The video Rehearsal takes us into one of the three studios in the headquarters of the Cirque du Soleil based in Montréal (Québec, Canada). A team of five elite athletes from Eastern Europe (Russia and Ukrainian) are training for a flying act, adapting their skills to eventually perform in the Cirque du Soleil.
As in many of my works, I am interested in what happens behind the scenes. The costumes and spectacular scenic effects are stripped away so we can examine the efforts, work and emotional states of the athletes during their training.
I try to create a dialogue between the architectural structures of the studio and the body performing its precise movements. The video uses closed-ups of beams and ceilings, sometimes turned upside down to evoke the disorientation that the athletes may feel, almost as if they were in a space ship.
