Isabelle Corradi
She sings with dolphins, dances with aliens, and earns a living making people happy. Meet Isabelle Corradi, the most unusual cosmopolitan in the world.
It’s early Sunday morning in Cologne, Germany. Isabelle Corradi is raising her face towards the caressing June sun in a park next to the tents of Cirque du Soleil. Some of them are being taken down: today’s two performances are the last ones in the city. “Tomorrow I’ll be in Mexico – swimming and singing with dolphins in the Caribbean,” Isabelle says dreamily. “Yes, I sing and they respond…”
But tonight, this petite woman with bright, smiling eyes will sing for the Cologne audience. The energy of her vibrant mezzo-soprano will fill the Grand Chapiteau, where the “Varekai” story unfolds. This show is Cirque du Soleil’s tribute to the global citizenship of its artists, the “nomadic soul, the spirit and art of the circus tradition,” as the program reads. The word varekai means “wherever” in the language of Roma Gypsies, to whom the whole world is a home – just like it is for the circus performers.
Spiritually connected with dolphins
Violaine Corradi, Isabelle's sister and soulmate, is composer and musical director of "Varekai"
But the world is not enough for the lead singer, “the Muse” of “Varekai,” Isabelle Corradi. Her home is the Universe – no less and no more. When talking about people, the singer refers to them as “humans”: humans going out to eat, humans shopping on a Monday afternoon. She feels spiritually connected with dolphins and believes that souls reincarnate to assist people in their personal growth. She is fascinated with extraterrestrial life, and dreams that one day science will enable us to meet creatures from the stars.
It requires quite a deal of open-mindedness and departure from convention to converse with such an extraordinary lady. Obviously puzzled by the question about her motherland, Isabelle plays with the word as if she has heard it for the first time: “Mother-land… Mother? Land? What do I say to that one? Yes and no, no and yes. I have beautiful friends that I love and cherish – in Montreal,” she says. “But I am in Montreal two or one and a half months a year. Yes, I’m happy when I go there, but I love the Earth, I love the oceans, I love the mountains!”
Becoming a nomad
16 years ago in Quebec’s largest city, Isabelle Corradi was at a crossroads. A spiritual cassette tape she received from a friend gave her unexpected guidance: Some of you will have to leave your motherland to go and spread the light everywhere in the world… These words sounded like a calling. “I am one of those!” Isabelle exclaimed.
Many people would scratch their heads trying to make sense of such a message. But Isabelle Corradi didn’t even have time to contemplate it: she was invited to bring her resumé to Cirque du Soleil. Yearning to belong to the company’s “pioneers and visionaries,” Isabelle rehearsed, jogged, stretched, danced and “belted her heart out” to Celine Dion’s most difficult songs in anticipation of the audition. And, yes, the prophecy of the voice from the cassette came true! After many an audition and many a day, the circus’s composer asked her: “Do you want to be one of us?”
The global lifestyle
From that day onward, she has been a part of the team made up of performers from 40 countries. “When I go to work, I feel I’m in the United Nations,” Isabelle says with a laugh. “I say ‘hi!‘, ‘nee-hao!‘ ‘hallo!‘, ‘bonjour!‘, ‘bongiorno!‘, ‘privet!‘, ‘kak dela?‘ ” The Italian-born French Canadian has learned to respect all nationalities and their customs before, after and during work, inside the marquees of the Cirque and outside them – no matter where they are pitched.
“For example in Japan, if you blow your nose in public, it’s an insult. In my country you can blow your nose anywhere. We have to learn the rules of each other to have peace.” In Cirque du Soleil, this goes way beyond etiquette and diplomacy. Isabelle is still thrilled by the solidarity and harmony among the 56 performers of “Varekai”: “My God, it’s so beautiful: when there was that war happening between Russia and Georgia – on stage every night we had Russians and Georgians. We were performing together, giving love, doing the best! If it can happen in a little microcosm, it can happen WORLDWIDE!”
In America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand – wherever Isabelle is on tour – if strangers ask her where she works, their eyes light up the moment they hear “Cirque du Soleil” in response. “You see in their face they are happy – and that’s what we do: we bring joy. I remember we received a letter from a young girl. This girl had no more hope in life. She wanted to kill herself. Her mother brought her to see the “Saltimbanco” show, where I performed. And this girl felt like life and hope again and wrote a letter that touched us so much!” the singer recollects.
