Dewayne Bevil, the Orlando Sentinel’s self-proclaimed “Theme Park Ranger” writes today about the recent changes to Cirque du Soleil’s La Nouba, performing nightly at Downtown Disney West Side.
To tweak “La Nouba” requires more than a hop, skip and a jump.
The Cirque du Soleil show at Downtown Disney’s West End now sports a skipping-rope segment that involves two new Japanese artists as well as many troupe members — including trampoliners, trapeze artists and women who normally dangle high above the stage floor from red ribbons.
Skippers Yusuke Funaki, 29, and Shoichi Kasuo, 24, arrived in Orlando in June to prepare for the new act, which was placed near the beginning of the show in July. They were inspired by a performer in another Cirque show — Nori, a skipper in “Quidam.”
“My first impression was ‘What a fun thing to do,'” Funaki says through a translator. At the time, he was an aerospace engineer on weekdays and skipped rope on weekends.
“It’s not about transition,” he says of his career path. “It’s more like the priority has changed.”
Read more of the article here.
{ SOURCE: Orlando Sentinel }
