When the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil Gilles Ste-Croix (Quebec, 1947) was twelve years old, he asked his father to give him a bass because he wanted to be like Paul McCartney, but the man refused, because he did not want to risk who ended up playing in
pubs.
Years later, in 2006, Gilles was able to collaborate with McCartney during the production of
Love,
in which Cirque du Soleil celebrated the Beatles.
That show was the pinnacle of Gilles' professional career.
In 2014, at the age of 64, he retired from the front row of a circus that, in his successful career, has not only established a business model, but has also dignified the profession throughout the world.
Ste-Croix and his wife Monique Voyer own a house in San Pancho, a town with a strong community spirit whose beach prodigiously mixes large families around a plastic table, the Argentine surfer who came for two months three years ago, the young French tourist who wants to be a traveler and walks barefoot and has already had a Huichol symbol tattooed on her arm and the native plumber who speeds up his motorcycle shirtless and singing against the wind “I won't be able to follow in your footsteps / your path is longer than mine…"
In this environment, in 2011, in order to raise funds so that the cultural foundation Entreamigos, in which so many girls and boys from the town play and are educated, would not close, Ste-Croix and Voyer undertook an exciting project.
In a store in this colorful corner of the Pacific coast, they launched El Circo de los Niños de San Pancho, a non-profit association designed to promote the personal, technical and artistic development of girls and boys (from 5 and until the age of 18) in the disciplines of circus and dance.
Ste-Croix added $50,000 out of his pocket and recovered Cirque du Soleil material to be mended.
Performance by the San Pancho Children's Circus (Mexico).Monique Voyer (San Pancho Children's Circus; Mexico)
It is an August morning in which the rains of last night are still breathed.
I enter the facilities of the children's circus and see the video of the show that closed the previous season,
Fausto,
and those from previous years, such as
A Midsummer Night's Dream
or
Alebrije.
Trapezes hang from the ceiling.
There are unicycles, stilts, mats.
I meet Glades Perreras, current director.
“The price is 150 pesos per week (7.50 euros), two hours a day.
There are scholarships and discounts, and since there is professional and specialized instruction in teaching children, we invite families to collaborate more.
The idea is that since everything is possible in the circus, there are no distinctions.
That is the main challenge for the idea of belonging to be strengthened”.
Judging by the enthusiasm of parents, students and teachers that can be seen in the videos, the work is intense.
“The first year 40 children signed up.
For this course there are already 150 registered, we have also had to open on Saturday mornings.
You work hard, you can be a clown, an acrobat, a juggler... This circus is a wonderful gift to experience,
and even more so when its impact is received by children and adolescents.”
The activity starts in October.
Ste-Croix arrives in November with the idea of the choreography that will be worked on during the course and that will be performed in March.
It is not surprising that last year, at the persistence of a Canadian minister who came to see the
show,
the San Pancho children's circus made performances in Querétaro and Mexico City.
Vani, mother of Leliane, a girl who will begin her sixth season at the circus in October, accompanied the
troupe.
“The security that they are taught to have on stage they then have off it.
They are children who think differently, they are creative, they take care of each other, they take care of the environment, they take care of their diet, they have more initiative, they climb on fabrics to the ceiling and they know with certainty that the companion below will help them if they fall.
Gilles is a genius of imagination and his circus is contagious”.
Don't miss it, then, I tell him before saying goodbye and looking for the beach thinking about the bass he didn't want to buy from Gilles, his father.
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