Performance

Cirque du Soleil Makes Its Comeback Sunday and

Miami Artist Becomes Pre-game Hero

By Cynthia Archbold

Giant shocking-pink flamingos dancing on stilts are among the stars slated for the eight-minute, over-the-top Super Bowl pre-game show. 

And the guy who is responsible for hiring and directing them is none other than Miami choreographer/dancer/actor Octavio Campos.

Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian performance troupe that almost managed to turn the Jackie Gleason Theater into its permanent Miami Beach home, is producing the Super Bowl pre-game show, teaming up with 

Miami pop art icon, Romero Britto, who will design the set and costumes.

Campos says the show will be Biblical in scale (even by Cirque’s over- the-big-top standards), featuring a cast of 400 — a living, morphing and, at times, flying canvas for Britto.

“Most of the 400 are volunteering,” Campos says of the hundreds of  very limber Miami locals who will take part in the show. Most are college and high school students and cheerleaders. Ten of the stars are artists Campos hand picked, mostly members of his own Miami-based expressionist performance art company, 

Camposition. They are scheduled to take center stage at Dolphin Stadium before the big game along with a handful of Cirque’s professional trampoline artists.

“I am really excited to be a part of it and the cast is really excited too, because it’s the Super Bowl and it’s Cirque du Soleil,” says Campos, a tall and charismatic man with an infectious, unpredictable expressiveness.

But, because this is really Cirque’s production, he has to rein in that enthusiasm a bit.

“Security is tight, tight, tight” he says. Media are barred from rehearsals, which are taking place in a Miami high school and two other undisclosed locations.

However, Campos reveals that the show is Britto-esque, describing it as tropical Deco football.

The key action takes place on a giant trampoline designed to look like a football field with Britto-designed palm trees as the goal posts.

Despite Cirque’s cone of silence, Campos lets on that Cirque trampoline artists will “fly through the air like footballs being kicked into the end zone.” Perhaps the most spectacular image he describes is that of a young performer strapped to a high-tech giant football balloon 50 feet above the earth.

Campos was tapped to direct the professionals, including six stilt walkers in flamingo garb and four other characters who will perform close-ups for the TV cameras; other team leaders will handle the 

volunteer cast.

So how did Campos win the Cirque Super Bowl star search?

In his opinion, “I am an expressionist performance artist and choreographer. There are not too many of us. Cirque’s style is very expressionistic, so they identified me.”
 

Cirque du Soleil talent scout Annemaria Duchenne says Campos’ wildly creative reputation was the big attraction. Last fall, she hunted him down in Miami, having heard that “he creates eccentric and nouveau 

types of shows and has a lot of connections with artists,” she says. “Everything I heard was true.”

She watched Campos in action, teaching at one of the ultimate laboratories of potential Cirque performers, downtown Miami’s New World School of the Arts.

“Original?” she says. “He’s beyond that. He’s unique, avant garde, really has his finger on the pulse of what is needed in the artistic community — not only in Miami, but everywhere,” she says. “He’s a 

magnificent artist.”

She sums up his artistic appeal this way, “He’s deep, he’s profound, he’s real, and he has a sense of humor about him at the same time.”

How did Campos develop his gifts? Born and raised in Miami, he studied in the prestigious dance and music composition programs at State University of New York, Purchase, then auditioned his way to 

Munich and a contract as a paid state artist, choreographing and performing in original productions and touring all over Germany.

He returned to Miami four years ago, where he founded Camposition and got a job at New World School of the Arts teaching movement and creative process. Camposition is currently presenting “Subversive 

Cabaret,” an ongoing performance series at the group’s studio in Little Havana, 247 SW Eighth St.

“Because he trained in Europe he has a different flair of how to present shows,” says Cirque’s Duchenne. But there is something else about him. “He’s really an exceptional person in addition to being a 

magnificent artist,” she says.

“I attended one of his classes … and the exchange he has between him and his students is really remarkable. You can tell that he is creating a future of very original artists like himself.”

Will Cirque come back to Miami to find future stars?

“Because of Octavio … most definitely, because he is creating the type of artist that Cirque du Soleil will be hiring potentially,” she says.

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