you a little bit of the evolution
of Cirque du Soleil in the past 30 years, I brought a little video to share with you.
[ Video playing ]
[ Video ends ] >>Jamie Reilly: "Impossible is just a word."
I'm sure this speaks to you guys a lot as well; right?
[ Applause ] I've seen this video a gazillion times and
I never get tired of watching it myself. I get goose bumps every single time.
Today, Cirque du Soleil has 19 shows performing worldwide to an audience of 15 million people
a year. We employ 4,000 technicians and professionals. We have 1300 artists in our companies. We
have made movies and television shows. We have designed nightclubs. We have performed
at the Oscars. Actually, we did that twice. We have won countless awards and critical
acclaim. In fact, it seems like the only accolade we're missing a Google doodle in our honor.
[ Laughter ] Hint, hint.
Despite all of this achievement, despite the company's size and complexity, Cirque du Soleil
has not lost a sense of its roots. In some way, each of us still feels like a street
performer. We have never forgotten that our audience is at the heart of our company and
that we have a mission that goes beyond the simple "business of show;" the mission being
to invoke the imagination, provoke the senses, and evoke the emotions of people around the
world. I wonder if this story rings true to you because
I think it should. As I researched your company, by Googling Google, I learned that Cirque
and Google is some things in common. Both were born from the simple idea of two friends.
Both companies revolutionized their industry. Both have a very strong sense of mission and
purpose. Both believe in doing business without doing evil. Both keep their customer at the
core of their activities. Both believe in doing more than great in reaching excellence.
Someone asked me recently why 15 million people a year take the time and spend the money to
see a Cirque du Soleil show, and I really had to think about that question for a while.
Is it the beautiful, evocative music? Is it the stories we tell? Or the stunning aesthetics
of our shows, the sets, the lights, the costumes? Or could it be the magical dream-like quality
of our productions? Now, I think all of these ring true and play
a key role in our connectedness with our audience, but I don't believe any of them reaches the
core of what we do and why we have been embraced by audiences worldwide.
The first time I saw a Cirque du Soleil show was more than 20 years ago in Montreal. I
sat and watched Alegria, a show that celebrated the energy, the passion, the grace, and power
of youth. I was transfixed. On that night, I began an emotional relationship with the
company that has not ended to this day. That unique emotional relationship is what
I believe brings our audiences back time after time to see our shows. They are drawn into
our world. They allow us to touch their imagination, their senses, and their emotion.
This is a great responsibility, shared by most artists. Having such access to people's
innermost stuff is a great privilege and a great responsibility. We must not take our
art lightly. We must be committed and serious in our pursuit of the beautiful, the aesthetic.
But Google, too, has developed a unique relationship with the world, one which makes ours pale
in comparison. You have become an integral part of the lives of billions of people. You
are as important to them as the knife and fork, the pencil, or the toothbrush. You have
caused a new verb to be born. We no longer look something up. We Googled it.
In 2013, the human race ran -- and I'm going to read this -- 2 trillion, 161 billion, 531
million Google searches. When I saw that number, I couldn't even say it. I had to Google "how
to say big numbers," and that's a true story. I don't have a good sense of the sheer size
of that number but I can tell you one thing for sure without the slightest doubt. That
number means that no matter what your job here is at Google, what you do every day is
not trivial. What you do is more than important. It is fundamental, society-forming. You are
changing the world around you. You are changing the human race.
You are challenging how things are by exploring how things can be.
You are information jugglers. You are contortionists of the possible. You are acrobats of invention.
You are magicians. You are technological artists. A recent Time magazine article described Google
-- therefore, all of you -- as increasingly strange. Well, as --
[ Laughter ] As a circus person, I don't mind telling you
that I like the look of strange. In my world, strange meaning so bendy that you can sit
on your own head! It means being able to balance on a high-wire,
to fly through the air with millimetric precisions into the hands of a catcher. It means being
a clown, evoking laughter from tears. It means being a nomad, rootless, homeless, wandering
the roads of the world. If in the Google world being strange means
being courageous and edgy, pushing the limits of the human condition, striving to find ways
to make the human experience better, then go for it. Be strange. Celebrate your strangeness,
your Googlyness. Thank you very much.
