Varekai
We saw Cirque Du Soleil’s Varekai on Saturday. Beyond some snippets on Bravo, we hadn’t seen Cirque Du Soleil before. It’s actually pretty amazing seeing it live: our seats were on the third row on the extreme right of the stage, close enough to see muscles quivering in handstands — if they quivered.
For me, there were several distinct stages of amazement and wonder. There’s the simple wonder at the showmanship. Cirque’s production values are high, the results of its corporate sponsorship and ticket prices. All that money was well spent on lighting, costumes, choreography. Yes, they successfully invoked a surreal world, full of wonderful creatures. It looked great, but this was the least of the show’s achievements. I think that any production company with such resources — say, any number of Broadway shows — could have pulled off something similar if it wanted to.
A higher level of amazement was in the physical skills of the performers. Clearly, the acrobats are circus folks in some way, trained from an early age to perform spectacular physical feats. How else do you have spines made of rubber, and muscles strong enough repeatedly support the body’s weight with a bent arm? And these acrobats weren’t even near the limits of their capability: their muscles didn’t quiver from the strain, only from quick adjustments to maintain balance. After all, they repeat the physical acts over and over again through the course of the show, each and every day, with few mistakes. I’m speaking with the jealousy of someone well below the 50th percentile in flexibility in my jujitsu class, and whose legs can come close to giving out after a prolonged bout of multiples. The gulf between professional and amateur is far larger than you can conceive.
The highest level of amazement combined both these other levels: choreography and physical skill combined to produce several acrobatic tricks where you wonder at the devious mind that would have thought, would have conceived that such tricks were not only possible, but were consistently repeatable. The best example would have been the troupe of acrobats who would be propelled into space by another acrobat underneath him. The first acrobat would basically sommersault head over toe, and, depending on the act, land on the feet of the guy who pushed him up. And this would happen over and over again, with varying leg positions and landing points, without any obvious mistake. Yes, most of it is ballistics and conservation of angular momentum, but the body control to pull this off, the timing involved, is simply amazing. (Again, to invoke jujitsu, after more than two years, I still consistently have problems executing a free breakfall without twisting in the air, and I still cannot do an extension roll without flattening out into a thumpy landing).
Definitely, definitely see this if you have a chance. The acrobats and their acrobatics are simply stunning.