The Big Top

The Cirque du Soleil mobile "village" includes the Grand Chapiteau (Big Top), artistic tent, entrance tents, VIP tent, box office, kitchen, school, office trailers, warehouses and more.
180,000 square feet (4.2 Acres or 17,000 square meters) is needed to house the entire site including the tents and trailers.
The artistic tent is 1,300 square feet (120 square meters) and houses areas for: wardrobe, warm up and training, physiotherapy and dressing rooms.
It takes 11 days for more than 200 workers, including 100 hired locally, to complete a city to city transfer of the infrastructures.
It takes 7 days to set up the site and all the infrastructures and it takes 2 days to completely tear it down.
This represents at least 11 000 man hours which represents 5.5 years of work if one guy did it alone!
An average of 55 tractor trailers are needed to carry more than 2 million pounds of equipment from city to city.
Completely self-sufficient for electrical power, the site relies only on a local water supply and telecommunication facilities to support its infrastructure.

The Grand Chapiteau measures 165 feet (50 meters) in diameter and is supported by four 82-foot-high (25 meters) steel masts.
The Grand Chapiteau is comprised of 18 pieces of flame retardant vinyl canvas and is manufactured in Bordeaux, France by Voileries du Sud-Ouest, internationally renowned for their big tops.
The climate-controlled Grand Chapiteau seats more than 2,500 people.
The Big Top is held down by roughly 400 stakes, 5' (1.5 meters) nails.
The cupola is 52 ft (16 meters) above the ground.
The Big Top can support winds up to 200 km/h.
A Big Top lifespan is about ten years, depending on the conditions of use (storage, temperature and frequency of setup/tear-down).
The Big Top infrastructure costs roughly $1.6 million. This does not include the stands or the other tents.

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