We just got back from a Cirque du Soleil performance at our downtown arena. It was completely free, since Kristin’s work had booked an entire performance for their employees!
As you no doubt know, Cirque du Soleil is a modern circus that has character and story-driven shows and no animals. Tonight’s show was Corteo, about a clown viewing his own funeral. It was comedic and celebratory, and has apparently been performed over 5000 times in 17 years of touring since its debut almost 20 years ago!
That was our view. The arena was split down the middle with the large stage, and the audience sat on either side. When the action began the curtains lifted and it looked like this:
But I’m ahead of myself, since I forgot to mention that thanks to Kristin’s work both parking and food was also free, which means we didn’t have to pay the insane costs for fries and hotdogs ourself!
The performance was wonderful. With live music and singing and every sort of gymnastic event you could imagine it was a fascinating couple of hours.
The round stage rotated, and almost every act included some sort of aerial element. The most impressive for me were the solo artistes, like this ‘aerial silk’ girl (who had phenomenal shoulder/arm muscles!):
Or the freestanding laddersman:
Or the elastic strapmaster, whose body seemed like it was 110% muscle:
In the above photo the stairs you can see in the background are the opposite side of the arena.
Every main act was interspersed with a modern take on a clown show, which were amusing distractions as they set the stage for the next gymnast. Plus, they had pantomime horses:
We also saw trapeze artists, jugglers, diabolo savants, cyr wheel masters and lots of girls swinging from chandeliers. It was a lot of fun 🙂
Thanks Regeneron!