It’s curtain call. The lights dim as the last stragglers rush to their seats. The seated audience brims with excitement, quietly murmuring in anticipation. The adults look on with interest, but the children in the audience are enraptured. A girl and her dog, dressed in white and blue, appear in the aisle. She throws his toy on stage and it bounces off a massive white cube, opening a portal to another world. So begins Echo, Cirque du Soleil’s newest show in the South Bay. It’s a story of nature and cycles, rediscovery and renewal, following a young character as she embarks on the journey of a lifetime.
When one thinks of carnivals, fairs or the circus, they picture a traveling city that parks momentarily on the outskirts of town, as if its injection of cultural color is too vibrant for daily use. While Cirque du Soleil has constructed a big top tent at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds, it’s equally focused on connecting with the community in exciting, engaging ways. Beyond Echo, Cirque du Soleil is visiting local institutions like the Tech Museum and the Santa Clara library for a series of smaller, more accessible exhibitions of its trademark artistry. While Cirque du Soleil is made for everyone, children seem particularly enchanted by their performances, whether it’s acrobatics, contortion or juggling.
In the realm of live entertainment, few organizations can blend wonder, creativity and innovation quite like Cirque du Soleil. It’s made its name on grandeur and boundary-pushing performance because it finds the hallowed sweet spot between sport and art. This dazzling combination of showmanship and technical ability has turned Cirque du Soleil into an institution.
Echo, in particular, was born out of uncertainty. Created just before the pandemic, the show had to be put on pause before it could spread its wings. Once normal life resumed, the concept was resurrected and reassessed, sometimes as the nights went on. “There is still an evolution,” says Cirque du Soleil artistic director Fabrice Lemire. “We can forge it a bit here and there, but the narrative remains.”
Lemire is a veteran ballet dancer, artist and choreographer. He’s worked on eight of the company’s productions since joining in 2008, five of which he had a direct hand in creating, such as Crystal. While both shows are similar in that “kind of human aspect of self-discovery,” says Lemire, Echo is more interpretive. “We go back to this massive cube, the protagonist, and the rawness of the acrobatic elements to tell the story.”
Cirque du Soleil is a billion-dollar franchise, but it wasn’t always that way. Funnily enough, the world’s premier circus started as a publicity stunt. Back in the ’80s, Quebecois performers Guy Laliberté and Gilles Ste-Croix organized a summer fair but needed funding to bring it to fruition. To raise their profile, Ste-Croix walked nearly 60 miles from Baie-Saint-Paul to Quebec City entirely on stilts.
The stunt resulted in enough government funding for an early iteration of the circus, called Les Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul, to tour Quebec in 1980. It was well-received but financially untenable. The pair spent another year creating La Fête Foraine, a street festival featuring circus performances and even workshops to teach the carnival arts to members of the public. This resulted in financial success and eventually, Le Grand Tour du Cirque du Soleil.
Now, Cirque du Soleil is a worldwide brand, staging shows in 300 cities on six continents. In 2017 alone, the company netted $1 billion in revenue. While the pandemic put a pause on exhibitions, the company is back and better than ever. Cirque du Soleil may be a grand affair, but it’s the intimate, immersive nature of each iteration that has earned the company such acclaim. This extends to the city around the big top tent; born out of street fairs and carnivals, Cirque du Soleil honors its roots by staging smaller exhibitions alongside its main exhibitions in every market. Take Echo, whose performers are venturing out to stage small shows at various libraries and museums in the South Bay.
Echo follows FUTURE and her canine companion, Ewai the DOG. By accident, they stumble upon an intimidating, mysterious cube. One chance move and they fall feet first through the veil into another realm. In their process of discovery, guided by animals akin to spirit guides, the pair learn how hope, empathy, and intention have the power to shape the world and themselves. “It’s about young adulthood, self-reflection, and exploration of where you fit in society?” says Lemire. “Where, what do you want to be as an adult?”
