Alegria!
Alegria... WOW WOW WOW!!!! Saltimbanco, another Cirque du Soleil show that we saw two years ago in Des Moines, was wonderful. Alegria lived up to our expectations for Cirque shows. Wonderful music, phenomenal acrobatics, and even two of the techs must enjoy defying gravity, as they were sitting on two very small platforms above the audience, running spotlights. One guy was a firespinner, and at one point set fire to the stage floor (on purpose). They had three guys doing what I call the bouncy board boy act, in which six men stand in pairs with a long board between them, supported on their shoulders. The gymnasts bounce off the boards, propeled in part by the men helping them by flinging them up a bit, and then of course they do flips and things before landing on the boards. One part of the act had the guys flipping from one board to another. Yeow! One of my favorite parts was a trampoline act. The floor slid away to reveal two long trampolines in a cross formation, but it was really more like a giant plus sign. The gymnasts used the entire length of each leg to do flips and cartwheels and jump over and under each other, off the trampoline onto the stage floor, over the clown who kept getting caught up in it, and then even the clown did a flip, which was quite a feat considering how he was rigged out in big baggy pants and a hat and a rubber mask. They have a juggler, two more clowns who did gag bits between gymnastics, Oriental contortionists who look as if they have no bones, a guy who was doing solo arial work using a bungee-type setup, and the show closed with my other favorite, the trapeze artists. They had two trapeze/arial acts, actually, other than bungee boy, and the safety rigging was interesting. The bungee boy had no wire, but he also spent plenty of time near the floor. His most spectacular feat was probably when he wrapped the cord around his waist, was lifted up toward the roof, and then spun down to the floor by letting the cord unravel. The first trapeze guy did an act on a single swing, alone, and he was hooked into a safety rigging that had a ring on it so in addition to the trapeze work he could do spins in the air. Wow. My other favorite was the final act, which was 7 guys on the trapeze at the top of the rigging. Two were setting the swing in motion, and then the other five took turns doing flips and swinging and flinging themselves off into the air and being caught by the two guys on the swing. The seven of them dismounted by doing flips and landing flat on their backs in the safety net, then bouncing to their feet and climbing down. Even the two techs had rigging that allowed them to climb down from the catwalk grid. And we have souveniers; one scene included a clown caught in a snowstorm; a machine set up a wind and they dropped cut up pieces of tissue paper for the snow. It blew not just up to the concourse level where we sat (we liked our seats) but also up to the balcony. Four of the crew and one or two stadium employees spent the entire intermission sweeping and picking up the papers. If Cirque brings a show anywhere within 3 or so hours of us, I am SO very totally going to go if I can! Wow wow wow! We have now sat up quite high (balcony-type level) and about level with the arial stuff; next time I want to sit on the floor. I would also like to see O, the water show, but I think that requires a trip to Las Vegas. Humph. Not that interested. Maybe someday...