[ Applause ] >>Sergey Brin: Thank you. And I think we have
a little time for questions. So if people want to come up to mics here. I don't know,
do we have a Dory thing going? No. Just questions at the mics.
>>Jamie Reilly: Any questions? >>Sergey Brin: Come on up.
>>> Hello. Bonjour, Jamie. From one French Canadian, it always makes me happy to see
Cirque du Soleil whenever they perform. My question to you Google is a company that's
built by the people that work here. And for Cirque du Soleil, as someone who did gymnastics,
my mother is a gymnast from Montreal, it never occurred to me that, like, Cirque du Soleil
is something you can join or do. So I'm kind of curious how you recruit all the coaches,
all the technicians, all the artists that you find.
>>Jamie Reilly: Very good question. There are various ways in which one can join Cirque
du Soleil. Because we have a very good brand name, we're lucky because we receive a lot
of resumés, videos, proposals of all kinds, really.
[ Laughter ] We also work very similarly to professional
sport, so we do have scouting teams that will go around the world from the Olympics to gymnastic
competitions and so on to recruit talent from a very young age, of course.
We will hold casting calls, so very similar to the movie world, in various strategic places
around the world where people will come and present what they can do. And those, I would
say, are the main ways that we recruit people at Cirque.
>>Sergey Brin: Do you want to try something up here right now?
It's a great chance. [ Laughter ]
>>> I would need a waiver or something to do that I think, so no.
>>Sergey Brin: All right. Anybody got an act? This is your big chance
to join the Cirque. All right. A question.
>>Cliff Redeker: A question but no act. Could you describe the origins of Amaluna and how
the piece actually became created? Did people search for an act first or a plot first? How
is the genesis of the show? >>Jamie Reilly: Absolutely.
So first and foremost, Amaluna is a show that celebrates or showcases women, which is a
first in the history of Cirque du Soleil. It's the 32nd production of Cirque. We're
just about to be two years old so we're still a very young show. We have a cast of 70% women,
which includes an all-female band, which is also a first for us at Cirque. So we're certainly
very proud of that. Amaluna was directed by Diane Paulus, who
was actually here a few months ago, I believe, doing a Google Talk, if memory serves me right.
Diane is a very famous female on Broadway, so I like to say that Diane brought the theater
to the circus. She was very much inspired by "The Tempest" from Shakespeare, Greek mythology,
"The Magic Flute" from Shakespeare, and has done a mashup of those elements. And of course
because we showcase women, instead of having a Prospero we have a Prospera, who is the
queen of the island. Once we do a creation, it's a very organic
process, so it's not defined by saying we look for acts that fit in the story or vice
versa. Creation is something that's very organic as I'm sure you can all understand.
So there are certain acts or certain elements that we knew we wanted going into this production
and others that came about in the evolution of the creative process.
We stumble on things, make new discoveries, and creating a Cirque du Soleil show or a
big-top show, I should say, at Cirque starts four years before a world premier. So it takes
a long time, and it's -- there's a lot of evolution, of course, that will happen throughout
that four-year time period. >>Sammie Baime: Hi there. Thanks so much for
attending today. This is amazing. I wanted to just ask how long on average do shows stay
on tour for? >>Jamie Reilly: Another very good question.
One of the very unique elements of Cirque du Soleil in the entertainment world is that
we do not reproduce our shows, contrary to Broadway or other theatrical productions.
So our shows -- we retired Alegria a few months ago, and Alegria was almost 20 years old.
Mystere is still going strong in Vegas, and they're already 20 years old.
So because we don't reproduce our shows, it allows us to keep them alive and performing
for many, many years. So I would say between 15 and 20 years is more or less the life span
of a show with Cirque. >>> Hi. I always wondered about the ideation
process that you use at Cirque. Like the beginning of "O," when I first saw "O" almost 20 years
ago, the entire curtain gets pulled up into the balloon, and I just wondered how on Earth
would you come up with that idea and how do you make sure that you can come up with ideas
that are impossible and pursue them? >>Jamie Reilly: That's a very good question,
and it's one that's very hard to answer, because again of how organic everything is.
