There’s always something so overwhelmingly satisfying about taking in a performance of Cirque du Soleil. And this weekend, audiences can partake in Crystal, a brand new production making its North American debut at the Cajundome and Convention Center in Lafayette.
This time Cirque du Soleil is taking a step into uncharted territory, mixing their well-known, gravity-defying and artistic performances with the element of ice. The mixture of disciplines creates a spellbinding world that makes their new production a show that simply cannot be missed.
In the beginning, what seems like a frozen world, solid and free from movement, transforms into a captivating story of initiation and discovery.
The show centers on Crystal, a young girl facing what all young children must: their desires to keep their head in the clouds versus the nagging pressures to finally grow up. Feeling misunderstood, Crystal takes to the ice and finds herself falling through, presumably under the weight of her suppressed creativity and her stressful reality.
The audience is transported to an underwater world as images of Crystal’s free-fall flash across an icy backdrop used throughout the show. A performer descends from the sky transitioning the audience from reality and into Crystal’s imagination. Here, the show begins.
Performers use the entire length of their frozen stage and the audience is guided through every moment of Crystal by fantastic skating choreography and spectacular acrobatics. The ice plays an integral part in telling the story as performers create lines and change their environment through projections and motion tracking that supplies an element of magic to Crystal’s world.
At times the pace becomes slow, but after some acts (like a whirlwind hockey game turned pinball machine that sends skaters flipping through the air, and a gasp-inducing balancing act ending with a performer perched atop a tower of chairs directly on the ice) the time to recover was necessary.
During those times we are wowed again by brilliant skating and the antics of several performers including that of a friendly clown, Crystal’s imaginary friend.
Of course, Cirque du Soleil could only be so much without the amazing music and vocals embedded throughout the show. Performed live, the music never ceases and carries the show to heights unreachable by any trapeze artist or aerial silk performer. The music even makes it onto the ice with players in skates gliding around the arena enchanting the crowd with their musical spells. The audience may even be surprised to hear covers of popular music that help to move the story along.
Crystal is without a doubt a masterpiece, a beautiful combination of acrobatics and skating that is accentuated perfectly by a cast of disciplined performers. Their love of the art and the performance shows with each executed element and the thunderous applause, joyful laughs, and stifled gasps that pulse throughout the arena during the show proves the audience loves it too.
A word of advice for people who decide to attend: wear a jacket and prepare to go on a journey like no other.
{ SOURCE: KATC | https://goo.gl/4BqWSd }
