Welcome to the latest edition of Fascination, the Unofficial Cirque du Soleil Newsletter.
Wow, can you believe it’s March already? Do you know what that means? Spring is just around the corner and we’re just a little more than a month away from the premiere of Cirque du Soleil’s newest big top production – Luzia. The closer we get to premiere now the more information that seems to trickle out about the show – from pictures of costumes to glimpses of the acts themselves. But perhaps the most important element about the show’s creation is the house it’s going to play in. On Thursday, March 3rd, Cirque raised Luzia’s big top in the old port of Montreal, and we had web-side seats to the goings-on there via the Snapchat and Facebook social media apps. Although we were in the dark more often than not (those technical glitches can get ya!), it was still quite exciting to speculate about the new big top’s design while we waited… would it be the traditional blue and yellow striped tent? Would it be one of the blue and yellow swirled tents instead? Or would Cirque put up something totally fresh and new, as we were lead to believe? Yes! They’ve got a brand new white tent (representing the moon) with yellow concentric circles swirling about (planets) and an all-yellow tent with white lines swirling about sitting behind it (representing the sun). In the FOTOS area of our OUTREACH section this month is where you’ll find all the links to pictures we posted from Luzia’s tent raising, as well as those little bits and bobs that leaked out over the last couple of weeks. So check them out, it’s quite exciting!
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The following evening – Friday – my wife and I had an amazing time with KURIOS here in Atlanta. OH EM GEE, it was one of the best experiences at Cirque ever – the artists were firing on all thrusters! KURIOS literally left us breathless.
Nicole and I fell in love with the show at premiere, watching it take its first tentative steps in Montreal. We found it to be one of the most immersive shows to come out of Cirque in a long, long time. Everything about it seemed right – its cohesive and self-contained universe is simply perfect. I mean, there’s nothing about it that seems out of place – musically or aesthetically – that plagues some of the Cirque’s other productions. It simply works very well together. Michel Laprise, who was in attendance that evening, has put together a kick-ass show…
And it’s still kick-ass, if you’ll excuse that colorful metaphor.
Friday night was the first time Nicole and I had a chance to catch up with the show since premiere and we couldn’t have been more ecstatic or pleased.
The “new” Russian Cradle duo – Anny Laplante and Andrei Kalesnikau – we’re simply fantastic together. Top notch artists! (Off course, they just won the gold medal at the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain – Paris.) Both our jaws hit the canvas when they came out swinging and flipping doubles right out of the gate. I even found myself holding my breath, fearing for her life on more than one occasion – a sensation I hadn’t felt since Maxim “Mad Max” Levantsevich ripped off his head-dress at Varekai’s premiere in 2002 and leapt between the two Russian Swings as if it were an every-day occurrence. Anny and Andrei literally gave me heart palpitations!
Andrii Bondarenko’s balancing on chairs routine was phenomenal as well (we saw Rokardy in Montreal) – we got a huge kick out of the Atlanta audience coming to the realization that they’re mirroring the entire routine up in the cupola, which was a huge surprise for us at premiere. (The act *IS* called “Upside Down World” after all!) Rola Bola was awesome as always. I mean, what else can you say about his act? There aren’t enough adjectives in the English language to describe what he does. He *IS* the fearless aviator!
Eirini Tornesaki sang brilliantly, of course (we love her). Kit Chatham and the rest of the 11:11 Clown Voodoo Band was in excellent form too. The casts of the Acro Net and Banquine numbers were living it up as always (and managed to make me ask: what on earth are they doing?!) Anne Weissbecker, and the Siamese Twins took to the air dazzlingly in their acts, as they do. Nico and his hand puppets were excellent. And the clown was as funny as ever with his Invisible Circus and Animal Mime routines.
But out of the entire show there was one performance we hadn’t the opportunity to see at premiere: “the yo-yo guy”. I wasn’t sure what to expect out the routine at first, because when he takes the stage and brandishes a simple yo-yo, you can’t help but wonder what kind of simple filler performance you’re about to receive. What can you do with a yo-yo to make it Cirque-y, you know? Well, hellooooo! Let me assure you this is not play-time; we’re far from “Walking the Dog” and “Around the World” here. He came out with some skills, man! We were watching 1A and AP World Champion Tomonari “BLACK” Ishiguro, who left his highly successful yo-yo competition career to focus on performing arts. He managed to impress Cirque du Soleil during an audition back in 2009 and here he is, living his dream in Kurios, where Ishiguro is nothing short of phenomenal! And I wasn’t the only one impressed… the entire audience fell under his spell as well!
At the end of the performance we exited the Grand Chapiteau so euphorically high we could barely contain ourselves. I could have gone to see Banana Shpeel right after and proclaimed it the second-best thing ever without skipping a beat! (I must be joking!) So a huge heart-felt thank you to the cast and crew of KURIOS – you guys rock!
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The press in Las Vegas have been busy this month covering all the changes to LOVE – both musically and acrobatically. We’ve collected the most relevant pieces from the Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas Review- Journal, and Las Vegas Weekly into one piece in our FEATURES section for your perusal. However, should you not be interested in reading through all the Q&A’s and other reviews for details, here’s the TL;DR (if you’ll forgive the internet parlance) version; a summary:
– Every aspect of the show has been looked at and touched.
– There’s going to be a lot of new projection content.
– Choreography, costumes, and lighting have been addressed.
– The show is going to be brighter, more colorful.
– “I Am The Walrus” is out, “Twist and Shout” is in.
– “I Want You” is also being added, with choreography.
– Choreography for “Yesterday” has been updated to acrobatics.
– “Revolution” and “Hold Your Hand” have more trampoline, more acrobatic flips, and more set pieces.
– They’re about 70 percent complete with the changes, which have gone live February 25th.
– More changes and tweaks will come in as the show nears it’s 10th anniversary celebration this July.
– Musically, the show has been totally remixed again.
– All of the seat speakers were replaced to accommodate new technology.
There’s plenty more to read about Cirque in this month’s issue too: with the debut of the new E-boutique we thought it was time to have a talk with Cirque about merchandise. So Keith reached out to Ann Paladie, Las Vegas PR Director, who put him in touch with Audrey Tillman, Director of Merchandising and Operations, Resident Shows Division, (Las Vegas). You won’t want to miss their conversation. And we continue to explore Guy Laliberte’s Poetic Social Mission with “Moving Stars and Earth for Water”. And more!
So, let’s get started!
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