Inside Kooza: the people bringing Cirque du Soleil magic to Hong Kong
Ahead of its return, meet the artists behind the circus production’s death-defying stunts and slapstick clowning
It’s a rare sunny afternoon in Seattle, in the United States, and Angelo Lyerzkysky Rodriguez is parked on the pavement in a camping chair, shirt off, eyes half-closed behind sunglasses, peacefully soaking up the warmth. It’s a striking contrast to how I saw the 37-year-old Colombian circus performer the night before: also shirtless, but mid-flight, hurtling through the air to great dramatic effect as part of Kooza’s Wheel of Death – a high-stakes, high-speed act that elicits gasps of disbelief from the audience.
Behind the spectacle are the people who bring Kooza to life every night. Many come from a long line of circus performers, such as Rodriguez, who is fifth-generation, while others are following a childhood dream, like aerialist Mizuki Shinagawa. There’s 63-year-old Vicente Quirós and his 55-year-old brother, Roberto, both high-wire veterans, and New Yorker Mark Gindick, a film student turned clown. Offstage in the wardrobe department, Alexandra Mancini helps maintain the show’s 175 handmade looks. Here are their stories.
Vicente Quirós, high-wire act
My brother Roberto and I were born in Madrid, Spain. We are a sixth-generation circus family. My grandfather did head-balancing, my father did trapeze and Rolla Bolla (balancing boards), my mother was a singer and Spanish flamenco dancer. As kids, we were in school but every summer, Easter or Christmas we would go to see our family at the circus. And we started to love the circus because of family, because of tradition.