Cirqueing his duties

Last August, an estimated 2 billion people watched gymnast Li Ning sprint along the upper rim of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium, the torch-lighting climax to the 2008 Olympics’ stunning opening ceremonies. Those ceremonies reaffirmed the pure power of visual, sonic and kinesthetic spectacle to unite audiences from widely different cultures, even if their director, Zhang Yimou, observed sourly to London’s Daily Telegraph that such feats were hard to replicate in the West, where “everyday there are two coffee breaks and no one can suffer any discomfort because of human rights.”

Naperville resident Dwight Jordan is well poised to refute Zhang’s prediction. This spring, Jordan steps in as the director of Cirque Shanghai’s Navy Pier production Bright Spirit, the acrobatic troupe’s fourth foray into Chicago. Jordan’s résumé testifies to his skills as a crafter of popular entertainments; he’s directed long-running, tourist-pleasing shows for Six Flags Great America (Love at First Fright, Show Stoppin’) and the country & western mecca of Branson, Missouri (A Christmas Carol, Headin’ West).

The kind of spectacular entertainment in which Jordan specializes demands a talent for synthesizing a wide array of design and production elements; it’s not just a matter of droppin’ final gs. For Jordan, who grew up playing several instruments, the key element is the music. “The musical is always what drives the visual,” he explains via Skype from Shanghai, where the show is rehearsed. “If the music’s right, everything else connects. The productions feel cohesive because the performers and the production team understand the music.” Featuring a soundtrack of classical and contemporary Asian music, Bright Spirit has required careful fine-tuning to match each specialized act with music that brings it to life.

Pop-spectacle director isn’t really the kind of career that guidance counselors (or theater departments) prep one for. How did Jordan end up in his position? “It was an accident, really,” he says. At Millikin University in downstate Decatur, he studied music education; like many talented instrumentalists, he had an eye toward directing high-school bands. Upon gaining that position at nearby Mt. Zion High School in 1978, he began helming the school’s show choir; Jordan remains the director of the 30-year-old organization Showchoir Camps of America, which he cofounded. (If you’re not familiar with show choirs, it’s a concept pioneered by the traveling troupe Up With People: fresh-faced kids dedicated to improving the world through brassy and tightly choreographed sets of easy-listening and Broadway standards. The new Fox TV show Glee lovingly mocks the unique phenomenon.)

Jordan clearly had a knack for show choirs: Integrating singing and dancing into loosely thematic showcases, his groups started winning regional and national competitions. And he caught the attention of Six Flags, which commissioned a Halloween-oriented musical extravaganza. Jordan credits his unusual path to his early training and varied experiences in music, both performing and directing.

As he prepares to usher Bright Spirit to its lakefront berth—a new cross-cultural experience for him that came about via a Branson connection—Jordan expresses amazement at both the prowess of the show’s acrobats and the ease with which he’s negotiated the cultural distance between Naperville and Shanghai. “The acts are just incredible,” he says. “They still surprise me as I sit and watch them.” Performers are catapulted from teeterboards to be caught standing; others on a Russian barre—basically a stick held up by a pair of porters—flip through the air and effortlessly regain their footing.

A particular revelation for Jordan was the troupe’s hat jugglers, not the flashiest-sounding routine. “But then one guy’s juggling seven hats, and they’re standing on each other and making pyramids,” he explains. The show as a whole aims at uplift; the acrobats’ physical discipline and the design’s sensory amplitude serve to make emotional connections with the audience. Jordan’s ultimate goal sounds as modest at first as the deceptively simple jugglers: “I want the audience to leave happier than they were when they arrived.”

Cirque Shanghai’s Bright Spirit brightens Navy Pier’s Skyline Stage Wednesday 3–September 7.

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