In our Leading Women series this week,
we take a look inside the fantasy world of Cirque Du Soleil and introduce you to the company's casting director, Krista Monson. She is the guardian of talent.
She oversees a dynamic pool of artists that even includes former Olympians.
Her name can inspire fear when uttered in audition hallways, but with her warmth and tone of voice, she is anything but an imposing figure.
I really try hard to always keep that level of humanity in my relations with artists and everybody.
She oversees a team of scouts that look for performers in the western U.S. and Canada that could be used by Cirque du Soleil shows worldwide.
Her team also picks performers for the company's ten year-round U.S. shows.
This guardian of talent, former dancer and choreographer,
mother of two boys and wife to a Cirque du Soleil band leader is Krista Monson.
The fantasy world of Cirque du Soleil. It pulls audiences in with its breathtaking acrobatics, otherworldly scenery and stunning choreography.
In any of the company's 21 shows, you could see singers, dancers, jugglers, clowns, contortionists, acrobats and more.
Krista Monson is one of a handful of casting directors bringing them in.
The needs of Cirque du Soleil are so varied, Monson's team has to be across seven what they call "discipline families,"
and nearly 500 artistic and acrobatic profiles fall within those families.
Sport, circus, instrumentalists, singers, dance, actors and clowning. Under the sport umbrella, there are probably over 100 disciplines.
The job of Monson's team is to know what the shows need and then to find it.
It is a massive mission, and though Monson is a former dancer and choreographer herself, she admits the needs of Cirque du Soleil go far beyond her base of knowledge.
You can't be an expert at everything. It's impossible.
And what is possible, though, is to have experts as part of the casting team that understand those communities, understand how musicians work, understand how clowns work,
and react to our approach, and what will help inspire those artists to want to work with us.
So, even if you're talking about an Olympic diver or an Olympian, artistic excellence is usually something that's not in their vocabulary.
They're seasoned pros at... in what they do. They've been doing it for years and years and years and years and years, and they're at a very high level.
And we want that high level. But we also want them to be open-minded. We want them to take risks. We want to get them out of their comfort zone.
We are hit occasionally with a certain artist that comes to us and we cannot categorize them.
And we actually like those moments, because we know we're hopefully discovering something new.
Monson's soothing, welcoming demeanor is the same whether she's leading a meeting of her staff or directing a singer during an audition.
We really are proud that our auditions are hopefully not a cattle call, you know, with that they are an experience for an artist.
And that's the opportunity for me to say, hey, we're all... we all get here somehow,
and we're all human beings, and let's work hard and if you feel uncomfortable at some point in this audition, it means you're doing something right.