CIAO
.jpg)
Okay no I'm not yet going, but there is something so bedazzeling, so magical about their circus, I just had to write about it. For those who don't know them ( be ashamed, cultural ignoramus!) Let me wiki that for you:
Cirque du Soleil (English pronunciation: /ˈsɪərk duː soʊˈleɪ/, "Circus of the Sun"), is a Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a "dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment." Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul in 1984 by two former street performers, Guy Laliberté and Daniel Gauthier.[2]Le Grand Tour du Cirque du Soleil was a success in 1984, and after securing a second year of funding, Laliberté hired Guy Caron from the National Circus School to re-create it as a "proper circus". Its theatrical, character-driven approach and the absence of performing animals helped define Cirque du Soleil as the contemporary circus ("nouveau cirque") that it (...) blah blah blah yada yada yada etc.
The thing with Le Cirque Du Soleil is that they are nothing like a regular circus. Their magic lays in the fact that they took the ancient aspects of classic circus ( acts such as the tumbling acts, the clowns,...) but managed to maintain if not outshine the current standards of entertainment. Nowadays grown people have the attentionspan of a fly, they always want new, better, even more spectacular... How is a regular circus supposed to compete with that ?
Well they did it totally right. Cirque Du Soleil manages to stupefy your senses by bringing an astonishing mix of poetry, athletics, magic, art, costumery, music and much more into a performance that will stick with you for a lifetime.
We live in an era where we think that we have seen it all, our cynical minds tell us that such an old concept such as a circus can't amaze us anymore. PLEASE TELL YOUR MIND TO SHUT UP.
In this age of mechanical production we don't know what pure craftmanship and art is, what it means to see a live performance, to see emotion in a performer's act... Cirque Du Soleil blows our rational mind by transporting us to a new time, a new era where masks and costumes express who you are. Where the body is not only functional in matter of keeping us alive, but also an extention of our soul, capable to show us emotions we forgot we could see, let alone express.
CIrque Du Soleil is about chasing your dreams and make them come true, to embrace one's self by seeing the beauty of movement. Cirque Du Soleil is about a family coming together to surpass the possible into what everybody thought lost, forgotten, impossible. Their show is about showing your passion and communicate the change we would love to see in this world. Their idealism and visualisation of Utopia invite us to dig deeper in ourselves, to examine both our wishes and our values.
I mean, who knew that at my age I could still be emotionally moved by the struggles of a clown? If you have seen Alegria (aka my favorite CDS show) you know that the clown in the storm act is just both flabbergasting and heart breaking. For those who haven't seen it, watch this video starting at 7:25
Take that 3D cinema ! So much emotion in an act where not a single word is spoken. Just ridiculously amazing.
Alegria is with no doubt my all-time favorite show ever in the history of EVERYTHING. I could watch it over and over again. If I ever get the chance to see this show live I'm gonna die of emotion.
I know I can get carried away sometimes when I really love something, but CDS is just pure rainbowmagic and unicornglitter. Don't even get me started on their costumes and make-up.
In my Marketing class we keep talking about targeting and finding the right audience for a product, so it's safe to say that when a show can move both the illiterate as the highly educated, the young and the old, from all over the world, it means that something was done right no ? Watch the soul-shaking trailer of Alegria here :
For my Belgian readers : Cirque Du Soleil will be in Belgium performing Corteo from June 13th in Antwerp! If I get missing after that, I probably slipped myself in their trucks. Not even joking about that. I reaaaaallllyyyyy want to see them live so bad.
Have you ever seen a real-life circus, or would you like to? Tell me about it!
Bisous
J
Dedicated to my personal circusclown and the best perfomer I know, Venant :) Don't leave with the circus without me or I'll cry, forreal.