To talk about "O" specifically, I remember when Guy came to the office one day, and they
were in the creation process Dralion, which was another one of our big-top shows. When
we were in the full creation process, he showed up at the office one morning and he said,
"I want to do a show with water." And everybody around the table looked at him and said, well,
that's never going to happen. How are we going to do that? And he said, "I don't care. We're
going to create a show with water." But I think it's really more about looking
at all these elements and we could talk about this for hours but it's about coming back
again to the core values of the company and saying that there are no bad ideas. Everything
is explored. And impossible is just a word. We live by that every single day. Just with
Amaluna as well, we have a water bowl on stage that sits on the traveling stage and when
it's full of water it weighs 7,000 pounds to give you an idea. When we call an engineer
and say hey, we need a traveling stage and it needs to hold 7,000 pounds, everybody said
that's impossible. It's never going to happen. And we said no? Well we'll call the next Guy
if you don't want to did this because we're not taking no for an answer.
So having that at the core of our values am allows us to explore the impossible.
>>> Hi. Thanks for coming. So you have been involved with it for 20 years,
so I'd love to hear how the audiences have changed and how your shows have changed accordingly.
So what you're launching now versus 20 years ago. Is there more action? Are you expecting
people like here to take a bunch of photos during it? I would love to hear.
>>Jamie Reilly: Another very good question. You ask very good questions.
I think we're actually now in a place at Cirque where we're starting to explore all of that.
We're starting to understand the world is pushing the boundaries around us and that
we need to find ways to adapt to that, might it be with taking pictures during our shows,
while, of course, keeping our artists safe because that is our number one priority.
Amaluna, which is a very recent production, when we were in the process and we had a composer
for the music, the first time Guy listened to it, we all thought the music was fabulous;
right? And Guy said, "I don't like this music," and we were all a bit surprised because we
were like, "Well, we all like it. We were sure you were going to like it, Guy." And
he said, "No. We've done this a gazillion times in all of our shows," the more new-world,
new-age type of music. So he says, "I want something completely different."
And from then and on, we went into a completely different direction, and for those of you
who have seen, or those who haven't, certainly hope you will get the opportunity to see it,
the music is rock with a techno edge. We've gone completely in a different direction,
and you certainly do feel that freshness, and so on.
But one of the greatest challenges in a company that is now 30 years old and has the size
of Cirque is to keep pushing those boundaries within the parameters that we have and to
make sure that we are continuously reinventing ourselves. And as the years go, the more difficult
that's becoming. So recently we've announced that we're starting
a new theater division within the company, and we're relooking a little bit at how the
company is structured. And the reason we're doing that is to be able to address all of
those burning questions and to be able to ensure that we remain innovative in 2014.
>>> How many mistakes are made, on average? Like has the Balance Goddess ever sneezed?
>>Jamie Reilly: Yes, absolutely. I don't think she's ever sneezed but she has dropped the
sticks, yes. Not often. Not often. But let's not forget something very important.
It is live entertainment. It's live entertainment done by human beings.
Little mistakes happen probably every single night. There's never one show that's exactly
the same. That's the beauty of our art; right? We'll have injuries, people out, people in
modified queues because of injuries, and so on and so forth, that we have to deal with
on a daily basis. But because we hire the best in the industry,
people who come and see us usually never notice these mistakes or barely notice these mistakes
because we're very good at fixing them or working around them but it remains live entertainment
at the end of the day. >>> How do you encourage artists to continue
pushing the edge of human potential? Do you have, like, a 20% time?
[ Laughter ] >>Jamie Reilly: When you're on the road, that's
very difficult to do because sometimes we'll do up to ten shows a week and we do have limited
space in our little village. It is 65 trucks of equipment. But when it houses 115 people,
there is so much space you have to play with. But that's essential and vital to ensure that
we put on the best shows every single night. So we do encourage and support artists, and
we do -- and they're also very interested in learning different disciplines. We have
teeterboard artists currently working and learning the husille (phonetic), which is
a completely different discipline. So this keeps them motivated, it keeps them creative,
it keeps them interested and dedicated to what we do. So I wouldn't say it's a specific
guideline of 20% but each week we make an effort to make sure that we have time to allow
our artists to do that. >>Sergey Brin: Actually, I have a question
for you related to that. You mentioned the village. So where do all the performers and
other staff live when you're traveling for a couple months?
