The decision of the wild seduces the senses in “Echo.”
The most recent surreal fantasia from the French Canadian circus phenome, Cirque du Soleil, delights the attention, as anticipated, but additionally stirs the soul with a dreamlike pageant that evokes the splendors of the pure world.
A 23-foot dice has landed below the enduring blue-and-white huge prime. “Echo” facilities on a colossal high-tech field round which a phalanx of acrobats vault, twist and fly. At first the monolithic construction, resplendent with gauzy projections, suggests an iceberg slowly thawing, revealing remnants of the primordial world, lovely feral creatures that leap and prowl. Later the field looks as if a cage, a digital lure confining the animal inhabitants of the planet. Inside this summary framing, the troupe’s famend gymnastic ingenuity soars.
Created by a number of administrators, “Echo” is each minimalist and complex, a examine in contrasts. One of the vital deeply conceptual items since “Quidam,” “Echo” fuses a way of existential longing with the standard jaw-dropping athleticism. That sharp inventive edge is what elevates “Echo” from mere leisure. Whereas the piece shouldn’t be precisely seamless and the narrative can actually be elusive, “Echo” makes you assume in addition to really feel, marvel in addition to smile.
After all you possibly can all the time eschew the themes and simply go along with the thrills.
The time period hair-raising takes on new which means as two performers contort their our bodies excessive above the stage, linked solely by their coiffures.
Muscular tissues ripple as two males cavort alongside the slack wire throughout the dice. A crew of acrobats flip backwards and forwards from see-saw to see-saw. A juggler defies expectations.
Better of all, should you ask my kiddo, the clowns on this spectacle had been laugh-out-loud humorous, vaudevillian masters of the slapstick arts. The giggles and guffaws they provoked alone had been well worth the value of admission for the 14-year-old cohort. The stacking cardboard field routine was completely hysterical.
For me, nonetheless, a puppet stole the present. A big pink man in a bowler hat, this futuristic marionette provides shades of “King Kong” and Burning Man as he cradles a lady in his mammoth hand, his lifelike eyes blinking, as if he can’t imagine his eyes. Neither can we.
Contact Karen D’Souza at karenpdsouza@yahoo.com.
‘ECHO’
Introduced by Cirque du Soleil
When & the place: By Could 11 at Santa Clara County Fairgrounds; at Oracle Park, San Francisco, Nov. 20-Dec. 21
Working time: two hours 5 minutes, one intermission
Tickets: $76-$359; www.cirquedusoleil.com
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