Circus + dance = Cirque du Soleil.

ON A LATE SUMMER DAY IN LAS VEGAS, A NERVOUS NATASHA Chao is learning perhaps her most gravity-defying Feat to date with Cirque du Soleil. Trained in gymnastics with a touch of classical ballet, the 28-year-old performer is the first woman to perform the Red Bird character in Cirque's Mystere. The feat she is learning was in the original choreography for the show and has since been dropped, it is a headfirst free fall of sixty feet, in which she curves her spine upright at the last minute before contact with a salary net.

Chao enjoys performing Red Bird, for, with her flair for the outrageous, she is comfortable with the interpretation and improvisation that Cirque du Soleil encourages. And, like other Cirque artists, she is a performer with impeccable timing and keen spatial awareness, She cannot afford injury, so she must he cautious; there are no understudies.

Cirque du Soleil ("Circus of the Sun" in French) hears the same relationship to a sawdust-and-peanuts circus that a Ferrari has to a pickup truck. There's nil booming-voiced ringmaster, no lion tamer--in fact, no animals at all. Familiar acts are reinvented so that gymnasts with eerie double-laced masks slither up poles; pear-shaped creatures in padded Spandex catapult from teeter-boards and trampolines: and dancing lizards and courtly acrobats in white wigs and breeches somersault over burning candelabras and fly through the air in aggressive aerial ballets. Each show is conceived as a unit, with its own title, look, and theme. Everything from the thunderous Wagnerian music to the performers' skin-tight unitards and birdlike headdresses reinforces the show's sleek, aerial character. Even the transitions are choreographed with military precision.

Yes, choreographed. Most Cirque performers are grounded in gymnastics and athletics, but all take movement classes as well. And then there are the out-and-out dancers--in Mystere (1993), for example, there are Oscar C. Hawkins and Rebecca Prince as Birds of Prey, Ruta Jasiukaitis as La Belle, Annick Moreau as The Black Virgin, and Fabrice Garcia and Phillippa Hayball as Lizards. The dancers appear during and between acts, providing some continuity to its loose, celebration-of-life story line. Another Cirque show, O, features acrobats who perform atop a floating barge with balletic prowess and dancers who grand jete along the rim of the set's mammoth indoor pool of water.

CIRQUE'S CHOREOGRAPHER, Debra Brown--who choreographs the "look" of a show in addition to its formal movement--says she knew from the age of 9 that dance would be her life. After choreographing for dance companies such as Experimental Dance and Music in Vancouver and the Victoria Arts Collective in Victoria, British Columbia, as well as for professional gymnasts, she fell under Cirque's spell in 1986 and joined the company the following year. Her early training in gymnastics, dance training in college (she majored in modern dance at York University in Toronto), and physical education work (in which she received a second baccalaureate degree at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario) have served her well with Cirque.

"There is certainly something to be learned by cross-referencing, by looking at other art forms and learning different ways to give expression to your passion to move and perform," Brown said in a telephone interview. "One thing all of the Cirque artists share in common is a passion for doing art. Circus performers, who risk their lives, are the most passionate."

A case in point is Chao, a Canadian who joined the cast of Mystere in 1993 and has performed the role of Red Bird (though not the risky fall) since 1999. "For my Cirque audition, we had to do crazy things--improvisation, acting, dance," she recalls. "It was very strange. Now I can't imagine being anywhere else. The work is so theatrical, the way the acts come together--it's like a melting pot."

Adds Chao: "Cirque is really safe. If there's an opportunity to wear a wire, you do. We realize the work is dangerous and it makes sense to be a little nervous. You have to have some fear, otherwise you don't take precautions--and that's dangerous."

Safety and performance are linked, says Pavel Brun, who has been with Cirque du Soleil since 1990 and has served as artistic director for both Mystere and O in Las Vegas. Brun trained at the Russia State Circus School and performed for twelve years with the Moscow Pantomime Theatre. "In the production of a show, the most tempting approach is to mesmerize the people in the audience, but we also want to touch them. It's possible to have both," Brun says. "The goal of a Cirque performer is not just to perform a quadruple somersault, but to treat it as some manifestation of a spiritual, inner life. The ideal performer should be hungry for such transformation. Like in dance, the goal is not the fouette turn or the arabesque, per se, but to have a language, a conversation, with the audience."

One performer who has managed this feat is Paul Bowler in Mystere. The 34-year-old gymnast, a former Olympic competitor, performs "The Aerial Cube." Done without a safety net, it is one of the most daring aerial feats in the show.

Twice nightly, Bowler spins a 6' x 6' metal-framed cube while performing a ballet of aerial maneuvers in and around it, forty feet above the stage. It's an act he first performed in Cirque du Soleil's Alegria in 1997, three years after the show had premiered, and at one time it included a pas de deux with dancer Moreau.

Says Bowler: "You have to be absolutely fabulous to capture someone's attention, especially when you're moving in a cube--it's like a frame and everyone's watching. Who wants to see just a gymnast? What is unique about Cirque is that it takes a [regular] gymnastic act and turns it into living art."

Cirque's multimillion-dollar operation is owned and controlled by the same artist-entrepreneurs who created it, and it continues to be based in its Montreal headquarters, known as the Studio, where all shows are created. Cirque du Soleil began as an idea in 1982 in Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec, where young street performers organized a festival. Its productions now total eight, with five touring worldwide under the familiar white or blue-and-yellow Big Top and three in permanent theaters (two in Las Vegas and one at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida). Most of the productions have been created by the same group of visionaries, headed by writer and director Franco Dragone and Director of Creation Gilles Ste-Croix. Costumes for most Cirque productions have been created by Dominique Lemieux and sets produced by Michel Crete. Dralion, which premiered in 1999, and Varekai (it rhymes with "share a pie"), which debuted this year in Montreal, are directed by Dominic Champagne and include a new team of creators.

The average age of Cirque du Soleil's 2,100 employees is 32 years, with more than forty nationalities represented and more than twenty-five languages spoken. About 500 are artistic performers, with about one-third hailing from Canada and another third from Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. Cirque du Soleil takes care of its own, with surprisingly low turnover at almost every level of management, performance, and production.

THE COMPANY'S SEARCH FOR the best talent and choreography is constant. A casting team conducts monthly searches and examines the resumes, video footage, and audiotapes the company receives daily from dancers, gymnasts, and others worldwide.

Cirque extends to its employees the same attention it lavishes on its productions. Benefits and working conditions are generous and include some profit sharing. On tour, performers say, they receive top-notch medical care and physical conditioning support.

"The original intent of Cirque du Soleil was to provide infrastructure and support for the artists," says Brun, "so that the artists could concentrate on their creativity, performance, and growth. So Cirque remunerates the performers so that they can afford good lodging, food, and health maintenance. We also take care of the artists' development in other ways--by providing workshops and master classes, perhaps with a specialist in [the improvisational and comic style of] commedia dell' arte that may not be directly show related, but it broadens the artists' horizons."

With such remuneration and benefits for its employees, and lavish productions, it is not surprising that a ticket for a Cirque du Soleil show is pricey (over $100 for O, making it one of the most expensive shows in Las Vegas). What customers are buying is more than a performance; not unlike buying fair-trade coffee, they are investing in a company that, despite demanding and risky aerial feats, is financially and artistically one of the safest places for a performer to be.

Gigi Berardi, a Dance Magazine contributor, is working on the second edition of her book Finding Balance: Fitness and Training for a Lifetime in Dance.