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The Return of Cirque du Soleil
By Patrick Brady
October 16 marks the Southern California return of Canada's most unusual export, the Cirque du Soleil. The new show, KOOZA, will take up residence at the Santa Monica Pier in its trademark Grand Chapiteau-big top tent.
The show's creator, Serge Roy, says that Santa Monica was instrumental in Cirque du Soleil's early success in America and their return to the Santa Monica Pier in time for the pier's 100th anniversary celebration is something of an American homecoming. The opening of KOOZA will also mark the 25th anniversary of the Cirque itself.
Likewise, KOOZA is a return to the roots of Cirque du Soleil. The show focuses on two age-old circus traditions: acrobats and clowns. Performances highlight the incredible physical demands of acrobatics and are spiced with a colorful display of bold slapstick humor that has made clowning an ageless favorite of circus fans.
KOOZA acts include a troupe of acrobats that create human pyramids and dive into a circle of fabric inspired by the Inuit game "Nalukauq." Another acrobat uses eight chairs and a pedestal to create a 23-foot tower on the artist balances. A group of young performers work together as contortionists to create a breathtaking, moving sculpture of unusual poses. A group of four tightrope walkers use two high wires suspended above the audience and display grace and balance most of us can't manage on flat ground. Other acts include juggling, a teeterboard that flips artists more than 30 feet into the air, as well as a solo trapeze act. Another unusual twist in the show is a duo that performs on a unicycle-two bodies, one wheel; imagined the traditional Cirque display of strength, balance and grace transposed onto a unicycle and you have the picture. And in a stroke that makes Cirque du Soleil truly unique, there is the "Wheel of Death," a 1600-lb. wheel that rotates at terrifying speed and powered only by the two acrobats who leap and counter-rotate in perfectly timed teamwork.
The ensemble's characters are led by a king who commands no respect. The cast also includes the agile Trickster-the creator of the world of KOOZA, the Innocent, a pair of clowns, the Pickpocket, a beast that lives beneath the stage and runs KOOZA's hidden machinery and is called the Heimloss, and one nutty canine called the Bad Dog.
In traditional Cirque du Soleil fashion, the audience is kept in close proximity to the action, giving viewers a palpable sense of danger. No effort has been made to hide the apparatus used by the performers.
For more information, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com.