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Big Top Theater: The Cirque du Soleil
| Article
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20453 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1992 |
1,929 Words |
| Author
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Scarlet Cheng
Scarlet Cheng, based in Los Angeles, is a contributing editor
to the arts section of The World & I. |
It is a magical mystery tour. It is an enchanted Oz where brilliantly costumed denizens levitate and soar through space, contort their shapes, cavort and balance in impossible combinations, with each feat as dazzling as the one before.
"It's not a circus; it is more than circus," Franco Dragone, artistic director of the Cirque du Soleil, or "Circus of the Sun," maintains. "It is a show that marries elements of dance, theater, mime, and circus and creates something new, that goes beyond them."
Yes, reinventing the circus--that, no less, is the lofty goal of the Cirque du Soleil, the bright and brassily innovative piece of theater that has come out of Montreal. For the past seven years, it has won enthusiastic fans on both sides of the Atlantic, and it now is about to leap across the Pacific for an even wider audience.
And reinvented it is. Compared with the usual American circus, it is as different as night and day.
At the overhyped Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, there is a relentless insistence on having so much happening at once--the three-ring circus was never a very good idea--while dozens of products are hawked in the aisles during performances. The acts themselves become peripheral, mere background to watching people mill about and trying to buy overpriced cotton candy and light-up yo-yos for the kids.
The Cirque du Soleil, on the other hand, offers a refreshing appreciation for performance aesthetics and unity of experience. It also decidedly appeals to adults as well as children.
First, the whole layout is wonderfully designed. One comes upon the bright blue-and-gold ten encamped in accessible public settings--in Montreal it is pitched in the Old Port; in New York City it fronts the river at Battery Park; in Los Angeles it is set up at the Santa Monica Pier; in Washington, D.C., it sits right on the Mall, just below Capitol Hill. One passes through one of two smaller pavilions, which also serve as concession stands that sell a (mercifully) small selection of snacks and merchandise, before mounting steps into the cheerful citadel of the Big Top.
This imposing tent was made expressly for "La Nouvelle Experience," the 1990-91 edition of the Cirque, and seats a goodly twenty-five hundred. The interior feels intimate, with
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