Film offers close-up look at Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas titles

They’re so proud of acrobats viewed from overhead and even underwater, they might forget to mention the expressive eyes of Erica Linz.

“I’m a wee little thing,” says the not-quite-5-foot acrobat and former Las Vegan, previously spotted in the soaring aerial ballet of “Ka.”

But Linz found herself as the central character of the new movie, and in the big-time Hollywood company of executive producer James Cameron and director Andrew Adamson, who also helmed the “Shrek” and “Narnia” series.

“Worlds Away” is mostly a performance film, offering close-up looks at most of Cirque’s Las Vegas titles for those in far-away lands who aren’t likely to see them in person.

But it stops short of pure live-show documentary. The acrobatics are framed by a sketch of a story that takes Linz down a rabbit hole to a Cirque Wonderland, in pursuit of a trapeze artist (Igor Zaripov) she meets on a seedy midway that is more “Something Wicked This Way Comes” than “Mystere.”

Both Linz and Zaripov are used to high-flying aerial displays of affection. But Linz only has two lines of dialogue in the largely silent feature (although it was filmed two years ago, she has total recall: “No thank you” and “H-E-L-P!”)

The rest of her acting is up to the IMAX-sized emotion in her wounded eyes. After working in large theaters where “things are more exaggerated,” Linz suddenly found herself in a position “where the camera is right in front of you. And James Cameron (who was hands-on with some of the 3-D cameras) loves to bring the action really close to camera.”

“He and Andrew really guided me a lot,” she adds, with Adamson telling her, “as long as the intention was in your eyes and it was sincere from the inside, that it would read. That it was necessarily to almost feel like you were doing nothing, but just try to believe in what your character was feeling, and the camera will pick it up.”

Digital advances with those 3-D cameras were key to the movie getting made, says Jacques Methe, the executive producer on Cirque’s end, who shopped and developed the project for the company.

Cirque wanted to film its Las Vegas shows only if it could be done with the same dramatic stage lighting live audiences see. It was only a few years ago that digital 3-D made it possible to film without “break(ing) the magic” with added lighting, Methe says.

Still, the production was so on the edge of technical limitations that reshoots were required to remedy the darkness of the initial footage from “Ka” and “Love.”

“We wanted the raw materials to be our shows in Vegas,” Methe adds of the strategy that gave the film an instant big-budget look. “They’re big, they’re spectacular … our most ambitious shows, and you don’t have to change cities. We thought Vegas would be a fabulous mine of Cirque material.”

After a mutual agent matched them with the tech-obsessive Cameron and Adamson, the director came up with the framing story that would mix and match the Vegas shows as Linz’s character travels from one fantasy big top to another (the misty space between them is a combination of the South Point’s arena floor and green-screen technology).

In one sense, “Worlds Away” is the ultimate Las Vegas product placement. But the show titles and their real-world locations aren’t referenced until the end credits.

“This is not a commercial,” Methe says. “There are simpler ways to make a commercial.”

Adamson’s crew filmed in Las Vegas for about nine weeks, starting in December 2010. But it took only the first week to scrap plans to film in front of paying customers.

“You need to place the camera pretty close to the subject,” Methe says, which meant restaging the numbers during the day.

The opening carnival midway scenes were filmed in Adamson’s native New Zealand, where Linz suddenly felt like a real movie star.

“The first time you say, ‘I’ll be in my trailer,’ you feel real silly,” says the affable “full-fledged American,” a minority in Cirque’s international ranks.

But Linz’s twin interests in gymnastics and theater – “my weird little artistic obsession” – did come together when she was discretely approached to audition (“so it wouldn’t inspire any jealousy or competition” in the Cirque family).

“I love the idea of acrobatics as part of theater,” she says. “You can tell a story in ballet, but you don’t typically see it done that often with cartwheels.”

Linz performed 10 years in the casts of “Mystere” and “Ka,” and was an active crusader in the fight against childhood cancer with the fundraisers Circus Couture and Cirque du SoBald.

She now lives in Los Angeles, pursuing stunt work and any other opportunities her “Worlds Away” exposure may present.

But Linz still considers herself part of the Cirque family, to the point that she was more worried about embarrassing them than herself.

“I was going to be representing my peers, and people I respected very deeply, and who I consider to be among the most talented people on earth,” she says. “You don’t want to be the one who doesn’t do them justice.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.