The lights are smoky, illuminating a fantastical forest setting. The music is mystical, almost tribal, with ethereal lyrics in an indistinguishable language.

Cirque du Soleil performers, typically known for their mind-boggling flexibility and daring acrobatics are on stage looking ... thoroughly unremarkable. Boring, even.

Without the surreal costumes of an actual performance, the nine people on stage in track pants and tank tops look more like they belong in Yates than under the big top. They are going through the motions of the Body Skating routine, working on timing and, for the moment, leaving out the twisting, tumbling, artistic moves for which the avant-garde circus company is best known.

The afternoon practice session looks a lot like skating around a slippery surface in socks — until one performer climbs onto her partner’s shoulders and twists their two bodies into contorted and incredible shapes, lazily and effortlessly, a reminder that these seemingly average people are capable of the incredible.

Being at a Cirque rehearsal is much like seeing a celebrity in the street — the aura of mystery and awe surrounding Cirque’s reputation is interrupted by the startling knowledge that these people are, in fact, surprisingly normal. Behind the stunning mid-air acrobatics and the innovative artistry, under the trademark Grand Chapiteau with its distinctive, garish yellow-and-blue stripes, are the everyday lives of the artists and athletes.

Behind the Scenes

Adjacent to the main “big top,” which can fit 2,600 people for each performance, is a smaller, quieter Artistic Tent, a jumbled mix of practice and leisure spaces, with a myriad collection of costume racks, barbells, couches and televisions which keep the 50 to 60 performers busy between shows.

Cinthia Baronek is perched comfortably on the arm of the sofa, ruffling her red-tipped, choppy hair as fellow Brazilian Juliana Coutinho bends over from the back of the couch, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Helen Ball and Sophie Oldfield, two pixie-haired and fair-complexioned Londoners, prefer to stretch out on the floor at the foot of the furniture. The four are part of the Triple Trapeze act, in which they soar and tumble and form a synchronized kaleidoscope of intricate and acrobatic shapes nearly 20 feet from the ground.

“It’s not typical, boring trapeze,” says Baronek. Um, right — Boring. Trapeze.

For now, the 20-somethings are chatting nonchalantly in heavily-accented English and trying to convince me that they lead very ordinary lives most of the time. There are no colorful costumes, no bright stage lights here. The scene is a lot like a college dorm room — except for the girl in the background balancing on her hands and bending her legs until her toes are pointing just inches from her face. Yep, totally ordinary.

The mix between the ordinary and the extraordinary helped the company develop from a street show to a performance of exceptional international reputation.

Cirque du Soleil’s roots lie with an eclectic mix of French Canadian stiltwalkers and street performers just outside of Quebec City who, in 1984, were seeking to create a more imaginative way of presenting their varied art forms.

Now in its 20th year, the little project that began as a hodge-podge of local entertainers with unusual gifts has grown into an internationally-renowned entertainment empire, with more than 3,000 employees and 42 million spectators worldwide.

The unique productions have redefined the notion of the circus, circumventing traditional freaks-and-caged-animal spectacles to create shows based instead on the physical and artistic feats of the performers themselves. Raking in ticket sales of over $450 million, the company has hit over 100 cities with nine different productions.

Varekai, the traveling performance now setting up shop in the District at RFK Stadium, began like most productions do — in Montreal, where a creative team at Cirque’s headquarters (including founder Guy Laliberté) brainstormed themes and concepts for new projects.

Inspiring the audience’s imagination is the primary goal of every production — the creative teams build every show concept around a theme but without a straight narrative or storyline so that spectators can interpret for themselves what is happening in each act. The theme is reinforced through the show’s sensory experience, and everything from set to sound is carefully planned. Cirque shows are set to live music — if an act fails or goes awry, the musicians can pick up the tempo or improvise accordingly.

Each show’s soundtrack is a fusion of eclectic styles and international rhythms underscoring lyrics in a made-up language. “That helps us make it even more international,” says publicist Chantal Blanchard. “We don’t have to adapt it everywhere we go, and the imaginary words can mean whatever [the audience] wants them to mean.”

For the two-year-old Varekai production now setting up shop outside RFK Stadium, designer Eiko Ishioka (whose dynamic creations have appeared in films like The Cell) dreamed up more than 130 incredibly detailed and inventive costumes. Despite state-of-the-art designs and fabrics, “it’s still a lot of arts and crafts,” says Blanchard.

Each piece is dyed, constructed and detailed with sequins and appendages by hand — a painstaking process of 33,000 careful hours of work. Each creation is meant to serve as a “second skin” to the performers — soft, smooth and malleable, that’s exactly how they feel to the touch.

Running Away With the Circus

Varekai, which means “wherever” in the Romany language of the gypsies, pays tribute to nomadic wanderers, the circus tradition and the freedom of possibility. Loosely based on the ancient legend of Icarus, a man falls from the sky into an enchanted forest and embarks on an adventure with its inhabitants.

