Friday, October 3, 2009
Cirque du Soleil Showcases Technology at School of Arts
The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area - by Matt Evans Staff writer
It’s tough to get a break in show biz, but a conference held this month at UNC-School of the Arts in Winston-Salem with Cirque du Soleil demonstrated the opportunities that exist in “entertainment technologies,” school officials said.
The UNCSA Southeastern Regional Entertainment Technology Conference was the first of what Cirque du Soleil hopes will become a series of events highlighting the technology that goes into the company’s performances. Cirque du Soleil, which is based in Canada, is known for its stylized acrobatic performances in permanent shows in cities such as Las Vegas and Orlando and on numerous tours around the world.
It takes 100 or more technicians behind the scenes to put on each Cirque du Soleil performance, said Dennis Booth, the assistant dean of the School of Design and Production at UNCSA. While the conference was not meant as a job fair, it did give students a good idea of the kinds of opportunities that are available with the company itself and with the suppliers of its lighting and sound technologies, he said.
“We graduate something like 50 to 75 students out of our graduate and undergraduate (technical) programs each year, and they have almost 100 percent employment rates coming right out of school,” Booth said. “Our performance schools, sadly, can’t say that.”
Leave a reply