LAUREN RATH - "Skin Tight" Cirque du Soleil theater

Skin Tight: a circus from Lauren Rath on Vimeo.

Skin Tight brings the excitement and spectacle of the circus out onto the streets.  Masked in a costume of rubberized fabric, the building enacts its own performance—as a jumbo-sized street performer—animating during performances and rehearsals when mechanized interior stage elements and rooms poke into the elastic skin.  During off-hours, the building poses as tableau vivant, and is overtaken by an unnatural stillness, countered by the subtle, nearly-imperceptible motion of its protuberant bar and cafe.  

In action, the façade wrapper hints at the motions of the interior performance, without betraying the ulterior, much like peeking around the edge of a circus tent might exacerbate the sense of anticipation and curiosity about the show.  The façade is proportioned like a billboard.  It can transform from being completely blank to a raised state of hyper-relief, emphasizing the façade’s complicated history mediating sign and signified.

The exterior draws upon the iconic shape of the circus tent and the motion of “raising the bigtop”.  The interior is amassed like a contortionist in a box, turned onto itself.  Upon entering the building, guests follow a sequence of encounters with the supple building skin, its fixed internal walls, and the sliding stage elements and rooms, emphasizing the nested closeness and interiority of the building.  People will feel as though they are “inside the machine”, a world unto itself, drawn through the sequential spaces by anticipatory views of what’s next.  Space is choreographed through a sequential progression of experiential vignettes during the ascent from entry to foyer and into the theater.  Interspersed bar and café areas offer intersecting views across the atrium.  Drawer-like moving rooms dock against each other before a performance and during intermissions, condensing social encounters and highlighting amusements during non-performance times.  

Within the theater auditorium, the stationary audience is treated to an immersive theatrical spectacle.  The radical frontality of the traditional proscenium is countered by moving stage elements that emerge from behind and above the audience, punctuating the performance with anticipation and surprise.