For the show’s artists, the unstable traveling life is all part of the job.

Like most Cirque performers, Baronek, Coutinho, Ball and Oldfield found their way to the troupe after years of dance or gymnastics training.

“I was mainly a dancer, until I started taking some acrobatics classes back home,” Baronek says. “Once I started trying the aerial things, that was it. It’s like a virus — the more you try it, the more you want to do it.” Her passion for aerial stunts eventually led her to one of the dozens of international auditions held every year.

“A lot of us coming from dancing backgrounds had great leg flexibility but no upper body strength, so that was a bit of a challenge for many of us getting into acrobatics,” Ball says, shifting forward in her position on the floor to lean on her hands — a move that reveals the taut muscles in her tiny frame, built after her months as a catcher in the Triple Trapeze act. Obviously, upper body strength is no longer an issue.

Oldfield, who spent most of her pre-Cirque experience in small theater companies near London, was thrilled when she got the call that she had been selected to join the Varekai cast, but the decision turned her life upside down. “After the audition, you never know when you’ll get a call — it could be a week, it could be a year. You have to be prepared to drop everything and move your whole life at any time,” she says.

Moving to a new city every four to six weeks, combined with rigorous performance and rehearsals, can be draining. Housed in corporate apartments, Oldfield says going to a “real” house to visit a friend or family member gets to be a treat.

“There’s nothing so comforting as a nice, messy house full of ... stuff,” she says. With so much traveling, most performers only carry two suitcases worth of belongings to each place to save time and energy.

“When you’re doing the same show every single day, all the time, being in a different city keeps it new and fresh,” Ball adds. “But the packing and unpacking will drive you nuts. It’s a fine line between wanting a new apartment to feel like home and not wanting to take anything out of your bags.”

But the perks of traveling make it all worthwhile — the show has already been to 10 U.S. cities and plans to visit several more after leaving Washington. “I probably wouldn’t get to see most of these places if it wasn’t for this job,” Ball says. “Every city has its own style, I love it.”

Life on the Road

Coultinho is sprite-like, with wide, innocent eyes and a tendency to drop Portuguese phrases into her verbose English. She and her boyfriend, who travels with her while Varekai is on tour, have managed to keep their relationship together, but it isn’t always easy. “When I got the call to join, … he was happy for me, but it’s hard for him,” she laments. “He can’t really have a proper life here.”

While Coultinho fills her days with workouts and practice sessions, he stays alone in their corporate apartment or tours whatever city they are in for the time being. “It can be very frustrating and it can be very fun,” she says. “But that’s cool — we are still together and we’ve seen we can stay together even here.”

Most performers, however, don’t have family or friends traveling with them. Instead, the cast and crew become their own tight-knit family. Everyone does everything together, but they don’t seem to mind.

“It’s a really good vibe here,” says Ball. “It’s pretty solid really — most people stay around for a few years, which makes sense. You can’t have people swapping in an out [of the routines] all the time.”

Most often, performers come and go in waves. Frequent viewers of last season’s “The Fire Within,” Bravo’s Emmy-winning reality series that charted the show’s development, may be disappointed to learn that of the dozen or so performers featured on the show, only Kevin and Andrew Atherton, the buff, blonde twins known for their remarkable aerial strap routine, remain with the production. The others, cut, quit or redistributed, have been replaced with other talented artists who have made the performance and the Cirque family their own.

Performers typically train for three hours each day and perform 10 shows a week in each city. It can be grueling, but most take time off whenever they can to travel and be tourists in each city.

The cast is made up of performers from 13 countries, and the culture shock of touring a foreign country for a year can be difficult.

Baronek says she loves traveling in the United States but is agitated by the “restrictive” nature of American society.“All the rules, the ID checking, everything closing early. You feel watched all the time. The so-called American dream doesn’t seem to exist,” she says with a note of dissatisfaction in her voice.

“I miss my country a lot,” says Coultinho, who descibes Brazil as “more free and crazy” than the U.S. “Everything here is so straight and narrow, and the people that grow up here tend to be as well. If you grow up in a crazy place, you’re going to have a crazier spirit,” she says mischievously.

Making it Work

But it’s all part of the job of working with Cirque du Soleil, and the trapezists all emphatically say they feel lucky to travel and perform with the circus troupe. It’s not all the fun and games audiences see on stage, but their passion for the art makes it worthwhile.

In the future, most see themselves moving back to their home countries and back to smaller, intimate performing groups, back to families and real lives; for now, they bask in the surreal glow of the limelight.

“My favorite part?” Baronek asks. “I love the end of the show. We’ve all come from smaller production companies, but taking your bow at the end of a Cirque show in front of hundreds and hundreds of people and you hear ’em roaring ... it’s real emotional. That’s definitely something amazing.”