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Dergin Tokmak's remarkable journey from hip-hop to Cirque du Soleil.
On a stage show filled with complicated apparatus - Russian swings, trapeze,
trapdoors, wires and pulleys - Dergin Tokmak’s solo on crutches is still a sit-up-andtake-
notice performance. His character, the “limping angel” in Cirque du Soleil’s
Varekai, whirls round the stage on his crutches like a dervish, using them like a
gymnast on a pommel horse to kick his legs out and up: gravely showing the character
Icarus, who has lost the use of his legs after falling from the heavens, that he can and
should get up off the ground.
Tokmak should know. Although the “limping angel” was created for and performed
by an able-bodied tumbler, Tokmak has been reliant on crutches and a wheelchair
since the age of one, when he contracted polio. His own angel came in the form of his
cousin who, in their German hometown, introduced him to hip-hop in 1986. “This
subculture,” he says, “changed my life.”
Already itching to find an outlet for his 12-year-old energy, he found breakdancing
was perfect.
“Hip-hop was a big thing when it came to Germany - everyone was right into
breakdancing, you could see everybody practising on the karton [cardboard], trying
out tricks, and my cousin was a very good dancer, and he always took me out with
him.”
Too young to get into nightclubs, Tokmak practised his backspins and windmills at
youth centres until his cousin one day brought home the minor 80s hip-hop classic
Breakin’, which featured - just for a few seconds - a dancer on crutches.
“And from then on I changed my whole thing - never again to practise on the floor. I
tried to do some tricks like he did on the crutches and then I just tried to concentrate on the crutches and develop my own style.”
Under the street name “Stix”, Tokmak had already toured extensively as a back-up
dancer for acts like Run DMC when Cirque du Soleil scouts came calling three years
ago. He sent in a demo tape after hearing about the job, but had no idea what he was
in for. In the warm-up space backstage at the Grand Chapiteau, with a contortionist
performing 190 degree splits and bending her spine in half behind him, Tokmak cracks a
huge grin, remembering his reaction to the scout.
“I had no idea about the circus in the beginning -- I wasn’t sophisticated enough to
know it! I had no idea until I was telling my friends and saying, ‘Did you ever hear
about the Cirque du Soleil?’ And they were like, ‘Of course, man! You don’t know the
Cirque du Soleil?!’”
When the circus brought him to Montreal for rehearsals, he began to understand the
character “as part of my own life story, but told in a fantasy way”. When he first had
to dance to a classical piece, however, “I was, like, I don’t know. It was very hard in
the beginning to do all the things they expected of me. I’d never played a character or
done any of the movements I do now on the stage. My background is just acrobatic,
just breakdancing.”
Introducing athletes to new dramatic disciplines is artistic director Marc-Anthony
Thomas’s job.
“It brings out the challenges,” says Thomas. “You have to say, yes, this is good, but
now you have to put emotion in it, this kind of movement.”
With 19 nationalities and any number of artistic, athletic and musical backgrounds
within the troupe, Thomas sees his role as achieving balance within the performance
– “because they come from all types of backgrounds, I have to make sure they fill all
the other areas. So, for example, our dancers have to be trained to be a lot more
disciplined, a lot more focused, like the athletes. It’s a yin and yang kind of situation.”
The long tours with Cirque du Soleil keep the show fairly fixed, but ideas within it will
evolve. Tokmak’s dance, as a case in point, wasn’t a showpiece under the previous
performer; it was Tokmak who took it to the next level as a standout solo.
“What I do,” Thomas explains, “is keep rehearsing the show, working with the artists,
finding new tricks, finding new ways to do what they’re doing - as well as when new
artists come in, training them to integrate them into the show. If you were to see it
next year, some things would be a little different, but the theme will stay the same.”
Having worked on projects as diverse as Broadway in Poland and Superbowl halftime
entertainment, Thomas doesn’t find working in a tent (albeit a five-star tent) all that
different from a stage or a 70,000-seat arena.
“Art is art to me. Telling someone to perform for one person, there’s just as much
given as is given to another person.
“But I love doing big events and that’s why I enjoy working with Cirque. The training
is not too different, and it’s great working with people who are really dedicated to
what they do. That makes it 100 percent better to work with them than people who
are just doing it for the money - they’re doing it for a little bit more than that,
because they’re actually giving up a lot of their lives - and actually in some cases even
risking their lives.”
Tokmak admits to enjoying the job security that Varekai brings. He’s clearly found a
niche within Cirque du Soleil and would like a spot in one of their permanent shows
(preferably not in Las Vegas). Hip-hop, he says, has changed; Cirque du Soleil has
taught him to tell different stories with different music. Seventies folk is a current
favourite.
He’s been working on dancing in his chair - a modified type with splayed wheels,
similar to the chairs the Wheel Blacks play rugby in - and performed in the chair and
on crutches in the last clip James Brown made before his death, a remix of “Sex
Machine”. Brimming with ideas, he’s also working on a duet - with the male on
crutches. Is he ever tempted to bust out moves in the street to surprise people?
“Yeah, I do that! When I have an idea, I just have to. My dance developed in the
street, so it’s part of my life from day to day, how I live. I just put it in.”
VAREKAI, Cirque du Soleil, Auckland ASB Showgrounds (to February 11)
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