>>Jamie Reilly: Many, many years ago, in the 1990s at Cirque we lived on-site --
>>Sergey Brin: In the tent? In the big tent? >>Jamie Reilly: We had trailers on-site and
that's where we stayed but we stopped doing that. I like to say what we do is camping
deluxe at Cirque. We all live in corporate apartments, hotels or extended stays. So we're
very well looked after. >>> This kind of goes back to how long your
shows will run for. If you have a show like Mystere that's been going on for more than
20 years, how do your artists and performers sustain that? Do some come and go? Does the
show change a little bit because new artists have to be brought in to kind of accommodate
the ones who may retire or get injured and can't come back for some reason?
>>Jamie Reilly: Yeah, absolutely. Artists will come and go. It's like anything in life.
Some will stay for a year. Some will stay for 15 years. It all depends on what their
wishes and desires are or their physical ability to sustain what it is they are doing within
the show. One of the great things at Cirque is we're
always very adamant in not touching the integrity of the show. So the main story line. However,
compared to a phantom of the opera, for example, where it's exactly the same thing because
it's based on a book, we do allow room for growth. So we will, in some cases, bring in
new acts or different acts, and the show will continuously evolve. Even Amaluna, in the
last two years, we've just recently gone over to a changeover in artists, and the acts themselves
are the same but what they do is different. So this is an effort and a growing, living
organism, if you wish, that we work on every day to sustain. So they do evolve quite a
bit. You can see it in a year and think, oh, my God, that was very different from what
I saw last time. But the core of it will be the same.
>>> Hi. Before Cirque, it seems to me like a lot of Big Top circuses used to rely heavily
on animal acts. Can you speak to, I guess, why Cirque doesn't use animals? I think it's
an amazing decision, by the way. But maybe was that some conscious decision that you
guys decided on in the beginning? >>Jamie Reilly: Yes, absolutely. We respect
other circuses and the use of animals and we respect what they do tremendously, but
back in 1984, when Guy and Daniel had this vision and this idea of creating a different
type of circus, it was very important to Guy and his whole idea was based on the premise
of showcasing the human body. In his mind, why would we use animals when
human beings can do phenomenal things? And what we do at Cirque du Soleil is really to
showcase that. We're showcasing the human abilities, and that's what we've done and
that's what we choose to do, which is why we'll never have animals in our shows.
>>> Hi. Traditionally, the only way to watch a Cirque show has been to go to, like, a production
show in Vegas or something, or be in a city where Cirque tours. But last year, a couple
of years ago you came up with the movie. I'm just curious how that impacted? Did it get
more people interested in Cirque du Soleil or....
>>Jamie Reilly: Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't seen specific numbers on it, but
I certainly hope it has. Because what's important to understand as well, especially with our
Big-Top shows, we can't go to every city in the world. Our arena shows have enabled us
to explore new territories and cities, but when you're traveling with 65 trucks of equipment,
you can't go to Alaska, for example, or Hawaii, because it would make no financial sense whatsoever,
even though I would love to go to Hawaii, but it wouldn't work. So being able to do
movies or television shows, we certainly hope that this allows to reach more people around
the world in showing the beauty of what we do at Cirque.
>>Sergey Brin: Wait, wait. Dumb question. There's a movie? Does everybody know this?
>>Jamie Reilly: Yes, there's two. >>Sergey Brin: And they play in theaters?
>>Jamie Reilly: Yes, the latest one, which I believe was around a year ago, was at the
movies. Yes. >>Sergey Brin: And was it just like a video
of a performance or does it have, like, a movie plot?
>>Jamie Reilly: It's really -- we brought acts from various shows and David Cameron
put together and directed the latest movie that we've put out a while ago.
>>> Hi. My question is do you also try to collect some data to probably analyze and
improve the shows? >>Jamie Reilly: Yes, we do. We do that on
a marketing perspective, on a conditioning perspective. Our coaches and our experts continuously
look at ways and injuries and statistics so that we gain a good understanding of what
they mean. Because in the circus world, even circuses look to us to get that information.
So we're sort of leading the charge in being able to have a better understanding of what
doing 300 shows means on the physical body and various disciplines and so on and so forth.
We do it in marketing. 15 million people, as I was mentioning, come to see Cirque du
Soleil every year so I think we're the biggest entertainment company in the world so we're
trying to grasp what that means and try to use the data to its full potential, as much
as we can. >>> Can you talk a little bit -- sorry. Can
you talk a little bit about how iteration works during the choreography process? Do
artists have very much input into what goes on?
