CIRQUE DU SOLEIL: Part Circus, Part Ballet

Web site: www.cirquedusoleil.com
Prices: vary by city, check the web site for your city's show, generally $25 - $50.
U.S. Tour Dates and Locations:
Las Vegas, Nevada, the only permanent show in the U.S.
Santa Monica, CA, from September 23, 1999
Irvine (Orange County), CA, from December 2nd, 1999
San Francisco, CA, from February 3, 2000
San Jose, CA, from April 6, 2000
Denver, CO, Summer 2000
Minneapolis/St-Paul, Summer 2000
Houston, Fall 2000
Dallas/Fort Worth, Fall 2000


The Cirque du Soleil is a vivid montage of purple colors, agile bodies, and ribald costumes. It is one of the most imaginative performances I have seen; the performers experiment with utterly new ideas on how the human body can twist, catapult, and fly.

It is a funky, acrobatic, Canadian-French version of a circus that has been around since 1984. It was founded in Quebec, is now headquartered in Montreal, and has performances going on in North American, Asia, and Europe. The Cirque has no animals, and much of the performance has the smooth, aesthetic feel of a ballet in technicolor. It features artists from 10 different countries - Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Switzerland, Ukraine, the U.S., and a house troupe of 35 Chinese acrobats. The theme of the Cirque changes all the time, this year it is 'Dralion,' for dragon. The performance lasts close to 3 hours with a 20-minute intermission. It is held in a fanciful yellow and blue stripped circus tent with stadium seats that are not easy on your back-end, but most likely you will be to engrossed to notice. Just don't expect anything like what you have seen before.

The acts are wild and varied, interspersed with haunting live music. One young girl holds herself up in a one-handed handstand, while swiveling and rotating the rest of her body in every imaginable angle to the beat of piercing music. Certainly there can only be about 10 people in the world that have the balance and indefatigable strength necessary for this. There is also a group of men that come out to dance and do gymnastics while perched impossibly on rolling balls. Another act involves young men flying through linked circles, but the night I saw it this the performers kept crashing into the circles and knocking them apart. It was opening night at the Irvine show; let's hope they get this smoothed out.

There are also 2 couples, each couple on a double trapeze, who swing and dance as if they were made of silk, flawlessly soaring and stretching their bodies. But I found the most beautiful segment to be when a man and woman drop from the ceiling on an unfurling purple scarf, then proceed to do a ballet together half in the air, half on the ground. The colors, the smoothness of the dancers, and the choreography are breathtaking. I could have watched them all night.

The theme 'Dralion' gives the cirque an infusion of a fanciful Chinese New Year street parade. Small Chinese dragons with giant painted faces and disjointed movements often come out to circle the stage and the performers, a paper mache come to life. 'Dralion' is also meant to celebrate the four elements of life: air, water, fire and earth. As such, the costumes are in four colors: blue for air, green for water, red for fire, and ochre for earth. The music has elements of Indian melodies, African instrumentals, and western lyrical motifs. The live singing is great, but not fantastic, as it was in a previous show, Allegria.

Hopefully the above gives you a sense of the vibrant, tightly-controlled chaos that this performance throws at its audience in every color and shape you can envision. The human imagination is a wonderful thing.




Recommended: Yes