Alegria
The players in Cirque aren’t superbeings. They’re as ordinary as the men and women sitting next to us. In fact, on one of its last pages the program invites the audience to audition for the show. Unlike photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, Cirque is searching not for freaks but for folks who want to develop their potential and have a “grand adventure.” It’s this ordinariness, which is never lost in the extraordinariness of the show, that makes Cirque du Soleil such terrific performance art.
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After the opening number and parade of clowns and other personages comes a two-person trapeze act that embodies much of what is Cirque. Beautifully costumed in form-fitting togs adorned with sequins in an otherworldly design, the two young, sinewy aerialists–one male, one female–are ministered to by clowns and hags. Just before the performers ascend to their sky-high swings, the hags snap wires on them. It’s a reassurance. It means sit back and enjoy the beauty. If anything is death-defying at Cirque–and perhaps much of it is–it’s denied. The thrills come from what happens, not what might happen if something goes wrong. So the aerialists fly to their swings on those wires and begin an almost slow dance, rhythmically pumping back and forth in perfect symmetry.
This is of course a whole different choreography, a whole different kind of magic. It’s energetic and muscular, busy and exuberant. The rubber creatures somersault and roll, jump and fly. They go across alone and in twos, missing each other by what looks like inches. There’s no trick to this at all. It’s the stuff of gym classes and Olympic broadcasts, but in collaborating units and faster, better.
It’s perhaps verging on the sentimental to say there’s something about love in all this, but Cirque isn’t sentimental in asserting that. In spite of the name, Cirque’s is not a sunny world, but one in which light is constantly contrasted with darkness. One of Cirque’s most moving moments involves a clown who finds comfort in the embrace of an empty coat–a coat that encircles him because of his own powers, that assuages his loneliness because of his own capacity to love. In Alegria that embrace is sustained–it lingers, it nourishes.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Al Seib.
