Drying-Off Act : Circus, Encamped by Beach, Regroups After Storm

Yves Neveu of Le Cirque du Soleil surveyed the darkened interior of the troupe’s big-top tent in Santa Monica, where high-wire artists, electricians and concessionaires alike were shoveling sand, sweeping out water and picking up debris.

“It smells,” said Neveu, the tour manager, wrinkling his nose.

“But it’s only the ocean,” pointed out publicist Karen Thomson. “Not as bad as elephants.”

The New-Wave, French-Canadian circus, which substitutes bicycles for animals, had other reasons to be grateful as well.

The heavy surf that had been forecast for Tuesday morning failed to materialize, meaning the troupe could begin to dry out its parking-lot encampment just north of the Santa Monica Pier. A fitting turn of events for the Circus of the Sun.

And the wind-driven waves that had washed through the blue-and-yellow big top Sunday and Monday had not inflicted enough damage on the computers and electrical equipment to prevent the show from opening in two weeks.

Which meant that Corinne Pierre, 12-year-old chair-balancer/bicyclist, could smile.

“I was afraid we might not be able to do our show,” she said shyly, through a translator.

But less than 48 hours earlier, the 71 circus members had begun to wonder if Le Cirque’s big top itself was going to make an unscheduled pratfall.

“Around 7 o’clock (Sunday night) there was one big wave across that sand dune,” lighting director Lou Lafortune said, pointing toward the shoreline, where man-made earthmovers were now busy at work. “This area (the parking lot) is lower so the water stayed. It was three feet deep inside” the big tent.

Within two hours, the evacuation had begun.

“Monday is a day off in the circus,” said a laughing Jean-Pierre Pelletier, the assistant technical director, “but I worked until 5 the next morning in the dark.”

Aside from electrical equipment, the circus’ blue, yellow and red hardwood floor had to be removed piece by piece, 16 trailers towed to higher ground, the concession tent taken down, and the box office--computer, telephones and records--resettled in a hotel room.

And it wasn’t over.

Monday morning, Thomson said, the members were eating in their enclosed, portable, kitchen-on-stilts when “the high tide came in and we were surrounded (on the outside) by water. We joked that maybe it was going to float out to sea.”

In fact, Le Cirque du Soleil has had its share of ups and downs lately.

After critically acclaimed showings at the Los Angeles Festival and in Santa Monica last year, the group’s January tour of Australia was canceled after last-minute objections from Australian Actors Equity and the country’s own Circus Oz.

So Le Cirque scheduled a Feb. 4-14 run in Santa Monica.

‘We Don’t Know Waves’

“We had no idea this (the flooding) could happen,” Thomson said. “We’re from Quebec. We know snow. But we don’t know waves.”

But now the worst seemed over. The city had helped pump the water out of the tent.

And Tuesday was unpack-again day--for all hands.

Pointing to one trailer that was being unloaded, publicist Thomson said:

“That man unrolling the carpet is Daniel the juggler. Angela, our contortionist, is carrying the chair there. Let’s see, that’s Andrew, who’s in the high-wire act, carrying that suitcase. Up in the truck, that’s Michel, our ringmaster, handing down a fan.”

Some rehearsals were expected to resume today.

“Some of the equipment, we have to wait for it to dry,” Neveu explained. “But acts where we don’t need equipment can start, like the hand-to-hand (balancing) and the clowns.”

Neveu smiled.

“And the trapeze is OK too,” he said. “At least, the tide didn’t get that high.”