BWW Blog: Gillian Abbott - My First Job

When I was seventeen years old I was invited to audition for Cirque du Soleil in Vancouver, BC. I went to the audition solely for experience and to have my face seen as I was too young to be offered a contract (the minimum age was 18). After close to eight hours of dancing phrases, improvising, partnering, acting and sharing solos, the casting director asked me if I would be able to move to Las Vegas within months. I told her, "I'll move in a heart beat if I have the opportunity". On February 14th she phoned my house and asked to speak to my mom. I was legally too young for her to speak directly to me. She said they were very interested in hiring me for the Beatles LOVE show. My family had seen the show the summer it opened and after swaying together singing the finale "All You Need Is Love", I turned to my dad and said "that's what I want to do with my life". Although my mom knew this and thought it all sounded very exciting, she was also shocked and suddenly nervous about her youngest child leaving so soon.

The contract with Cirque was not immediately finalized so I decided to pursue my plan of auditioning for dance colleges. I left the next day for Houston, TX where I was to audition for The Juilliard School. From Houston I went to Pittsburg to audition for Point Park. After a day of auditioning at the conservatory, on my way up to meet with the Dance Director, I read a text message from my sister that read something like this, "YOU BOOKED LOVE!!! WE'RE MOVING TO VEGAS!!". Turns out my sister and mom had been talking to the casting director from Cirque all day and my sister had agreed to be my legal guardian until I turned eighteen so I could take the job. I have the most amazing sister in the world!

I went back to my hometown Calgary, Alberta to finish up high school. Luckily I went to a private sports school and had fast tracked most of my courses so in my last semester of grade 12 I only had English to finish. In April I packed up my life and headed to Montreal, Quebec where I learned the LOVE show at the Cirque du Soleil head quarters.

June 1, 2008 was my first official show at LOVE. I performed ten shows a week for an entire year. It was such an incredible experience! I was surrounded by amazingly talented colleagues who soon became by brothers, sisters, mammas and papas. I was introduced to the professional world in such a beautiful light and I cannot begin to express how blessed I feel. I grew every night, making the show new and fresh for every audience.

That winter I made an extremely difficult decision to turn down a second year contract with LOVE, beginning in June 2009, to pursue school. I should mention that my "thank you for auditioning" decline letter from my first audition for Juilliard arrived while I was already performing in LOVE. It was a huge risk to turn down a contract in order to re-audition for schools, however I was determined to study my art and I trusted something would work out. I studied for my SATs (not something Canadian schools require) and was granted a couple of days off from the show to fly to New York to audition for Juilliard and NYU Tisch. The day I got my acceptance phone call form Juilliard my stage manager announced it over the intercombackstage. It was incredibly hard to leave such a supportive family, but everyone was very encouraging that I was moving in an honorable direction.

Stay tuned for my experience at Juilliard!

Love, Gillian Abbott

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