LUCID FORGE

Events that embrace the various elements of the performing arts are tricky to pull off. How to include one, while leaving room for another? How to make each valid and interesting? Most of all, how to engineer each one for soulful expression, while helping to move narrative and keep momentum? Interestingly, smaller venues tend to stage the marriage better than large ones, where the subtleties of drama can get lost. Remember Aida in the then-SkyDome? The 1989 production had all the pageantry of the beloved Verdi opera, but lost all of its poetry. Cirque du Soleil, however, has no problem with venues, or with the marriage of aesthetics. Formed twenty-five years ago, the Quebec-based company maintains their expertise in marrying the elements of dance, music, clowning, and drama with more fantastical athletic feats. The group has re-tooled their 1992 show Saltimbanco for touring, trading in the cosy yellow and blue tent for the expansive environs of arenas. Translated from an Italian phrase meaning “to jump on a bench”, Saltimbanco just finished a triumphant run at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre. It travels to Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum from August 27th to the 31st, before hitting a number of American cities, including Honolulu in October. Billed as “an allegorical and acrobatic journey into the heart of the city”, the show features the talents of trapeze artists, jugglers, acrobats, mimes, dancers, musicians, and a myriad of energetic, colourful scenes that, with their zany outfits and makeup, would’ve given the Olympics a run for their money in both athletic prowess and pure entertainment spectacle.

Saltimbanco opens with a panto that recalls the Italian commedia dell’arta tradition, with plenty of comedy, improv, physical movement, and colourful figures. Rene Dupere’s opening music is grandly orchestral, with plenty of dance and varied acrobatically-styled choreography. A Colombina-like character acts as our guide, complete with a dramatic unveiling and a harlequin-like red costume. The stage is a flurry of colour and activity; there’s so much to look at, in fact, that it’s difficult to know where to look. Perhaps the figures moving into the crowd (who had, as the crowd assembled, done short comedy skits in the aisles)? Or the various figures looking like punk rock clowns, doing acrobatics in different corners of the stage? The onstage musicians? The elaborately-dressed, hugely-wigged singer? We’re not sure. The busy spectacle doesn’t incorporate video, but its presentation is very much a product of the high-tech age, with plenty of flashy images, busy choreography and audience interaction; as the score jumps between operatic-style numbers, Euro-jazz, ambient, electronica, and pop-rock, there’s a veritable hodgepodge of dance, theatre, and panto, all blended together with classic elements of circus spectacle, guaranteed to please, delight, and most of all, entertain. One of the first circus acts to grace the stage is the Chinese pole act, that sees performers dressed in striped, lizard-like costumes climb and jump around sets of tall, narrow poles. It doesn’t sound particularly interesting, but seeing humans defy gravity in this manner, particularly when you realize they’re over twenty feet in the air, endangers a new respect for the gymnasti-theatre form that Cirque excels at. The sheer body strength required for these acts is jaw-dropping, but the movement is presently so deftly, with so much poetry and grace, it’s as if dancers from the National Ballet (albeit gaudily made up ones) were before you. With lithe limbs, they move between huge poles like motley monkeys, shimmying up with seeming little if any effort, jumping joyfully through the air, hanging upside down, swaying in exhilaration. It’s an engaging combination of sensuous and precise.

Equally compelling are the interludes in which several characters within Saltimbanco’s world speak in a kind of sing-song gibberish; we’re forced to use our imaginations to fill in the narrative gaps, as heroes and villains play out their battles, and more acts creatively explore the poetry of urban life. A cyclist shows us tricks most Toronto peddlers wouldn’t dream of, let alone attempt, including a charming sort of bicycle-dance. A juggler keeps a rhythm with a continuously-expanding collection of tiny white balls that resemble an old-fashioned lotto machine. Trapeze artists, acrobats on bungee cords, two men doing a series of jaw-dropping balancing feats with their hands (and heads) –these are just some of the visual wonders to be found at Saltimbanco. The boleadoras act shows undeniable elements of its flamenco roots, with its masters each wielding long cords with weights attached to the end of them. Keeping in time without getting a chipped tooth or a whack on the head seems like challenge enough, and is sonically as well as visually engaging. The choice of a male and female performer for the act adds a layer of sexy tension, with the two engaging in a kind of flirtatious, rhythmic battle that recalls the best kind of gypsy entertainment.

But there’s another far more simple, if somehow more engaging, act that makes the Cirque show more than a series of impressive, impressively-costumed acrobatic feats. Referred to as “Eddy” in the program, and described as “the child within us all”, he delivers a series of skits that incorporate the best of mime and comedy, showing the character’s strong roots in the Italian theatrical tradition. Using only his body, he takes the audience on a journey of imagination that widens the field from being concentrated solely in the dance/gymnastics aesthetic. Mixing elements of the profane and the profound, we’re guided through a flood (by way of a toilet scene, no less), a baseball game, and, in one memorable scene, a Western. The audience becomes the onstage star, identifying with the fellow Eddy has chosen to be his onstage counterpart for a scene straight out of High Noon. It’s Mime 101, and watching the performer put the regular-Joe (us, that is) through his paces is mesmerizing. Shake off those shackles of poe-faced adulthood, says Cirque, remember the world of childhood make-believe. The Eddy character is a clear reference to the Arlecchino character within the commedia dell’arte tradition, with his combination of clowning, improv, and audience interaction. His central place within the world of Saltimbanco adds another level of creativity and engagement to a gorgeous spectacle, by using the most basic of dramatic elements: movement, sound, and imagination. It’s this kind of simple theatre that makes Saltimbanco so engaging. Outside of the impressive high-wire acts, the balancing, the juggling, the boleadoras, the bungees, and the rest, Saltimbanco works as being a multi-faceted performance piece because of its choice to place so much of the power to create a narrative within its audience’s hands. And even if you –or your kids –don’t get all of it, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than pure entertainment, while at the same time embracing the possibilities lying dormant within the imagination, taking even the most hardened, cynical adult back to a place of wonder and joy. Bravo.