Pandora's box office: 'Avatar'-themed Cirque show comes to Target Center

While some of us dream of living on another planet someday, two Minnesotans have been doing something like that for the last year. They work on "Toruk — The First Flight," a Cirque du Soleil show inspired by the hit movie "Avatar."

"Toruk" is massive. When it comes to Minneapolis at the end of September, it will fill the Target Center with its recreation of the planet Pandora.

There, a blue-skinned people with long tails known as the Na'vi live in a dense forest. Trees erupt from the ground, rivers ebb and flow, and wondrous creatures stalk through and fly across the landscape.

Puppeteer Rob Laqui is one of the performers bringing the animals and birds to life. He's experienced. He was one of the puppeteers inside the title character in the stage show "Warhorse." But he had to learn a whole new skill set for "Toruk," including living with a 3-foot tail.

"Everyone has their own way of doing it, but I know I definitely have a technique of how to run with a tail," he said.

"Don't step on somebody else's tail," his compatriot Ali Schwalbe added.

"Careful when you are turning around too fast, because you can whip somebody in the face," Laqui continued. "Especially if you are in the audience."

Schwalbe, a wardrobe assistant, has to make and repair costumes that accommodate tails. The clothing also has to allow the Na'vi to literally swing from the rafters.

"You have to make it work with them, and work for them," she said. "It has to look the way they want it to look, but it also has to perform with them and it can't hinder them in their movements and what they need to do for the show."

Schwalbe is from Roseville. She's been on the road for a year with "Toruk," but she still considers the Twin Cities home. She loved seeing Cirque du Soleil in Minneapolis when she was a girl, but never thought she'd ever work for Cirque.

"And then I finished sewing school at [Minneapolis Community & Technical College] here, and one of the shows was here in town, and I got picked up as a local," she said. "And then it just kept going from there."

"And then you ran away with the circus!" Laqui said, laughing.

"And then I ran away with the circus," she agreed.

Laqui took a different route into the company. He grew up in Edina and became a dancer, graduating with a BFA in musical theater performance from St. Mary's University in Winona.

He moved to New York in 2000 and auditioned for Cirque de Soleil a few years later. The organization put his application on file and said to keep in touch. It wasn't until the fall of 2014, after he had added puppetry to his resume, that he got a job offer.

"You never know," he said. "It's not a thing to give up. It can happen, literally over a decade later."

"Learn how to puppeteer," said Schwalbe. "You never know when it will come in handy."

"It's a skill set! It's a life skill! It's a life-hack," Laqui responded.

Both Laqui and Schwalbe ended up in Montreal in early 2015 for four months' intensive rehearsal.

Cirque de Soleil representative Laura Silverman says "Avatar" film director James Cameron has long been an admirer of Cirque de Soleil.

"And he's actually been heard saying that some of the ways the Na'vi move in 'Avatar' was inspired by some of the movement that he'd seen from Cirque de Soleil artists," she said.

When Cirque pitched the idea of a show based on the world of the film, Cameron agreed. But it was clear to everyone that having human avatars would be too complex.

"It was decided to just be the Na'vi, a prequel," said Silverman.

So "Toruk: The First Flight" is set thousands of years before "Avatar."

The show is a technological wonder. Performers wear tracking devices that allow 90 remote-controlled spotlights to keep each character perfectly lit at all times.

Forty powerful projectors in the ceiling animate the entire set. Images of water can swirl through the audience and onto the stage at one moment, and engulf it in molten lava the next.

All this is combined with the acrobatic skills of the Cirque de Soleil performers. "Toruk" runs at Target Center from Sept. 28 through Oct. 3.

Laqui said that with 200 performances of the show already done on the tour, he thinks "Toruk" just gets better and better.

"You have elite-level athletes, and also what I consider elite-level artists," he said. "And the fact that they are at this level just drives everyone to achieve more and more."

"Toruk" is likely to stay on the road for three years more, touring one world while creating another.