A Cirque du Soleil performer has died in Las Vegas after falling some 15 metres during a performance of the stage show Ka.
Frenchwoman Sarah Guyard-Guillot, 31, the mother of two young children aged 8 and 5 years old, was pronounced dead shortly before midnight Saturday, local time, after plummeting from the vertical stage during the production’s climax.
Hers is the first reported death from an accident onstage in the French Canadian company’s 30-year history.
Witnesses told the Las Vegas Sun that the accident occurred near the end of the performance of Ka, a resident production at the MGM Grand.
‘(The artist) was being hoisted up the side of the stage and then just plummeted down,’ said Dan Mosqueda. ‘Initially, a lot of people in the audience thought it was part of the choreographed fight. But you could hear screaming, then groaning, and we could hear a female artist crying from the stage.’
The performance was halted shortly after Guyard-Guillot’s fall; the second time in a week that one of Cirque du Soleil’s Vegas productions has been stopped because of injury.
Guyard, who performed as the character ‘Sassoon’ in Ka, had performed as an acrobat for 22 years since graduating from the Annie Fratellini Art & Circus Academy. She had been performing in Ka since the production premiered in 2006, a Cirque du Soleil spokesperson said in a statement.
Cirque du Soleil’s co-founder, Guy Laliberte, made his own personal statement about Guyard-Guillot’s death.
‘I am heartbroken. I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to the family,’ Laliberte said.
‘We are reminded, with great humility and respect, how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family.’
Cirque du Soleil was founded in 1984 by Laliberte and Gilles Ste-Croix, and is based in Montreal, Canada. A former street performer, Laliberte is now worth an estimated US $2.6 (AUS $2.83) billion according to Forbes magazine.
