Cirque du Soleil is like the best circus acts in the world.
Everything they do is always top notch,
and they’ve really got like a sort of almost mythical reputation.
We’re in Glasgow, and we are doing
a Cirque du Soleil C:LAB exploration workshop.
It’s stuff that you’d never find in like a normal skate park
or anywhere else in the world.
This workshop is a lot about experimentation.
They’re very much of the belief that they can kind of train somebody up
to almost do anything, or make the impossible possible.
We’re just trying to get all synchronized.
We just need to kind of be focused and be switched on,
because any minute, like your mind slips, yeah, you’re just gonna crash
or come right off the side.
We start to work with bicycles in other shows,
but now we have that organ, that is really dedicated to that,
to push the limit in any direction.
The main objective is to see if
it’s possible to ride bikes on the Wheel of Death.
There’s Vision Ramps, the Cirque du Soleil performance
and then the BMXs are all coming together
to bring three different worlds together as one.
Vision have basically built a contraption
that is going to mimic one of the circles of the Wheel of Death.
So they’re just kind of working out whether
it’s possible to ride outside of it and also inside of it.
It’s definitely out there in terms of bike riding.
Today, we’ve got a free-standing, 8-foot-high, Wheel-of-Death wannabe,
and we’re just essentially trying to see what it’s like
to ride the wheel just when it’s rolling.
Yesterday was with the scaffolding around
to make sure they can adapt to the speed of the wheel
and to react to the mechanism,
and now we are going to try without.
I would say that I’m not scared, but a little concerned.
That is terrifying.
It’s kind of how I imagined it, where simple things would work,
but then there’d be so much development as we went on,
and just with like being able to push it.
Been awesome, especially the hamster wheel.
Been designing that for a few months,
so it’s really cool to see the guys finally ride on it.
You got to concentrate when you’re trying that.
It’s progression.
As well as riding on the actual apparatus,
we want to see if the riders can jump through it.
The Wheel of Death, we’re just jumping through it.
Even that by itself, jumping through it is pretty scary,
because you can’t see the landing.
It’s totally blind. It’s getting scary.
I thought he was dead.
I think this is absolutely insane,
it’s like nothing that anyone has ever rode before.
It’s quite amazing to see these guys going through that small space.
They’re really bringing something really different. I like it.
If the question if me, can I see already an act?
For sure, but not just one.
We were getting a lot of inspiration by watching those guys.
They are so crazy and so incredibly talented.
Again for me, it’s always the same thing:
it’s pushing the human physical limits.
That’s what we do, and that’s definitely what those guys did.
It’s cool, it’s exciting, and there’s like a lot of work to do.
This is the first workshop we’re doing for the show.
I’m sure there’ll be many more.
Definitely excited to see where all this is gonna go.
It’s been amazing, but it’s definitely been scary and bit intimidating.
I can’t wait to see how this all turns out,
and this is the first stages of development.
So far it’s looking pretty promising,
and I’m sure it’s gonna be an amazing in the end.