>>Jamie Reilly: Yes. Again, the creation process is something that's very organic. So Diane
Paulus had a vision, of course, when she came along and created Amaluna. It was her first
time ever working with Cirque du Soleil and working in a Big Top, which is a very unique
venue to be in. So she needed, obviously, to gain the perspective
of our artists, because even she'll have ideas and say, "I want you to do that," and the
artist will say, "I can't" because it's not possible to do a quadruple somersault or whatever
that might be. So the communication between the group of artists, the choreographers and
the director are essential in ensuring that we build and create the best shows possible.
So again, it's something that's very organic, but having that open mindedness is fundamental
in what we do. >>> Hi. Can you speak a little bit to the
different challenges of the arena shows versus the Big Top versus the Vegas permanent? I've
enjoyed several different kinds. >>Jamie Reilly: Yes, you're well aware. That's
actually the three different types of shows we have at Cirque. So we have the Big Top
show in which Amaluna is performing, which is very unique when you think about it because
we travel with our own venue, with our own little village.
We have arena format, and by this what we mean is that we only travel with the show
itself, and we go into fixed venues around the world.
What's interesting with the arena shows -- and we've only started doing that around 2006
at Cirque. And what was interesting and what has been amazing for us in doing that is that
it really has allowed us to explore new territories that we had not been able to with big tops,
as I was mentioning. Arena shows have gone to Hawaii and to Alaska, Eastern Europe, to
the Middle East, and so on and so forth. So it's really an amazing opportunity where we
focus more the Big Top shows in the bigger markets such as here in San Francisco or San
Jose, we're off to New York after this and Washington and Miami and all of those bigger
cities. And then we have the permanent or resident shows, which we currently have eight
of in Las Vegas on the strip and one in Orlando. So obviously these are built on a much different
scale. And to give you an idea, Amaluna, which started building obviously in 2011, 2010,
is a $30 million production. Ka, in Vegas, which was created in 2004, if memory serves
me right, so almost ten years ago, was a $65 million production. Just to give you an idea
on the scale. And here we're talking about shows where the
theater was built for the show. So they are shows that will never move. If you want to
see occurs or Ka, you will need to go to Vegas to see them.
>>> Since your performers have very physically demanding acts, it seems like a lot of them
might kind of retire from Cirque early than they might -- sort of early. So I'm just wondering
like what -- they spend a lot of time developing a specific skill set and it relies on physical
dexterity. What does it look like for them, like, when they retire? If you were to try
to generalize, what does life after Cirque look like for a performer?
>>Jamie Reilly: Absolutely. Well, we do have a program which we call the Crossroad Program
at Cirque which allows artists -- where we fund artists to learn other skills. A lot
of them do become coaches, obviously, because they know their disciplines so well, and they
have done that for the majority of them since they have been very, very young. A lot of
them will become pilates instructors, yoga instructors. And yet like anything else in
life, I've worked with artists who have done master's degrees in business while they were
artists at Cirque. Nowadays, again, with technology, they're able to do all of those courses online,
and if they are willing, the possibilities are endless, really.
>>Sergey Brin: Okay. And the last question. >>Cliff Redeker: All right. I want to wrap
it up and ask what's the relationship between a touring show on the road and the home headquarters
in Montreal? Is there a lot of regular communication, iteration? Is there a mockup of each show
out in Montreal? >>Jamie Reilly: There probably -- No, I don't
think there's a mockup of each show. A lot of communication, which means that for
me, being on the West Coast, I do get up often at 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. for conference calls.
And I'm sure it's a very similar relationship as to what you guys live here at Google, with
either working with satellite offices around the world. Montreal, the headquarters really
plays a role in establishing the parameters, the guidelines, all of the corporate services
from legal to corporate taxation and so on, sit in Montreal to allow us on tour to be
able to operate and to focus on the shows. So they'll also support us with managing our
infrastructure, finding sites in future cities, starting the permitting process as we focus
on more our day-to-day activities. >>Sergey Brin: Okay. And thank you so much
for presenting here for us today. >>Jamie Reilly: My pleasure.
>>Sergey Brin: And for the Balance Goddess. [ Applause ]
>>Sergey Brin: Thank you all for coming. [ Applause ]
>>Sergey Brin: And I'll see you all Thursday afternoon.