By Crystal Harrell
The icebreaking spectacular of Cirque du Soleil: Crystal makes a stop at Acrisure Arena for its opening night premiere on Friday, March 28 through Sunday, March 30 for the show’s Grand Finale tour.
Crystal is Cirque du Soleil’s 42nd creation and explores the artistic possibilities of ice for the first time. This unique production pushes boundaries of performance by combining stunning skating and acrobatic feats that defy the imagination. Audiences can watch world-class ice skaters and acrobats take their new frozen playground with speed and fluidity as they challenge the laws of gravity with never-before-seen acrobatics.
The lead character, Crystal, goes on an exhilarating tale of self-discovery as she dives into a world of her own imagination. Crystal invites others to suspend reality and glide into a world that springs to a colorful life with astounding visual projections and an original score that seamlessly blends popular music with the signature sound of Cirque du Soleil. Crystal also features an international cast composed of figure, extreme and freestyle ice skaters, acrobats, musicians and a comic character. Eighteen different nationalities are represented in the cast.
“We tend to follow winter, so to be able to bring this show to the Coachella Valley in the spring is very exciting. We have a good audience here and its always fun being here,” said Roberto Larroude, Senior Publicist for Crystal.
Since its creation, Crystal has gone to over 150 cities and 26 different countries, now seen by over 2.3 million people since 2017 and just celebrated show #1000 in Perth, Australia in September of 2023.
In total, there are currently 97 people from 25 different countries on tour. There are 45 performers in Crystal. Collectively, the Crystal tour speaks 23 languages including French, Mandarin, Swedish, Portuguese, and Dutch. English is the language used by the cast and crew to communicate with each other on tour.
In addition to ice dancing, pairs and solo skating, synchro and extreme skating, there are over 7 Cirque du Soleil disciplines in the show including banquine, hand-to-hand, acro/tumbling, juggling, trapeze, poles, chair balancing and aerial straps all on ice.
It takes 18 55ft transport trailers to transfer Crystal from city to city. The entire show packs up into over 434 road cases, 160 racks and a few dozen other varieties of packing containers. The show uses 28 projectors to transform the ice into a playground, hockey rink, outdoor pond, cityscape, among others. The show also uses 36 trackers on costumes that control spotlights that follow the artists on the ice.
Crystal is also the only Cirque du Soleil show to use real snow during a performance as the team makes approximately 300 real snowballs each week. It takes about 15 hours to set up the show and about 4-5 hours to tear the show down. Crystal’s wardrobe team does 48 loads of laundry on load-in day to get ready for the week of shows, and 10-12 loads every day during the week of shows. There are approximately 500 individual set pieces that are constructed and torn down each week on Crystal. The wall structure used in the show is broken down into 210 individual pieces. The show travels with 80 pairs of skates (hockey or toe pick).
The show uses about 1,250 pieces of wardrobe for every performance, and travels with over 4,000 pieces in total – including over 35 pairs of shoes. The costumes were designed to withstand the rigors of ice, and keep the artists safe. Catchers wear special padding on their shoulders and gloves made of Kevlar equipped with polymer cuffs to absorb shock and protect their forearms from the razor-sharp blades. Some artists also slide on the ice and their costumes are made of water resistant, non-absorbent material to allow them to glide properly in their costumes.
Some acts in the show involve high-level floor acrobatics on ice, which requires a lot of stability. The acrobats’ shoes incorporate a combination of small metal spikes and crampons that help them walk, slide, run, and so many other things that aren’t normally possible on ice. All artists wear 3-4 different costumes for every performance, some wear 6. Each costume is equipped with full length zippers that run from ankle to ankle along the inside seam to allow the skaters to change without removing their skates.
A special, one-of-a-kind Crystal themed Firebirds hockey jersey will also be put up for sale with proceeds going towards charities.
“I hope the audiences who come see the Crystal get this feeling of magic in the atmosphere of the show that we have, because not many shows have skating that makes it very fast and fluid, with acrobatics together. It’s like a winter wonderland. I just love to come here and seeing the crowd’s excitement is the best thing,” shared Crystal cast member Nicole Gosviani.
Tickets at Ticketmaster.com, the official ticketing provider of Acrisure Arena.