Beyond art
Such experiences empower Isabelle and all the cast: “We remember the good that we do and it gives us energy again. This is our mission; it goes beyond the art, beyond being a good singer or dancer – it’s all about giving love.”
Turning on the love-dispenser for 2,600 people, two hours long, eight to ten times a week, in a kaleidoscope of cities, doesn’t sound like an easy task. But Isabelle radiates charisma non-stop, sometimes even too intensively for a quiet conversation in a park. And it becomes obvious: her cosmic amount of energy is meant for the stage. “We are the masters of our life!” she convinces us, singing in the gibberish language in the spotlights of “Varekai,” while her colleagues are risking their lives on Russian swings, bending and knotting their bodies into seemingly impossible contortions, and flying through the air at dizzying heights in dramatic illustration of her message. “To help people free themselves, I must be free myself when I sing,” the artist explains. Free of what? Of doubts, guilt, fear. And of the limits that she believes exist only in people’s minds.
Fueling the “Varekai” muse’s creativity, her never-ending journey brings her together with people just as unusual as herself. In Cologne, Isabelle finally met the “extraterrestrial” from her visions – completely without the help of science.
The "UFO-player" Shuga Mausmaki
A fellow traveler under the Cologne Cathedral
He neither fell from the sky like Icarus in “Varekai,” nor did he descend in a flying saucer. But he sure did know how to handle a “UFO” – he elicited celestial sounds out of a lentil-shaped metal instrument right in the heart of the Cologne downtown. “I was like, ‘wo-o-ow, that’s amazing!’ I was breathtaken,” Isabelle recalls. The young street musician was playing the hang – a modern Swiss melodic percussion instrument. “Just his vibe… When he plays, he becomes his instrument! And I felt so much love – how much he loves music and human beings. And it was stronger than me, ‘it’ said: you must ask contact of this person, you need to have connection!”
After the show
He calls himself “The UFO Player” or “Shuga Mausmaki.” The exotic-looking, Ukrainian-born street musician from Israel doesn’t stay in one place for too long. Shuga hadn’t heard much about Cirque du Soleil, but was delighted by Isabelle’s rare gift – a free pass to the “Varekai.”
After the show, the neophyte Cirque admirer, beaming with delight, gave Isabelle homemade ayurvedic sweets as a sign of gratitude. And then it dawned upon her: it’s him, the one she’s been looking for!…the artist embodying the being from the stars in the dance she is bringing to the stage in Zurich. “When you talk to her, sometimes the things she says make you realize where your own mental borders lie, because she seems not to have any at all. It’s weird. But as soon as she starts singing, you understand everything,” says Isabelle’s new friend.
A never-ending journey
Isabelle and Shuga in a park in Cologne
They have been inspiring each other for two weeks now. Shuga, a devout vegetarian, cooked the like-minded Isabelle his favorite Krishnaitic dishes, which she describes as a “gastronomic crescendo.” Fortified with spiritually correct food, they sang, acted, danced, composed and recorded music, rehearsed and shot video for the future show in Zurich. Laughing and playing, they even developed their own language made up of sounds, gestures and newly invented words. “He calls me ‘Segnor-r-ri-ina Delfi-ina,’ ” the singer says, all smiles.
On a park bench, Isabelle looks at the sterling silver ring on her finger with two dolphins intertwined. Tomorrow she will be in Mexico swimming with the dolphins. And “The UFO Player” will soon be tapping on his hang in Kiev. But Isabelle’s newly found soul mate has already become a part of her journey – as the Roma people would say, varekai.
“It doesn’t matter if I am wherever and Shuga is wherever. The Earth is very small. Right now we are using planes, but who knows – maybe one day we’ll just teleportate ourselves?” she asks playfully and winks.
Since human physical capabilities are not quite there yet, Isabelle Corradi will have to use traditional means of transportation to get to Zurich – her upcoming destination beyond the borders of imagination, where she will no doubt create a show as thought- and sense-provoking as anything this cosmopolitan does.
Listen to the music of the “UFO-Player” and Isabelle talking
Xenia Polska is a student of the International Media Studies Program, a joint effort by Deutsche Welle, The Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences and The University of Bonn.
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What a beautiful piece! Love the audio at the end!!!