I wasn’t actually planning to see the Cirque du Soleil this time round, since I’ve seen them three times in the last twenty-five years and the last time was only two years ago.
But, in the end I just couldn’t let them leave without seeing them.
My favourite character was Valentyna. She’s a mature, child-like, two-foot-five, dwarf acrobat, with a good sense of comedic timing, and I loved her. She was floating around, suspended from six giant helium balloons, and the audience got to play with her. She’d float down, and members of the audience would push up on the soles of her little wee feet and send her floating back up. It’s probably a good thing she didn’t come floating down near me, because I might have plucked her out of the air and squeezed her.
I was totally enchanted by her, but I felt almost guilty about it. When I was a kid I wanted a chimpanzee so I could name him Mikey and dress him up in overalls and striped t-shirts and baseball caps and sneakers and hold his hand when we walked to the park to play on the jungle gym. That’s kind of how I felt about Valentyna.
I know, I know – it’s wrong to feel that way about human beings. It’s probably wrong to feel that way about chimpanzees too. Sigh.
The thing about the Cirque is that everything they do looks like so much fun. Everything evokes that sense of childlike wonder and delight. Jumping on the bed, floating from helium balloons, learning how to fly, walking upside down across the ceiling, riding a bicycle through the sky…it’s all got that magical childhood thing going on.
I’m not sure I was ever that kind of child, though. I might have wanted a chimpanzee, but I didn’t even believe in Santa Claus. I distinctly recall my mother warning me when I was five years old, “If you tell Debbie there’s no Santa Claus, you’ll be in very serious trouble young lady!”
Debbie was my big sister and she believed. Years later Mom finally told her herself, because she thought Debbie would soon be a target for ridicule if she continued to believe. I remember Debbie lying on her bed sobbing at the news. Mom went on to explain that Santa Claus was “just like the Tooth Fairy,” which traumatized poor Debbie even further because, unbeknownst to Mom, Debbie still believed in the Tooth Fairy. I think the Easter Bunny bit the dust that day too, along with the tattered remains of Debbie’s innnocence.
Anyway, they say Corteo’s about a funeral for a clown, but to me it was about childhood. How about you? Did you see it? Did you love it? Did your childhood flash before your eyes?
Every Cirque de Soleil show I have seen makes me want to run away and join them. Now if I only had a talent they would want!
A number of years ago my friend worked for a company that supplied food for them at Battery Park. Before the show we got to go backstage and eat there surrounded by people in various stages of costuming. It made me feel like Alice in Wonderland.
Somehow I had managed to not see Le Cirque du Soleil, ever, until my friend offered to treat me for my birthday.
It was exactly as you described, and I loved it. It certainly puts all those goofy, half-assed plate-twirlers and tumblers that once played the Ed Sullivan show to shame.
Now I’m saving my money in order to travel to Vegas and catch all their shows there. I’m good at costumes …. perhaps I could enlist to work as a lowly wardrobe serf for them.
Re, me too, I wanted to run away and join the circus! Apparently you can, too, in a security/usher kind of role, as long as you pay your own way.
deBeauxOs, is the Vegas show the underwater one? Or is that Florida? Or somewhere else? A permanent underwater circus!
No, my childhood did not flash before my eyes. But, the child in me was given some peace. My father desperately wanted to see Cirque du Soleil, but he was too ill to go. He did not have the chance to see them before he died. I have resisted seeing them for 9 years for fear it would break my heart to see what he could not. Isn’t it interesting that the story was about a man on his death-bed re-living the happiest moments of his life… In the end what I thought would break my heart helped bring me peace.
Woodsy, I’m happy to hear it helped you in that way.
The was the second show of theirs I saw. I loved the first one more, for two reasons. One, I had no idea just how totally cool and inhumanely remarkable they are the first time, so it was freaking amazing. And two, I brought my kids this tme. The eldest thought it was okay, but would be way more interesting without those safety wires. The middle one kept says derisively, “I could so totally do that.” And the youngest, the one who climbed to the top of our piano at the age of 8 months and hasn’t stopped climbing since, kept saying, “I *want* to do that!”
I did love Valentyna, particularly attached to the balloons. It was surreal.