When Cirque du Soleil soared back into Oklahoma City with ‘Avatar’-inspired show ‘Toruk – The First Flight’, NewsOK’s Brandy McDonnell was on the scene to review the show locally. In a brief interview with Michelle Wuthrich, one of TORUK’s acrobats, Wuthrich mentioned that the show might be up for some changes shortly:
In her alien makeup and costume – complete with tail – Michelle Wuthrich, 25, is virtually unrecognizable Wednesday night as the Australian acrobatic performer who casually scaled up and suspended from a forest of towering poles at that afternoon’s rehearsals.
“We paint ourselves blue every night and put on our blue costumes … and it’s great,” she said with a grin. “Kids love it. … We’re getting a lot of great feedback. It’s really colorful. We still have plans to improve the show, as it is new. So, we’re looking forward to all those changes, but for now, the response has been fantastic.”
Read the rest of the interview here:
While “Toruk” may focus more on storytelling than other Cirque du Soleil shows, it still boasts plenty of fantastic feats of flexibility and strength. Aerial silk artists deftly spiral around cords that resemble vines, acrobats balance on a seesaw decorated like a giant skeleton while doing flips and handstands, and performers in harnesses go airborne while keeping the beat on colorful drums.
“We have some airbeds that are part of the stage, so we do a lot of kind of like trampoline work, jumping from side to side. There are some kites that we fly in the show, some big flowers that we manipulate … and then we have what’s called the Loom. It’s like a big, vertical grid structure, so we swing around and we weave in and out of that,” Wuthrich said. “It’s quite a lot of fun. Quite diverse.”
“Toruk,” which made its world premiere in December in Montreal, Quebec, marks Wuthrich’s Cirque du Soleil debut. She started in gymnastics when she was 3 years old, added dance and sports acrobatics when she was still a youngster and attended circus school when she was 15. She got her first job as a performer when she was 18.
“From there, I’ve kind of built my way up to the ultimate … which is Cirque du Soleil,” she said. “It’s a whirlwind, traveling every week to new cities. It’s been great.”
{ SOURCE: NewsOK | http://goo.gl/pkXSM0 }