Echo is entrenched in heady symbolism, but it uses abstract concepts and minimalist adornments to ground the story in the journey that every person undergoes as they come of age. The cube that takes up much of the stage acts as a theme, a set piece, and a character. “The metaphor to it is very much a window to life opportunities, so at first the female lead is taking these pieces apart to discover what’s behind those doors,” Lemire says, adding: “It’s like this way of self-reflecting onto yourself and discovering who you are and what you stand for… And then she will rebuild this cube with the help of others to make it her own journey, her own road, and own path.”
Speaking of paths, performer Thomas Gaskin and one-half of the Double Trouble “clowns” in Echo, followed a foreshadowed road to Cirque du Soleil. He was raised in a big top in the United Kingdom, where various family members practiced the circus arts. “I grew up selling candy floss and popcorn and doing spotlight,” Gaskin says.
This led to a performance career, whether it was stand-up comedy, acting, modeling or circus shows. This is his first role with the Cirque du Soleil company. In the show, Gaskin’s character acts as a ringleader of sorts, serving as a link between the audience and Echo’s protagonist.
He, along with his partner (the other half of Double Trouble), provides engagement, levity, and distraction as one set piece transforms into another. While prepared and well-rehearsed, the roles involve a fair amount of improvising; they respond to audience cues, performance embellishments, and narrative rhythms. Gaskin also sees parallels between his story and that of the FUTURE, the show’s protagonist.
“I do think there’s my journey to the show has quite a lot of similarities with the narrative of [Echo].. The idea of self-discovery and that sort of intimidated, sort of scary feeling there is with the lead character,” Gaskin says, adding: “but ultimately she finds this feeling of sort of interconnectedness and personal growth.”
A show like this requires a veritable village of cast, crew, management, publicists, and other players to bring to fruition. While some Cirque du Soleil shows feature a panoply of dazzling set pieces, Echo defers to an imposing two-story, 20-ton cube. This involves logistical challenges, organization and innovation.
Even with such an unwieldy prop in place, it’s the performers’ interaction with the cube and each other that transforms the show from exciting to transcendent; it takes the discipline of professional athletics combined with the risk-taking emotion of art.
In the same way that the big tent and cube must be torn down and built back up in each market, so does the story of Echo unfold, often with the expert use of projected visuals and even optical illusions. “I love the aspect of using that technicality, those technical elements, where you can just completely change your environment because of a projection,” Lamire says. “It’s like watching a movie. And you get absorbed while not having to move anything around. You follow the flow of that projection, and you find yourself in a completely different universe.”
The roving Echo circus features 122 permanent employees and 153 people total, including family members. This comprises a well-oiled machine, capable of erecting a miniature city of wonder for a month before skipping town. But Echo doesn’t require the level of set pieces other Cirque shows do—the performances are what matter. “It’s immersive in the regard that we take you and hold your hand, and you participate in the action,” Lemire says. “You are invited to react and respond through each number.”
Cirque du Soleil is all about establishing relationships—between the performers, the audience, and the community. While the type of engagement depends on the market, Cirque du Soleil takes pride in finding community wherever it lands. If it isn’t engaged in park cleanup or outreach to local gymnastic teams, it’s staging exhibitions of the carnival artistry that made its name. Echo’s aura translates perfectly for smaller iterations. Its journey of self-discovery, in a more accessible and bite-sized form, is sure to impact younger audiences at locations like the Children’s Discovery Museum, the Santa Clara Public Library and the San Jose Public Library.
Echo illustrates how the smallest actions can make the biggest waves. There’s no telling which kid will see it or one of its community extensions and be transformed, finding a path to their own place in the world’s greatest circus.
Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Echo’ will be at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose through May 11. Tickets are $63–$173. Visit cirquedusoleil.com/echo or call 877.924.7783.
Spelling of Fabrice Lemire’s name corrected on April 16, 2025.
