Cirque du Solei to stay in New York

Not content with performing in 271 cities in 32 countries and attracting 11 million customers last year, Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based circus empire, will establish a permanent presence in New York City next year.

In February 2010 Cirque, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, plans to bring a new show to the Beacon Theater in Manhattan for a multiple-month run that it hopes will become an annual institution. And in 2011 Cirque is to establish a four-month summer extravaganza in Radio City Music Hall as a warm-weather counterweight to the “Christmas Spectacular” — sans Rockettes, but populated with acrobats and clowns.

These will be in addition to the company’s touring tent productions, which have played New York periodically since 1988; the most recent show, “Kooza,” opened on April 16 at Randalls Island. Also continuing will be “Wintuk,” Cirque’s $20 million annual winter holiday show at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden.

But dashed for now are the company’s plans to build a New York City space that would give it a permanent home in Manhattan. “Dead,” said Guy Laliberté, Cirque’s founder and majority owner, when asked about its real estate negotiations, most recently a 2007 deal with the Related Companies to establish an outpost at Pier 40 in Manhattan. “So instead, you come in by the back door,” he added, “or even a window.”

That window is Madison Square Garden Entertainment — which programs both the Beacon and the Music Hall — and which provided Cirque’s theater for “Wintuk” two years ago.

“We want something solid and permanent in the entertainment capital of the world, and we are hoping to have a presence in New York for 12 months a year,” Mr. Laliberté said.

Some might worry that New York is facing a circus glut. In addition to the annual Madison Square Garden stand of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s traveling arena show, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently announced that Ringling’s smaller, touring Gold Unit will be performing under a Coney Island tent starting on June 18, and Ringling hopes that it will become a yearly fixture.

Then there’s New York’s own nonprofit one-ring little top, the Big Apple Circus, which since 1980 has dominated the Christmas circus season.

“Certainly Cirque will compete with us for disposable dollars and audience attention,” said Gary B. Dunning, Big Apple’s executive director. “But we have been succeeding in the most competitive market in the world for 31 years.”

Indeed, in 2007, the first year it went up against “Wintuk,” Big Apple achieved record high revenues of $7.5 million. During last year’s recession Christmas, Big Apple was down 2.3 percent in sales. Cirque did not release figures, but box office experts who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss confidential information said “Wintuk” sales were down some 20 percent. Nevertheless, “Wintuk” has sold 750,000 tickets since 2007, according to Cirque.

“We and Big Apple have different niches and audiences.” Mr. Laliberté said on a recent afternoon, during which he chain-smoked Gauloises.

He described the Beacon production, possibly titled “Vaudeville,” as a show about that tradition, with a cast of 50 to 55, to be directed by David Shiner, also the director of “Kooza.” The show, written by Laurence O’Keefe, the author of music and lyrics for “Legally Blonde,” is to be in tryouts from Nov. 19 through Dec. 31 at the Chicago Theater in that city. The show will run at the Beacon for at least three months and could be extended to half a year.

During those months “we will continue to work with all artists, including the Allman Brothers Band, to find the best alternative performance options while the vaudeville Cirque show is at the Beacon,” said Jay Marciano, president of Madison Square Garden Entertainment.

Another $20 million still unnamed show, for the Music Hall, “will fully utilize the space and spend half of each year in Paris or London,” and have 72 to 80 performers, said Mr. Laliberté, a wiry 49-year-old former street accordionist, stilt walker and fire-breather who rarely talks to the press.

Mr. Marciano said that “it’s only natural that we partner with them, given ‘Wintuk,’ ” adding that the Music Hall “is the only stage in the city that can handle such a large-scale production.” Cirque has long been circumspect about its profits, but Mr. Laliberté acknowledged that it has felt the effects of the recession. In Las Vegas, it has been ramping up its discount offers at its six shows. As a result, Mr. Laliberté said, in that city “our lowest occupancy is 82 percent.”

So, though Mr. Laliberté said that the Cirque touring shows were up about 7 percent in revenues this year, Cirque’s six shows in Las Vegas are down 7 percent.

Meanwhile, the company’s casino show in Macau, Asia’s gambling capital, has suffered after the Chinese government curtailed visits from the mainland because of concern about gambling losses. And an agreement to develop a permanent Cirque show on Palm Jumeirah, a manmade island in Dubai, is now in recession postponement.

Despite the down economy, Mr. Laliberté is aggressively making “optimistic plans,” of which New York’s shows are a part, he said, adding that “we’ve gone through three recessions in Cirque history, and they were all growth periods for us.”

Cirque has the wherewithal to expand. Last August the company sold a 20 percent stake to a Dubai sovereign wealth fund and a real estate developer for $600 million, Mr. Laliberté said. The sale lined his pockets as well: according to Forbes, Mr. Laliberté’s personal wealth is $2.5 billion.

The privately held Cirque does not disclose profits, but analysts who asked not to be named because they did not want to jeopardize their relationship with the company estimated a margin of more than 20 percent, better than the 18 percent return that casinos customarily aspired to before the recession. Mr. Laliberté said Cirque was forecasting $810 million in total revenue this year.

“But we are not tsunami-proof,” he said. Referring to the casinos, he added, “It is a scary crisis in Vegas — our partners have so much debt.” Cirque has been fighting against the undertow in which hotels have posted historically low occupancy despite historically low room rates.

Some circus people, most of whom would not speak for the record because they did not want to alienate Cirque, have suggested that with two more New York shows on the way and an Elvis tribute show headed for Las Vegas, Cirque is overextended, and have wondered whether the once-scruffy, former avant-garde commune — which has transformed itself into a blue-chip multinational Disney would-be that has sold $7 billion worth of tickets — is losing touch with its creative soul.

“There has been some dilution of the quality of their product,” said David Rosenwasser, a veteran arena manager and former circus executive who is director of the Greater St. Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau in Missouri. “I’m not as awed as I used to be. The shows are almost indistinguishable to me.”

But Mr. Laliberté countered that “we constantly readdress the issue of our shows being too corporate,” adding: “Every show must be one of a kind. And we must have fun.”

Courtesy of Mike Naughton

"I see this being a "killer" for The Big Apple Circus."