Another Dream come true: Cirque Du Soleil
My mother and aunt Tia combined resources to buy tickets for Trish, Orion, Oma and me to celebrate my 41st birthday in April. I prepped by visiting the official site and watching the trailer for Kooza.
The promo materials emphasizing the clown elements gave me high expectations.
KOOZA tells the story of The Innocent, a melancholy loner in search of his place in the world.
KOOZA is a return to the origins of Cirque du Soleil: It combines two circus traditions – acrobatic performance and the art of clowning. The show highlights the physical demands of human performance in all its splendor and fragility, presented in a colorful mélange that emphasizes bold slapstick humor.
The Innocent’s journey brings him into contact with a panoply of comic characters such as the King, the Trickster, the Pickpocket, and the Obnoxious Tourist and his Bad Dog.
Oh, Man! I’m totally gonna dig that! I’m all about melancholy loner in search of his place… Oh, man, a Trickster and everything. This is so gonna rock my world. It’s just the kick in the pants I need to set my sights above and beyond these low-hanging fruits!
Or so I thought.
We arrive in a down pour. It makes those last few minutes finding the parking lot into an adventure fraught with danger. The rain will be significant later. It stops shortly after we arrive, and we rendezvous with Oma.
No pictures will be allowed inside Le Grand Chapiteau, or Big Top. I snap a pic of the family and put the camera inside my jacket’s breast pocket. Our seats are on the last row of metal bleachers. Behind us, a dark crevasse. I take off my coat and set it down on the bleacher. At some point I have to stand to let people pass by. The coat makes a silent departure into the crevasse. At the intermission I seek an usher. Instead of retreating back the way we came I advance toward the stage. The usher is also a guard against those trying to crash into the Tapis Rouge (Red Carpet) area. Those folks get special treatment. Oh la la, c’est cher. Trop cher! Way Trop Cher.
The usher asks “Can you identify it?” Yes, it’s a black Calvin Klein, given to me by my mother-in-law. Thank you very much. They will look for it after the show if I could please wait around. Then between acts they let me know that they have found it and that it is soaking wet. Fell into a puddle! I have to wait until the end to determine that the camera is still okay.
They didn’t actually have this pickpocket at our show that I can recall. The mark’s name is Justin. The pickpocket clown is talented, but not hilarious or profoundly memorable by my estimation.
After the show, camera checks out fine.
Kept the Popcorn Box (and scanned it) as a souvenir as well as the water cup. I had been determined not to buy anything as drastically overpriced as I knew they would be. Orion was determined to get a snack and drink as we had driven straight from Olympia to Portland that morning.
Twenty Dollar Program showing the Mad King and his two Jesters
With the Algerian program vendor. Here we are conversing in French about Oma and Trish… how beautiful they are and how lucky I am, of course.
I was impressed. Don’t get me wrong. It was my first CdS show, and I took some lessons away.
- Be in your body
- Go beyond language
- Refine your art
- Control your image
- Prize your reputation
- Inflate your value
and yet… I remember this guy, and wanted the clowns to be more like him.
I laughed during Kooza and sometimes heartily, but I didn’t get the guffaws I expected or the epiphany built up by the show’s blurb. It didn’t hold together like I thought it might. I’ve seen several videos and the Varekai Fire Within documentary. I’ve heard Sage’s story of auditioning for the Cirque. Then, recently, I heard more about Sage working as a stilter to promote Kooza. Of course, I’ve had many people ask if that was my ultimate goal with clowning.
I think, after this, that it is not. Neither is it to work for Ringling. But to be in ensemble is beautiful. To have structures and systems of theatrical support is wonderful. These things build up expectations and make it safe for audiences to suspend disbelief, to at least applaud at conditioned intervals, and to ritualize a material sacrifice.
It’s a money hole. Quite the spectacle.
